3830 Soapbox Comments
CQ WW RTTY WPX Contest
Call: AC0C
Operator(s): AC0C
Station: AC0C
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Kansas
Operating Time (hrs): 19:38
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
80: 64
40: 246
20: 331
15: 351
10: 16
------------
Total: 1008 Prefixes = 1983 Total Score = 406
Club: Kansas City DX Club
Comments:
Thanks everyone for the QSOs.
Shack setup -------------------------------
FT-2000 with NS roofing filter, FT-dx5000MP
SB-200 with dual Gi7b, Alpha 76pa
So2r attic antenna farm with 80m dipole, 40m 2-element phased, 20m 2-ele
reversible, 15m 2-element reversable with dipole for N/S coverage, 3 10m fixed
antennas; 2 elements east, 2 elements west and a dipole for N/S coverage.
160/80m receiving loop.
N1MM logger, dual 5B4AGN BPF, Microham interfaces, YCCC So2r
------------------------
Nice to see the bands so quiet on Saturday and Sunday. And a lot of DX even
with the low SFI.
I am sure the contest went well for everyone because Mr. Murphy was trapped
here in my shack and would not leave!
Everyone knows Murphy is an amazing character - somehow arranging a temporary
SFI minium to coordinate with the RTTY WPX contest! But he was somehow
responsable for quite a few missteps as the contest went. Had a late start
because I managed to delete my carefully tweaked WPX macro set. Then I had
some ongoing trouble wiht the PTT droping with N1MM after sending the first
letter under ESM. The uHam router software driver for a few weeks now and
repeated driver crashes required a few reboots of the computer to clear. And
there is a new SMPS in the area that wrecked parts of 10/15 on Saturday morning
- hope it's not a plasma TV. Finally Murphy managed to arrange a suprise visit
by my parents which resulted in unplanned down time.
Fortunately, on the core hardware side, things worked very well. The SB-200
tank modifications held up and the RF compartment ran very cool with about 800W
output. Antenna system modifications including the addition of the 15m dipole
into the beam lineup worked FB with lots of JA/SA action on both 10/15m. And
some of the speaker switching and foot switch creature-comforts proved very
nice. Ran close to 50/50 split on the two rigs under So2r with the 2K serving
anchor duty on 15m and 20m in the day and 40m at night.
Lot of dupes this time - almost 5%. Very high rate compared to the Jan RTTY RU
last month where my dupe count was under 1%. I had one guy work me 3 times on
20m in about a 1 hour time frame. I just logged them again and kept on
rolling.
73/jeff/ac0c
www.ac0c.com
