Call: K4XD
Operator(s): K4XD
Station: K4XD
Added: 03/Nov/2008
Contest: ARRL SWEEPSTAKES CONTEST, CW
Class: SO UNLIMITED HP
QTH: Raleigh, NC
Operating time: 24
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160:
80: 213
40: 299
20: 322
15: 15
10:
------------
Total: 849 Sections = 79
Total Score = 134,142
Club:
Soapbox:
Can we organize a DXpedition to NT
before SS SSB? Eric VY1EI is doing a
yeoman's job but those pileups are
murder. The poor guy gets spotted and
within 30 seconds there is continuous
calling to the point he can't even
finish a QSO!
OK, with that intro
you can tell, I missed NT for the
sweep! In the two years I've done SS
I've made the sweep each time, and one
year made it in SSB while missing it
in CW, so I'm not giving up... I heard
VY1EI three times, twice on 15M and
once on 20M, but it was in a cluster
spot frenzy and I only heard him make
one Q each time before dropping out.
Despite my best attempts to position
myself CQ'ing close by, I was not
among the blessed to receive a call!
I did think of changing my CQ string
to CQ NT K4XD PRETTY PLEASE NT CQ but
pride got the best of me.
Maybe the
ARRL will offer an "slightly unclean
sweep" shot glass (in almost genuine
lead crystal) for those of us with 79
sections. They could raise a lot of
moolah that way.
So other than
missing NT (I'm not bitter, really),
how dit (sic) it go? Pretty well,
best CW score here by a nice margin.
I was 12 minutes shy of 24 hours
compared to 18.5 last year, and worked
about 300 more Q's. Did more running
but I still find myself S&P'ing to
warm up at the start of the contest.
By the second day I can run at 25 - 28
wpm comfortably, with a few WriteLog
fat finger moments thrown in, but
mostly sounding like I almost know
what I'm doing.
Surprised to have
good runs on 20M and 40M right to the
end, with rates in the 60's and 70's
per hour, hitting the 80's briefly. I
know, that's a slow hour at a big gun
station, but it was big fun here at
'XD.
For some reason I get more
pumped up for SS than any other
contest. It's probably because of the
PVRC involvement and the clean sweep
goal, two nice incentives. I think
having it start late Saturday also
gives me all day Saturday to get the
adrenaline going as well, compared to
most weekend long contests where I get
home from work Friday night and the
contest is already going.
In a
moment of sanity I didn't make any
major pre-contest station
"adjustments," but did add a second
monitor to my PC which helped a lot.
I run Alex's BandMaster program on the
second monitor, since it shows the
spot comments which is where people
put the section info. I also run
SpotCollector from DXLab and set up
its "Special Callsigns" feature to
look for VY1EI and other "rare"
sections -- Spot Collector makes a
voice announcement when a designated
call sign spot comes over the wire.
This lets you take a break from the
action and go listen to an amusing
pileup, sort of like a crash at NASCAR
or a fight at a hockey game.
A few
months back I started getting a really
nasty buzzing noise on 160, 80 and 40
that comes and goes, and is only at
night. I did the usual circuit
breaker trick to try to find it, but
since it only lasts a couple minutes
at a time, it was hard to track. On
Friday evening I had the house to
myself so figured I would really give
it a try. I tuned a portable SW radio
to 1820, and set the squelch so it
would cut out when the noise stopped.
Flipped all the breakers,
no cigar. I
was sure it was a refrigerator or
freezer based on the on/off cycles,
but it was still there with all the
breakers off. Rats! I really didn't
relish the idea of going door to door
and asking my neighbors to turn off
all their circuit breakers but it was
starting to look like that kind of a
problem. Then it hit me -- as I was
walking the dog a couple weeks back, I
noticed a street light across the road
that was cycling on and off every few
minutes! Bingo! When it's "off," it
sends out the RF hash. I watched out
the window and sure enough the light
and the noise exactly correlated.
Progress Energy has a form on their
web site for reporting street light
problems, and it promises a fix in
three business days. Yee hah, the low
bands are mine again.
I have my SO2R
setup working but I can't say I really
got a lot of Q's from it.
