great to sit at the controls of N1LN<\/a> for several stretches over the weekend. The company is good, and the operating was fun too.<\/p>\nThe start of the contest had me on the 20m station. Propagation at the start of the contest seemed very strange, and I was not able to establish a good run. S&P was also problematic. Signals were strong, but I was getting mixed results trying to pick up mults from the band map.<\/p>\n
Over the evening, 40m showed mixed results, but I felt better about my first stretch there. This was the first time I had used N1LN’s beverages on 40m, and they definitely helped reduce noise levels for copy on weaker signals.<\/p>\n
I had the great good fortune to pull the slots that resulted in being at the helm for the beginning of the day on 15m. The end of my slot for Saturday morning showed 15m opening to Europe just after 11:00z. I took a short break from the (then) low rate 40m drudgery for a toasted bagel around 11:20z. When I sat back down at the station at 11:35z, the band map was full of fresh juicy EU mults, just begging to be cherry picked. I worked through most of those relatively quickly, then spun the dial and started S&Ping EU stations. That shift was relieved by KA1ARB , and Rob had a good three hour slot there.<\/p>\n
Based on the conditions of Saturday morning, it seemed like a good idea to be ready for action on 15m Sunday morning. When I checked the operator schedule again I realized I’d be one of the operators on deck for another slot beginning 10:00z Sunday morning. By keeping a close ear to the signals on 15m, I was able to get a nice 15m run going before the band became crowded. It was very encouraging to hear how good 15m was for a change. We had good fortune operating on 15m during the daylight hours and into the early evening both days.<\/p>\n
20m was also productive, as it remained open well into the evening. It was often a real struggle to copy stations through the QRM, and maintaining a run was difficult there.<\/p>\n
The low bands were tougher sledding, but the other ops had better luck rounding up mults down there than I did. N1LN’s beverages were often crucial to QSO productivity, as they made rx much easier.<\/p>\n
Call: N1LN\r\nOperator(s): W4KAZ, N4YDU, KA1ARB, K4CZ, N4TCP, N1YXU, N1LN\r\nStation: N1LN\r\n\r\nClass: M\/2 HP\r\nQTH: NC-05\r\nOperating Time (hrs): 48\r\n\r\nSummary:\r\nBand QSOs Zones Countries\r\n------------------------------\r\n160: 78 14 30\r\n80: 290 19 82\r\n40: 573 30 107\r\n20: 1113 34 131\r\n15: 924 29 129\r\n10: 98 10 24\r\n------------------------------\r\nTotal: 3076 136 503 Total Score = 5,018,706<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It turned out to be a wonderful weekend for a radio contest. The weather here in central North Carolina was crappy, but not crappy enough to ruin the radio conditions completely. The bands were noisy, but the QRM was much worse than the QRN. Finding a clear frequency to run seemed the bigger problem.<\/p>\n
So it was great to sit at the controls of N1LN for several stretches over the weekend. The company is good, and the operating was fun too.<\/p>\n
The start of the contest had me on the 20m station. Propagation at the start of the contest seemed very strange, and I was not able to establish a good run. S&P was also problematic. Signals were strong, but I was getting mixed results trying to pick up mults from the band map.<\/p>\n
Over the evening, 40m showed mixed results, but I felt better about my first stretch there. This was the first time I had used N1LN’s beverages on 40m, and they definitely helped reduce noise levels for copy on weaker signals.<\/p>\n
I had the great good fortune to pull the slots that resulted in being at the helm for the beginning of the day on 15m. The end of my slot for Saturday morning showed 15m opening to Europe just after 11:00z. I took a short break from the (then) low rate 40m drudgery for a toasted bagel around 11:20z. When I sat back down at the station at 11:35z, the band map was full of fresh […]<\/p>\n
Continue reading 2009 CQWW DX @ N1LN<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/w4kaz.com\/qth\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/w4kaz.com\/qth\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/w4kaz.com\/qth\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w4kaz.com\/qth\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w4kaz.com\/qth\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=961"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/w4kaz.com\/qth\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":964,"href":"http:\/\/w4kaz.com\/qth\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961\/revisions\/964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/w4kaz.com\/qth\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w4kaz.com\/qth\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w4kaz.com\/qth\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}