Radio W4KAZ Thanks for stopping by the virtual KazShack. Feel free to comment - I often approve them.
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By w4kaz, created on 2007.11.07 at 06:49:06 | last changed on 2007.11.07 at 19:35:58 | Its “not a contest”. HA!
Maybe it is not, but the N4Q Krewe managed to rack up a nice QSO total anyway. And thats with one of the best operators, N4YDU, taking several hours off for another item on his schedule.
But our score put us as #1 in Class 2A for the Roanoke Division, and #16 in class 2A for all entries. Thats an improvement on 2006, where as N4PY we ranked #44. It is also a bit better in the #19 ranking in 2005, despite a slightly higher score then.
Time to update the N4Q website! (edit 11/7 – Note the number of participants versus the competition. It is even more of a stark contrast looking at 2A entries overall(#16))
Roanoake Division 2A top 10
# Call Score Cat QSOs Mult Sec Participants Club
1 N4Q 8,054 2A 2,093 2 NC 6 NC Contesters
2 K4MN 7,550 2A 2,293 2 NC 28 Cape Fear ARC
3 W4XD 6,988 2A 1,899 2 VA 90 Massanutten and Valley ARA
4 K4M 6,798 2A 1,824 2 NC 18 CARS
5 W8GK 6,196 2A 1,755 2 WV 32 Kanawha ARC
6 K4OO 5,920 2A 1,614 2 NC 6
7 K4RC 5,408 2A 1,690 2 VA 36 Williamsburg Area ARC
8 W4ANK 5,258 2A 1,143 2 SC 22 Trident ARC
9 W4BFB 5,248 2A 1,512 2 NC 58 Mecklenburg ARS
10 N4AW 5,042 2A 1,244 2 SC 18 Anderson RC
By w4kaz, created on 2007.11.06 at 12:33:28 | last changed on 2007.11.06 at 10:35:11 | This was both my best ever CW Sweeps and best number of CW Q’s in any contest from the home QTH.
A !Big Thanks! to all of the ops who take the time to slow down to match my 20 wpm rate for the exchange. This is a tremendous help, and I really appreciate the extra effort and consideration. (and it seldom happens in any DX contest!.) You guys are great.
It was hard. It was a challenge. I had to force myself. But despite
the pain, I did it.
No, not the CW SS contest…..I forced myself to watch the entire
LSU-Alabama football game before I operated. I’m just getting too old
to be an LSU football fan, all of these last minute wins are
gonna kill me yet. But despite the SIXTEEN sloppy LSU penalties, and blowing an initial 17 point lead, the Tigas won. Final: LSU 41, ‘Bama 34. Geaux Tigas!
By contrast CW SS was easy and I didn’t lose anything by missing the first few hours of SS. I can’t keep up with you guys right out of the starting gates!
Once I did finally infiltrate the Continuous Wave, I followed my normal
SS CW strategy of sweeping through the bands S&P. I picked a few
cherries on 20, then a few more on 40 where I was working the NCCC guys
in the mid afternoon(unusual for this station). I spent most of Saturday night on 80 meters. Continue reading Sweeps CW 2007
By w4kaz, created on 2007.10.31 at 16:29:17 | last changed on 2007.10.31 at 16:32:52 | I didn’t really expect to operate this DX contest, but I’m glad I did. I discovered that I’ll need a better 20 meter antenna before Sweeps, as I seem to have an intermittent connection somewhere on the 20m dipole. This antenna is at a ladder line fed dipole at 50 feet, so it should be working well enough. I was unable to load it properly. I’ve decided to ditch it in favor of a coax fed dipole in the same location. I have a vertical that I will probably deplaoy as well-just in case.
I was also happy to hear 15 meters open on both days. It has been a while since I operated a contest with my favorite band open enough for my piddly rectangular loop. Piddly or not, the 15&10 meter nested rectangular loop is a good antenna when conditions are better. It requires only one support, has a 50 ohm feedpoint, and I can turn it 90 degrees to favor a different direction. Not as good as a yagi, but better than what I had before, and its a good SWR across all of 15 meters and the contest area of 10 meters. Continue reading 2007 CQWW SSB W4KAZ SOAB LP
By w4kaz, created on 2007.10.06 at 16:31:47 | last changed on 2007.10.06 at 16:32:28 | Well, its not especially impressive, but the ARRL DX SSB multi-single at NT4D made it into the top ten box for US multi singles. Since we didn’t really put in an exceptional effort, this is pretty good. We are agreed that we probably could have easily done better, but we took a less serious approach to the contest intending to have fun and learn few things. Conditions on Saturday morning discouraged me from running on 15 or 20 meters, as I was not serious enough to want to dig into the QRN for the weak ones. Jay feels like he could easily have done better on 40 and 80 meters. Once we get Jerry comfortable with running stations, I think we’ll be in good shape.
