{"id":1035,"date":"2009-11-23T07:55:59","date_gmt":"2009-11-23T11:55:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/w4kaz.com\/qth\/?p=1035"},"modified":"2009-11-23T12:50:56","modified_gmt":"2009-11-23T16:50:56","slug":"2009-sweepstakes-ssb-reality-sets-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/w4kaz.com\/qth\/?p=1035","title":{"rendered":"2009 Sweepstakes SSB – Reality Sets In"},"content":{"rendered":"

amended 11\/23\/2009, noon<\/em><\/p>\n

This year’s SSB contest was great motivation to become a better CW OP.<\/p>\n

It should have been obvious when the RigBlaster turned up dead Tuesday evening that Murphy had decided to grace the KazShack with his exuberant best during the SSB portion of Sweepstakes. Or maybe the K.I.S.S.(Keep It Simple, Stupid!) rule should have been followed when working around the hole the absent RigBlaster introduced into the scheme. The audio check test runs Thursday evening would have helped identify the problems, but the work-around was not prepared by then. Such is Life.<\/p>\n

The long and short is that I really lidded up the bands with RF infested audio. The problem was much worse with the FT-920 for some reason, but the K2 was not a whole lot better. And yet, people still dug it out. The one curiosity in the entire thing is that the FT-920 monitor sounds pristine. It seems like I read somewhere the monitor on that radio is before the RF sections – but not sure why RF on the line is not causing the audio monitor to be distorted as well.<\/p>\n

The DVK audio from the computer was the worst. The pipes suffered from that, since the voice is still not 100 percent from an issue over the holidays in 2008.<\/p>\n

My intent was to enjoy the contest, and play with SO2R. As it turned out, it was more like SO(0.33)R – except the audio was crap from both radios. The nasty audio didn’t do much to encourage answers to CQ’s, so most of the activity came down to S&P. Even if I had planned to operate class “A”, I’d probably have ditched that and turned on the packet system anyway – even if it had resulted in a checklog.<\/p>\n

Watching the spots was probably the highlight. I spent a lot of time spotting as much as I could find that was not already on the band map, as well as any stations that seemed to be having a slow period when we crossed paths.<\/p>\n

I had better luck on 15m than on 20m. 20m is tough sledding with a dipole and low power compared to the other bands. Probably did not spend enough time on 40m. The resurrected 15m\/10m rectangular loop paid off with a few mults I think I would have otherwise missed.<\/p>\n

Since I had time to toy with the second radio(in rx anyway), I came to the conclusion that SO2R on SSB is going to be several orders of magnitude more difficult than on CW. It seems it will be a whole lot simpler to mentally filter out CW signals on either ear than with SSB.<\/p>\n

With CW it’s just a stereo pile-up. With SSB it is more like Donald Duck talking with Peanuts’\/Charlie Brown adults at a Van Halen concert, all played to the background melody of RTTY and slow scan tuner-uppers.<\/p>\n

Quoth Snoopy…”Bleh”.<\/p>\n

It is always curious to see which sections will be left on the table. No Quebec? That’s not normally one that goes missing. Rhode Island is a bit easier to miss from the QTH. The other three, MB, BC, NT, are sections that are “the usual suspects”, so missing those is no big surprise. AK and PAC turned out to be easier than normal when I stumbled upon stations from both before they were spotted. I picked up the first AB station in a similar manner, but later worked a couple more. I had an OK station call me during my one 40m run, but I was not able to copy him through the “donald duck” QRM. The 6’s were all tough with the poor audio.<\/p>\n

Almost zero time was spent in packet pile-ups. Three calls then move along. That was probably necessary with Murph’s bad audio on top of the low power crappy antennas. No one trying to manage a pile up is going to waste time on a weak station with bad audio. Thats not to hard too understand, and it sure makes sense. So there is even less point in wasting time that way than normal.<\/p>\n

Missed:<\/strong>
\nRI QC MB BC NT<\/p>\n

The Good:<\/strong><\/p>\n