CQ Worldwide DX Contest, SSB - 2019
Call: N9NB
Operator(s): N9NB
Station: N9NB
Class: SOAB HP
Class Overlay: Classic
QTH: VA
Operating Time (hrs): 23
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
------------------------------
160: 26 9 21
80: 99 16 31
40: 207 22 62
20: 295 31 72
15: 208 17 48
10: 34 10 23
------------------------------
Total: 869 105 257 Total Score = 863,262
Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club
Comments:
Thanks to Joe K2XX for loaning me two amplifiers (Alpha 9500 and
SPE 1.3K) for my first go at single op high power from N9NB.
My shack design simply wasnt ready for the RF levels and the
proxmity of my house/station to the towers. I learned first hand how
the solid state amps are super sensitive to VSWR.
Without ferrites and a seasoned approach w/ months of testing to properly
install a high power station, it was probably silly to think I could do it
and manage to use SO2R, but it was fun to try. I simply couldn't
do SO2R since the RF levels came onto the headphones and created
SSB audio in the headphones that I couldn't figure out how to get
rid of. The punch in the gut for me was when a fuse blew on the ALPHA (my low
band amp) with 21.5 hours into the contest just as night was falling, and a loud
gun shot noise occured at the same time making me think a capacitor may have
blown on the power supply.
I didnt have spare fuses, or the energy to investigate as I had been in Los
Angeles all week and just got in the day before and made the 3 hour drive to the
stn. the same day as the contest), so I "called it a day" on a serious
effort, and entered in the classic category. I was amazed to see W3PP was 250 Qs
ahead of me when my amp went out, and that would have been a hard lead to catch
up to - congrats to W3PP/AA1K for a great effort.
This poor outing definitely hurts my chances to qualify for WRTC in Italy. I
went for it in high power, and came up way short. It hurts. I should have stuck
to my knitting in low power. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, but in this case,
I lost the 900 points had I focused on low power as I had in the past.
I did a couple of hours on Sunday afternoon on low power, getting the station
ready for CQWW CW, and could really see the difference the amps provide. I think
I am going to stay with low power over time, life is simpler that way, and the
magic is there. Sure is nice, though, to have a big signal when trying to QSO on
the low bands with the loud eastern europeans. That was a new dimension, and
quite remarkable and enjoyable.
A big thanks to Joe K2XX and the team at DX Engineering that sent HP BPF's in
time for me to install them.
Thanks to CQ and the contest organizers, and to everyone for the QSOs. It was
very nice to hear and work some big DXpeditions in the contest.
Note: The posted band breakdowns are from memory, but should be very close,
since I didnt capture the results when I submitted the log. The total score and
# of QSOs are what was submitted to CQWW in my log.
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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