W4KAZ

First, many thanks to N1LN and N1YXU for the invite, the great company, and the hospitality. The station and the setting are wonderful, and I can’t think of a better way to spend an afternoon of radiosport.

The contest operation itself did not hit the goals I had in my head for us. I really expected to beat our own score from August, but we did not. We actually came up quite short.

The 20m band was really abysmal. I started out the contest on 20m. After the first 40 minutes, the “run” dried up, and never was re-established. The first two hours ended with only about 45 Q’s on 20m, woefully inadequate. I knew it was going to be bad when NT4D lapped the QSO count the third time on the 40m station. He had 100+ while the 20m station was stuck at 33. Ick. No one else had any better luck on 20m either. Just terrible. 15m was far worse. I moved there to pick up the CA mult and 6 or 7 CA QSO’s. N1LN picked up another mult and another 6 or 7 Q’s on 15m a little later. 11 Q’s total.

10m? Ha.

The good news was that 40m/80m/160m all supplied a steady stream of Q’s. With 20m shut down tight, the “happy hour rush” was pretty slow, as 40m had been milked pretty thoroughly by 5:00pm local. I did manage to notice it was twilight, and picked up a handful of FL, GA, and AL on the low 40m beam. But as soon as that finished I was beginning to work WA and OR on the top of the stack. 40m was long at sundown. NT4D abandoned the futility of 20m to start 80m pretty early. When N1LN took over the 80m run a little later, the rate had become pretty good on 80m. O’course, 40m had petered out.

80m was fairly productive for the rest of the contest, and there were a few good runs on 160m later in the evening. The term ‘good’ in the context of this operation was a best combined 60 minute rate of only about 125/hr. The three and ten minute rates hit 200 several times, but only for short intervals.

The company was great even if conditions for HF were not. I am learning a lot from N1LN and his station, and I really appreciate the opportunity to see the station in action. Time well spent.

The 3830 entry.

Call: NC4KW
Operator(s): NT4D, W4KAZ, N1YXU, W4SAR, N1LN
Station: N1LN

Class: M/2 LP
QTH: NC
Operating Time (hrs): 12

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:  168    40
   80:  381    52
   40:  371    44
   20:  110    22
   15:   11     3
   10:    0     0
-------------------
Total: 1041   161  Total Score = 167,601

This is a contest that I like, but usually miss because Thanksgiving weekend is usually booked solid with other activities. But there were a couple of open hours both Saturday and Sunday evenings, so the K2 went out for another spin. RX conditions seemed good, despite a cold front and line of showers in the area. Propagation was about what is expected at the bottom of the cycle, fairly crappy.

On 20m, I never heard any SP’s, and the few DL’s I could heard were very weak. Even allowing for the time of day, that was a bit unusual.

There were a bunch of JA’s on 20m Saturday night, but they could not hear me on either the dipole or the 160m inv-L. They were not very strong on my poor antennas, but there was little QSB, and they were easy copy.

I used the packet cluster again, since I was just dorking around. There was good copy on stuff I have not heard in a couple of years, but had trouble hearing the DL’s, and I never heard anything from Poland. Worked an F6 on 40m, but never heard any on 20m. The AL’s were S9+ just after local sunset on Sunday night, right before the JA’s started popping up on the packet cluster. Despite a ton of JA spots Sunday night, none were as easy to copy here as the hand full I heard Saturday night. Heard weak ZL’s working the west coast, but they never came up above a whisper here.

The best prize was working TA5KZ. I thought his call was too cool to miss(given my own), so I hung in his pileup until I got a hole he could hear me through. He was working mostly EU stations, and I think the “W4” was a break in his rhythm, but he was able to hear me. Sweeeet! I think the last TA station I worked was on 10m, back when the sunspot number was over 100.

Yikes. That was a bit more like work than play, but it got better as the contest progressed.

Events leading into the test did just not come together. I missed all of the practice and audio check sessions leading up to the contest. Once the test started – too late! Also had the beginnings of the common cold during the day Saturday. Got worse on Sunday, but the voice held up.

The game plan was to start on 20m and 40m with about 60 minutes of S&P. One thing led to another, and the first QSO wasn’t logged until about 45 minutes after the start of the contest. That probably cost a few possible mults, but none that I didn’t pick up later. When I migrated to 80m, I got a quick call and a report of bad/muffled audio from someone I had worked on 40m. I suspect that in adding the 160m module to the K2, I went too far in adjusting the output filter. Since I expected the bulk of my QSO’s to be on 80m, I decided to move back to the FT-920.

Moving to the FT-920 required moving all of the audio and antenna connections. That took a bit longer than it could have if I had been feeling better. Then I had to dork around to get the audio levels from the sound card an the mike equalized on the FT-920. This is going to be a bigger problem if I ever seriously try SO2R, because the level out from the sound card needs to be set much higher for the FT-920 then for the K2. I guess a simple resistor will suffice set the level lower for the K2.

Anyway – transfer to the other radio and associated dorking around put me about 90 minutes later into the contest. 80m was beginning to pick up, but I was able to squeeze into a 4khz gap I found, and establish a decent run. I pulled the plug a bit early, and was behind where I wanted to be.

Saturday morning was spent running 40m and S&P mults on 20m. Saturday afternoon was a real mixed bag. I at no time received any answers to CQ’s on 20m. Too crowded for a LP/dipole station to be heard.

Sunday evening was back to 80m, plus the occasional foray off the band for a possible mult. Picked up OK and WTX on 40m that way.

I was happy to break the 500 QSO point this year. Using packet helped me get six extra mults over the 69 in 2007. That brought the point total up to almost equal the 2007 level. Good enough.

The Good: The FT-920 was on hand to fill in for the K2. New computer sound card was fine. 80m was floor to ceiling full of QSO’s.

The Bad: Probably the K2 problem. Since I’m almost certain it was self induced, its not a show stopper. And it seems fine on CW. Need to do some testing, and re-align for 80m.

The Ugly: Hmmm. Gotta be the head cold. Luckily, maximum “Ick” was not reached until Monday.