Radio W4KAZ

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NAQP SSB – TEAM VoxLox

After mostly aborting an attempt to gin up interest in forming NAQP teams before the CW portion, I got interested again. I aborted my first attempt to get a few of the guys, mostly from the local PVRC chapter, when I found there seemed to be little interest and my own plans for the weekend were shifting. A last minute e-mail exchange put N4YDU and myself out there as ‘Team QLF’ for CW.

Then my power supply blew up during the CW portion. NT4D provided a loaner for SSB. Given a new lease on operating, a few e-mails to those showing interest previously in SSB teams soon had a core available to construct ‘TEAM VoxLox’, and after some rabble rousing a few late inquiries resulted in a partial second, ‘TEAM LoxVox’.

W4KAZ Summary:

Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:    2     2
   80:  157    33
   40:  158    38
   20:   56    23
   15:   18     9
   10:    1     1
-------------------
Total:  392   106  Total Score = 41,552

The team gave me the extra prod I needed in the last three hours of the contest. Conditions here were very noisy on 80m, with lots of QRN from the winter weather going through the whole eastern seaboard of the US. I had a nice early run on 80m, but it did not last. I was just not able to work many of the stations down in the noise.

My first two hours were also slow. I used the start of the contest to bag mults on 15m and 20m, then tried to establish a run on 20m. My run was more productive than the S&P, but it was still a very low rate. My best hours came from running 40m fairly early, and moving to 80m early. 10m and 160m were both of no help to me this year.

It was a lot of fun running into guys from ‘VoxLox’ and the other teams. I heard W4MY working S&P, but never worked any of the ‘LoxVox’ team. From the PVRC teams organized by WX3B, I worked four or five guys.

The Good: The teams were a fun thing for me, regardless of the final outcome in the team competition. Just knowing I had other guys out there plugging away kept my interest level up. The 20m dipole did well enough. The 40m dipole seemed to hear into the mid west very well. The band change strategy was probably right on the money, if 80m conditions had been better. The early move to 40m worked, and I probably should have held on there another 30 minutes before breaking. Maybe S&P high bands for west coast mults right after returning from that break, then begin the run on 80m.

The Bad: The band conditions were very noisy. It seemed to me to be almost as noisy as the N4A IOTA expedition in mid summer last year. 80m QRN was S-8 all evening, and no one could hear me on 160m.

Team VoxLox:

KA1ARB   72,189
K4WES     9,408
W4KAZ    41,552
NT4D     31,350
NT4Q     14,784
TEAM VoxLox:  169,283   final claimed score

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