I'll run
the analysis later but I would say a
few dozen Q's at most. I might have
something configured wrong, but when I
switch radios from WriteLog, the radio
I switch from stops transmitting
immediately. I was hoping that CQ on
radio 1 would continue while I plugged
a call sign into the window for radio
2.
But as soon as I put the cursor in
radio 2's window, radio 1 stops
transmitting. Not so good for holding
a run frequency. Before I got my
"fancy" SO2R setup with an EZMaster, I
could do RTTY SO2R from WriteLog with
essentially two independent "channels"
for both radio control and sound, one
for each radio from the PC. Two cheap
Donner Digital radio control and sound
card interfaces, and two cheap sound
cards in the PC. I think the
difference is that with the EZMaster,
it uses the LPT port to select radio 1
or radio 2,
and that happens when you
cursor into the radio's WriteLog QSO
entry window.
I'm guessing as soon as
EZMaster switches radios, the PTT line
drops and the alternate radio stops
TX.
I'm also not so great at
remembering to switch bands on radio 2
when I switch bands on radio 1, and
found myself listening on the TX band
several times.
Despite "heart in
throat" syndrome, I don't seem to have
knocked out the front end of the
non-transmitting radio, despite
pumping a KW into the other antenna
that is within 150' of the RX antenna.
Yikes.
I started the contest S&P'ing
on 20, and can see that in the first
hour I had 3 40M Q's on the second
radio and 41 Q's on the main rig. I
noticed the rate seemed to drop when I
was fiddling with both radios, as
opposed to sticking with one and
S&P'ing as fast as possible. Makes
sense, as long as there is enough
"material" available to keep you busy
with one radio, and given my current
limitations on overlapping the two
radios, you're not going to go any
faster S&P'ing on two.
At 0200 I
finally started CQ'ing on 40, and
stayed at it for about 90 minutes.
I
was somewhere around 200 Q's at this
point, although another quirk I've
noticed is that WriteLog skips QSO
numbers in SO2R -- I haven't figured
out the sequence, but I suspect a QSO
number is assigned as soon as you
click in the QSO window, and if you
don't complete the QSO there but go
back to the other window and do one
there, you get a new QSO number when
you return to the first window.
Fortunately the Score window shows the
real number of Q's, which by the ened
of the contest was about 30 Q's behind
the number I was sending. It's a
feature --
"Writelog 10x: intimidate
the competition with QSO number
inflation!"
Went full time to 80M at
0430 and stayed there until 0630.
About 320 Q's in the log, and with the
rate dropping into the teens and my
eyelids dropping into my cheeks, it
was time to hit the sack. I'm totally
amazed by the guys who do 48 hour
contests wall to wall. You are truly
iron men and ladies.
Back at the
dials at 1100 and stayed on 80M until
QSO 400 and 1300, then up to 40 for
both S&P and running until 1450. The
mid-West and West were both in nicely
on 20, with LAX, UT, SDG and ND all
joining the happy mults in the
scorebox, so I stuck with 20 until
1739. Took about 40 minutes to shower
and stretch, and then back to 20M
where I S&P'd for a while until
finding a slot at 14013 and had a nice
long run there. Took WX3B's advice
and "patrolled" the run frequency
sending a polite "get your #$ out of
here" message to any erstwhile
intruders. (Don't get excited, I
really sent "pse qsy up qrl tu" but
really was feeling territorial and
wanted to send the former!). Two
hours and 100 Q's, with some rates in
the 70/hour range. Felt good! In
past contests I had left the bottom of
the range to the big dogs, but here I
just looked for the first 500 Hz wide
slot and dropped in. Thanks for the
spots too!
The rate on 20 stayed up
until 0000 and I moved to 40M only as
it dipped below 40/hour. Found
another nice low slot on 40M at 7015,
and stayed there for 90 minutes and
another 100 Q's. Only went to 80M
because it was getting late and didn't
want to miss something... yet another
nice low slot at 3517, but the rate
never went much above the mid 30's so
I went back to 40M with 40 minutes to
go and found a good rate (and slot at
7013) again until the big slowdown at
the very end.
So that was it... one
short of 850 claimed Q's, hopefully
will stay above 800 with log checking,
and one cigar short of a box on
sections. Thanks to everyone for a
lot of fun... now to get psyched for
SS SSB... my ears are starting to hurt
already!
73,
Rowland K4XD