CQWW WPX Contest, CW - 2023
Call: KC7V
Operator(s): KC7V N7RQ K8IA W9CF
Station: K8IA/N7RQ
Class: M/2 HP
QTH: AZ
Operating Time (hrs): 48
Remote Operation
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 4
80: 63
40: 810
20: 1576
15: 1135
10: 111
------------
Total: 3699 Prefixes = 1109 Total Score = 9,588,414
Club: Arizona Outlaws Contest Club
Comments:
Bob K8IA, Kevin W9CF and Mike KC7V spent some time via Zoom this past week going
over the K8IA/N7RQ station configuration, results of station to station
interference testing and schedule. We have done many three-man 48 hour contests
as a team. It can be a tiring grind with 4 hours on and 2 hours off for each
op.
This operation was remote by W9CF using Remaud on both stations and KC7V using
the K3/0 Mini to remote into the K8IA side of the station and remaud to use the
N7RQ side of the station. Bob, K8IA, was onsite at home for his time operating
along with changing antennas, bands, setting the one non-remotable rotator and a
myriad of other tasks for the remote ops.
Despite all the testing we had unforseen issues that cost us about 2 hours of
operating time. One issue what that Bob's computer/keyboard, suddenly, would
not allow him to enter data. After several reboots, including turning off the
remote K3/0 and changing to two other known good keyboards, it was no joy. One
station kept going and one did not. After a prolong period of no operating on
one station, Bob finally discovered the culprit was a now bad USB port. Moving
the keyboard dongle to a new port finally solved that issue.
In the category of very strange, we had two other issues. The first was that
during a op handoff, Bob's K3 somehow lost audio to one ear (all ops do SO2V).
After checking the outboard connections, Bob took a look at the K3 CONFIG menu
and found out that it had somehow defaulted to one speaker, rather than the 2
speaker setting that had been set since he assembled the radio in 2011.
Resetting to 2 speakers did the trick. Also, during that same op handoff, there
was no N1MM ESM. ESM had been used at the station since N1MM came out (2006?)
and there was no logical reason why it reset to OFF. Fixed easily though, but it
did it again before the contest ended, very strange. All this happened at the
K8IA side of the shack with NO problems at all at The N7RQ side. A
radio/computer possessed.
There were several times that the Cox internet Bob uses caused severe audio
issues making it impossible to operate. Being at the far eastern end of Cox
service territory in Mesa has always shown an Internet speed problem there.
Thankfully this issue only cost us a few minutes at a time. We use Real VNC for
the remote work and there were several lockups over the weekend forcing us to
close Real VNC and restart it again. Minor stuff but a pain anyway.
We found 20m to be the workhorse with the band being open somewhere for all 48
hours. 15m was great as well with both bands providing nice EU and JA openings
Friday and Saturday. Sunday was the struggle day with poor conditions. 10m was
simply not there for the weekend and was disappoining. Both 40 & 80 were
noisy. Sometimes quite noisy as widespread multi-state storms were over the
western Midwest, both nights (affecting noise levels on 40 and 80), and a
temporary new, localized noise was evident on the early night hours of the
second night affecting all bands with a nasty S2-3 buzz. 10, 15 and 20 QSO
totals were nearly identical to last year. 40m was down from 2022 by 200 QSOs
and 80m was way down (down 160 q's). We noticed others with the same trend.
Overall we had 300 less QSOs than 2022 but 41 more mults. We concentrated on the
6 point QSOs and it made a difference as our score is about 450k more than 2022.
Despite early troubles we had a good time and got a bunch of points for AOCC.
Thanks to all that called in.
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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