ARRL 160-Meter Contest
Call: K1VR
Operator(s): K1EP
Station: K1VR
Class: SO Unlimited LP
QTH: EMA
Operating Time (hrs): 22.5
Summary:
Total: QSOs = 711 Sections = 65 Countries = 18 Total Score = 124,002
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
Thanks to K1VR for the use of his station for this contest. We had originally
were going to do a Multi LP for this contest, so I started out with packet. As
the contest progressed, I was able to stay in the chair until Eu sunrise the
first night, so Fred urged me to go SO. I am not an unlimited or assisted op,
so I probably didn't take full advantage of the spots. The night started out
slow and it pretty much remained that way for the entire contest. The rate
rarely got above 100 for any length of time. I heard/worked some western Eu
the first night and hoped that Eu sunrise would produce more, but it didn't.
The band was relatively quiet but just no signals heard from Eu. The band got
even quieter Saturday night with K=0, but still no good prop. Fred was testing
out his new switchable array, consisting of three sloping dipoles in a passive
array. There was good directivity in all three directions. On Friday morning,
I put together a switchable preamp to use with the beverage and rotating
receiving loop. The beverage was super noisy on Friday night, indicating a
problem, While I slept during the day Saturday, Fred fixed the beverage
termination which fixed the noise problem. Unfortunately, there were no Eu
stations to listen to on Saturday night. I did use the loop in diversity rx
with the K3. It was my first time being able to use diversity and it was
interesting to hear how signals went back and forth between the receivers. As
someone noted in an earlier post, there seemed to be a wall out to the west
coast. I barely heard W6s and when I did, there were other strong stations
CQing right on top of them. That indicated to me that they couldn't hear them.
I worked all of the VEs except VY1 (no KL7 either although they were spotted
frequently). I should have brought my remote station with me :-) I did not
work any CA or northwest states like WA, WY, ID, etc. but heard/worked OR. I
hardly heard a peep from KH6 and couldn't work them either. I did quit early
around 07Z, so the west may have picked up towards our sunrise. I rarely use
packet but this was the second time this week that I did in a SO or MS
situation. The number of bad spots this weekend was incredible. I had a number
of dupes, far more than last weekend. My vision would be that you could go down
the bandmap and work the available Qs, but the bandmap was so crowded with
endless busted calls from skimmers. We will continue to evolve the station and
see you in TBDC and CQWW160 contests soon.
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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