Well, in looking for a place to operate the ARRL’s 10M Contest, W3LPL (who was out-of-town, drats) suggested the K4VV station, which I’d helped build a few years back. With multiple (although nothing REALLY tall) 10M Yagis, I thought it would be worth doing. Plus, I usually do not get to operate (beyond a few “Is this thing working QSOs) stations where I’ve built antennas & towers. Jack & his XYL, Sharon, were amenable, so with some local tower jobs secured, I headed North.
The previous two weeks were noteworthy because of the amount of detailed traffic flowing from fellows who know propagation–describing that old who/what/when/where of suggested times & paths. None of that happened. No exotic DX was worked; no unusual paths were noted. But I had fun, & a fair amount of it.
Right at the start, it was obvious 10M was NOT the same 10M we had experienced in CQWW, just a few weeks prior. Signals were just flat–there were none of those rock-solid, thumping in the headsets, get you excited stations calling in. Nor was the rate great. But again, I was happy to be in the driver’s seat & an F1 jockey. (Okay, I admit, I was an ENTER jockey this time out. I was using N1MM for the first time ever, thanks to W0YR, who explained the program to me Friday afternoon, especially the ESM format, which I used. I can honestly say I liked everything about it, BUT the editing feature! I’m not interested in using a mouse during a contest. And if one makes a mistake, either in copying or typing, that’s what’s required. That took some getting used to. But again, overall, I was mostly impressed. Oh yes…the fonts on-screen could all be larger for these aging eyes. That’s probably a simple keystroke, but I didn’t/couldn’t find it, & looked over the tops of my old fart glasses most of the weekend.)
The other feature handicapping a single op at Jack’s QTH is the lack of a bathroom. I had some sort of weird stomach ache Sunday that required me to go to the house four times. Obviously, one loses one’s run frequency during this timeout. Plus the actual time lost. So my overall rate suffered. Again, I was having fun, so I just kept plugging away.
The final tally: 1698 & 153 mults. I missed MS
& AR, got all the Canadians, save the VOs. Plenty of JAs made it into the log. Nothing past the mercator in EU during the run. Almost nothing from Africa, save ZS. The usual LU count was way down. I worked seven of the new XE mults.
Again, I had fun. Thanks to K4VV for letting me drive & W0YR for helping explain the logging program.
A quick trip to Culpeper tomorrow, where once again, we’re trying to overcome problems w/his damn Prosistel, that I thought was fixed & re-installed last Friday!
stay tuned…
