California QSO Party - 2023
Call: NS6T
Operator(s): K6KM KE6AYK N6SPP NS6T
Station: NS6T
Class: M/M HP
Class Overlay: CntyExp
QTH: Woodlake CA TULA
Operating Time (hrs): 24
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs
--------------------
160:
80: 59 46
40: 165 89
20: 364 298
15: 309 347
10: 313 315
--------------------
Total: 1210 1095 Mults = 58 Total Score = 337,560
Club: Northern California Contest Club
Comments:
This year, we made our annual trek to Woodlake to activate Tulare county. As in
past years, US Tower graciously provided us with terrific rooms to operate from,
rooms to sleep in, and two 107 foot portable towers to place antennas on. Sadly,
the hot weather returned for CQP, and it got to 97°F pretty much every day.
Towers:
High band tower: US Tower 107 tower trailer cranked up to 60 feet
Low band tower: US Tower 107 foot tower trailer cranked to 107 feet
https://ustower.com/towerproducts/mtu3107mdpl/
3 Antennas:
JK Antennas C3S-JK Triband Yagi at 60 feet
80m Inverted-Vee at 100 feet
40m Inverted-Vee at 90 feet
3 Stations:
10/80m: Elecraft K3 + Elecraft KPA500/KAT500
15/40m: Elecraft K3S + Elecraft KP500/KAT500
20m: Elecraft K4D + Elecraft KP500
VA6AM High Power Triplexer and High Power Bandpass Filters
Thanks to N6DE for loaning us the antennas and the triplexer and bandpass
filters plus around 800 feet of coax! Thanks also to W6TCP and NA6O for loaning
us two Elecraft transceivers, two KPA500 amplifiers, and a KAT500.
All the major equipment performed faultlessly; although, we had trouble with a
number of small (but annoying) things. For example, one of our keyboards was
deactivated several times apparently from RFI. This took time at the beginning
of the contest but was eventually resolved through application of ferrites.
During station setup, we had trouble with a USB to serial port having the wrong
form factor. Making the CAT cable connection required breaking off the case and
bending some parts out of the way.
This time we brought enough equipment to make a wired LAN for all the ham
computers, and this allowed us to use N1MM+’s network capabilities. The LAN
was bridged to the internet via a WIFI/ethernet bridge that we kept away from
the radio equipment. As best as I could tell, we never lost our connection to
the internet. In past years, we would temporarily lose our WIFI connections due
to RFI.
Overall, propagation was terrific, and we worked significantly more DX than I
can remember from past years. For example, we worked South Africa on 10m phone.
10m and 15m seemed to be open from dawn until dusk. On the flip side, it seemed
that there were fewer US/Canadian stations to work. It was cool to see
individual multipliers for the Canadian maritime provinces.
Jeff KE6AYK joined us on Friday and Saturday to get some contest experience. He
operated 10m, 15m and 20m phone and watched us in action before leaving midday.
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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