New England QSO Party - 2023
Call: W1OO
Operator(s): K1ESE WS1L
Station: W1IMD
Class: M/S HP
QTH: Oxford Co., Maine
Operating Time (hrs): 20
Remote Operation
Summary:
Band CW-Dig Qs Ph Qs
------------------------
80: 100 0
40: 494 0
20: 517 0
15: 88 0
10: 5 0
------------------------
Total: 1204 0 Mults = 103 Total Score = 248,024
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
Many thanks to Paul, W1IMD for the use of the excellent station. Thanks also to
K1EU and K1JB for the use of the W1OO callsign.
This year's NEQP would be the first remote contest for Chuck, WS1L. John,
K1ESE, was a regular user of Paul's W1IMD contest station in Maine. Discussions
on the morning 3527 roundtable led to a decision to try for a serious
Multi-Single effort between us.
For a month or so Chuck tested remote configurations using a Remote Rig box and
Flex SmartSDR software. Once he was comfortable connecting to John's home
station we moved to Paul's contest station. It took some work, but a week
before the contest we had things working well.
That is when mother nature hit, with severe weather causing both hardware and
network failures at the contest station. It wasn't until the day before that
Paul was able to access the site and get things back running. Early Saturday
afternoon was a final check, and everything was working as it should.
It became clear from the start that NE1QP was our competition this year. We
were pretty much neck and neck the entire weekend.
John's notes for Saturday: I spend the morning watching an additional tower
being erected at the W1IMD station. The crane was fascinating. 4-6PM, I ran on
20M for two hours at the start of the contest and conditions were decent. The
lead on the Contest Online Scoreboard kept switching between W1OO to NE1QP.
Chuck's notes for Saturday 6-8 PM: I started on 20M, but rate kept dropping so
about 6:40 I moved to 40, where it went through the roof. I should have moved
sooner. The 10-Minute Rate Meter stayed in the 160-180 range for a long time.
Even towards 8 PM it was in the 80-90 range. The 7-8 PM hour we managed 103 Q's
and were in the lead. For now...
John's notes for Saturday 8-10PM. After two hours, I handed it off to Chuck and
he did the next two hours. My second shift started at 6pm. I started running
on 20M and switched to 40M. I didn't stop to look for multipliers...
Chuck's notes for Saturday 10 PM - 1 AM: I started out on 80M, which was good
but as the rate dropped faster than I liked I went back to 40, where things
worked pretty well into the West Coast. Rate was respectable but not great.
The last hour I mixed some S&P in with the Running. I worked a few EU
stations in some contest over there. One took my OXF ME happily, the other one
wanted a Serial # so I gave him Nr 1.
John's notes for Sunday 9AM-Noon: I started on 20M. It was a bit slow. Went
to 40M but not as many stations there, Tried 15M and stayed for a while but the
signals were not great. Ended up on 20M. I continued to just run, no S&P,
no looking for mults. I should have sensed a problem...
Chuck's notes for Sunday Noon-3PM: I was able to run on 20, then moved to 15 but
the rate wasn't what I expected so I went back to 20. Rates were good but not
great with a 61, 37 and 56 hour. I only picked up 2 mults the entire time, and
NE1QP had passed us by when I turned things over to John...
John's notes for Sunday 3-6PM: I was very surprised to see we had fallen behind
NE1QP. We had almost 100 more QSOs but they had many more mults. I gave up on
running and went searching for mults. I quickly picked up six. While waiting
for more to show up, I would do short runs on 20M. Back to chasing I picked up
another five. We were back in the hunt. I went to running on 20M and 40m but
stopping it whenever a new mult showed up in the N1MM available window. I
usually was able to get back to my run frequency before it was occupied. We had
edged in front again.
Chuck's notes for Sunday 6-8 PM: I found 20 to be showing lots of stations on
the band map but they were all W1's, too close for easy S&P. Running kept a
fair rate but 40 wound up doing better for us since the W1's were fairly strong
and the mid-west/west coast were workable. I did check 10 and 15 but very few
signals there.
It was neck and neck at the end with NE1QP. Our raw scores came out ahead, but
only by about 3 percent.
It was great fun working together. This would not be possible without the
efforts of Tom K1KI and his crew for the hard work of running such a great
contest.
73,
Chuck WS1L
John K1ESE
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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