Had fun again for Field Day with N4YDU. Always do. Even though it was miserably hot and humid this year. Operated this year under the NC Contesters call NR3X.
We had a crew of ‘ringers’ on 40m CW. W0UCE, N3ND, and K2AV ran up a nice QSO count on 40Cw. Other operators were AA4XX, K4CZ, N4GU, N4YDU, and W4KAZ. With the extra operators on hand we operated class 3A. AA4XX and K4CZ were only available for the first few hours, so in the end we wound up with about seven or eight hours of idle time on two of the stations. Gotta sleep sometimes.
With one station dedicated to 40m CW, the other bands/modes were spread between the other two stations. Station one was 40m ssb plus 10m/15m. The second station handled 80m CW and 20m CW, plus 20m SSB.
A late afternoon thunder storm chased me out of the 20m CW shack for just over an hour at about 4:00pm local on 06/26. To hell with that! I like operating, but not enough to die for. Also had a couple of computer problems early on with the setup for the 20 CW station. Piddled away some time resolving those. (Problems: N1MM has a faux “Elecraft K2” radio option that does not work [MUST use “Kenwood”], and when the laptop went idle its power saver caused N1MM to hang up when using its function key macros [solution re-boot laptop. Better Solution: Use writeLog])
The 80m/20m CW station had dipoles for each band, fed with ladder line. The 40m ssb/10m/15m station used a G5RV sized doublet, also fed with ladder line. At the 40m CW pit, two crossed 40m dipoles were played.
Final tally was 2746 total QSO’s for a score of 9600+ points. Close enough to 10K to taste it. Close to 3K QSO’s, but not quite close enough.
The band breakdown:
QSO/Dx+Sec by hour and band Hour 80 CW 40 CW 20 CW 15 CW 10 CW 80 PH 40 PH 20 PH 15 PH 10 PH Total Cumm OffTime D1-1800Z - 39/11 67/19 - - - - - 71/18 - 177/48 177/48 D1-1900Z - 49/1 8/1 12/0 - - - 5/0 66/1 - 140/3 317/51 D1-2000Z - 67/0 40/3 79/1 7/0 - - - - - 193/4 510/55 D1-2100Z - 42/0 18/1 - 7/1 - - - - 71/0 138/2 648/57 D1-2200Z - 47/1 7/2 18/2 10/0 - - - 10/1 13/0 105/6 753/63 D1-2300Z - 50/0 35/6 - - - - - 13/0 47/1 145/7 898/70 D2-0000Z 7/0 55/3 37/1 2/1 2/0 --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- 31/0 134/5 1032/75 D2-0100Z 44/0 35/0 - 14/0 - - 48/0 - 4/0 - 145/0 1177/75 D2-0200Z 42/0 35/0 - - - - 121/1 - - - 198/1 1375/76 D2-0300Z 31/0 40/0 - - - - 46/1 - - - 117/1 1492/77 D2-0400Z 20/0 42/1 - - - 13/0 16/0 - - - 91/1 1583/78 D2-0500Z 24/0 27/1 - - - 5/0 - - - - 56/1 1639/79 D2-0600Z - 22/5 - - - - - - - - 22/5 1661/84 D2-0700Z - 14/0 - - - - - - - - 14/0 1675/84 D2-0800Z --+-- 15/0 --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- 15/0 1690/84 D2-0900Z 34/0 7/0 - - - 16/0 - - - - 57/0 1747/84 D2-1000Z 6/0 28/2 - - - - 49/1 - - - 83/3 1830/87 D2-1100Z - 44/0 8/0 - - - 78/0 - - - 130/0 1960/87 D2-1200Z - 48/0 11/0 - - - 84/0 21/0 - - 164/0 2124/87 D2-1300Z - 39/0 29/0 8/0 - - 32/0 7/0 6/0 - 121/0 2245/87 D2-1400Z - 37/0 66/0 1/0 - - 4/0 - 33/0 1/0 142/0 2387/87 D2-1500Z - 38/0 50/0 11/0 - - 12/0 - 16/0 - 127/0 2514/87 D2-1600Z --+-- 33/0 16/0 3/0 8/0 --+-- 37/0 --+-- --+-- --+-- 97/0 2611/87 D2-1700Z - 30/0 3/0 - 1/0 - - 59/0 38/0 3/0 134/0 2745/87 D2-1800Z - - - - - - - 1/0 - - 1/0 2746/87 Total: 208/0 883/25 395/33 148/4 35/1 34/0 527/3 93/0 257/20 166/1
Wow.
Great score. We had trouble with storms as well, but that was at 3am local.
40 & 20 CW… the money station, as it should be.
Fun stuff,
Pat N0HR
Thanks. Lots of Butt-in-chair time. Missing the 10K mark is a little disappointing, since I know I lost more than those 100 Q’s having the 20m station idle debugging and for the storm.
But we had lots of fun clowning around too. And a pair of grilled hot dogs with all of the trimmings, courtesy of “Chef Archie” on Saturday for lunch really hit the spot.
Heard yesterday the temps hit 101F on Sunday. I know it felt like it Saturday too. The ‘drink lots of fluids’ strategy helped.