Anyway, its nice to be in the results box, even if its at the bottom.
By w4kaz, created on 2007.08.26 at 19:28:57 | last changed on 2007.08.26 at 19:53:59 | I added more N4A photos to the N4A website. The last few frames at the bottom of the N4A photos page show some close ups of the gear we used on the beach for the Iota expedition.
I was a bit surprised at just how well the 21 inch stakes worked as guy anchors. They really held firm. These stakes were cut from 42 inch”deck balusters” I got from the local big box for about 75 cents each. They are just pressure treated 2×2 material. I cut each baluster in half, so two vampire killers are obtained per baluster. I expected to need to back these up with additional stakes, but they held the 36 foot mast with just dipoles very well. It took only one stake to hold each guy. The second surprise was how easily they came out when pulled straight up rather than at the 120 degree guy angle. Continue reading N4A Antenna Support Hardware
By w4kaz, created on 2007.08.25 at 08:20:53 | last changed on 2007.08.26 at 19:15:26 | Once again, I missed both August NAQP’s by picking the hottest week of the hottest month to spend in the hottest, most humid place in the US east of the Mississippi. I did manage to get some fishing in with a buddy.
 
My fishing pal kept all of the catch.
By w4kaz, created on 2007.08.02 at 09:47:28 | last changed on 2007.08.21 at 08:23:22 | As always, working N4A with N4YDU was a lot of fun. On arrival at the docks, we were both very eager to get going, and got a little impatient waiting for the boat across to the island. The wait was somewhat broken up by the boat pilot’s dog, who seemed to be torn between playing ball with N4YDU and jumping in the water to cool off.
Arriving at the cabin by about 2:00pm local, the WX was very hot and humid, with only a light breeze and crystal clear blue skies. We first set up the generator and climate control, then spent a couple of hours putting up antennas.
Continue reading 2007 Iota as N4A from Cape Lookout
By w4kaz, created on 2007.07.16 at 11:18:38 | last changed on 2007.07.16 at 19:53:38 | Only 112 QSO’s spread out over several hours. I spent a lot more of my operating time listening to various run stations and just soaking in the propagation observations on the bands. I just couldn’t get into operating the contest on either mode.
But maybe thats because I spent the first five hours ripping apart and re-building the station set up. All was not lost. I was able to debug a problem with the DVK input to the radio(a bad RCA jumper). Since I had just completed a new feed-through panel, I also needed several new jumpers to go from the panel to the station. I had more fun soldering up jumpers than I did operating.
Continue reading 2007 IARU @ W4KAZ
By w4kaz, created on 2007.07.04 at 15:14:58 | last changed on 2009.01.26 at 10:17:59 | Planning to operate IOTA with N4YDU at the end of the month.
Cleaned up and tested the SWR on a couple of vertical antennas today. One is a hy-gain ATV18 I got on loan from NT4D. This antenna has seen one too many field days. The so-239 on the base is broken, but I can use a short coax jumper to feed it. The 10 metertrap seemed intermittent at first, but is working for now.
The other is a 20 meter quarter wave that I made from parts of a broken CB 5/8 wave. The base was sound, but I needed to do a bit of surgery on the upper elements. I also replaced the bolts with hose clamps, and some of the rusted hardware with stainless parts. This is a project that had been laying around, but a trip to the beach moved it up the list.
By w4kaz, created on 2007.06.28 at 21:11:53 | last changed on 2007.08.24 at 15:16:03 | Field day for 2007 was with N4YDU and the NC Contesters group, operating the special event station N4Q. We were operating from a fire tower near Lousiburg, NC.
Our group was reduced to five from those originally interested in coming out. We ran the operation as 2A. A general description of the operation is on the N4Q webpage.
BTW–QSL for N4Q is via SASE to W4KAZ.
Continue reading Field Day 2007 – N4Q
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