Friday night did not go well for Me in this contest so I occupied My time with other pursuits. Saturday at 1515 UTC was My official start in this contest and I had My first QSO's on 15m. For the next several hours , I bounced between 15m and 20m and was very frustrated with My equipment. The QRM was bad on 20m, but 15m was not bad. The problem being stations just were not hearing Me. I realize I'm not a big gun station but after many attempts to contact a station I'm usually successful. During this whole time I tried many different fixes-- switched Radios,antennas, of course checked power and SWR and used My MFJ antenna analyzer to find the problem or problems.
Both radios exhibited the same "not hearing Me problem '" till I found a suspicious jumper which only appeared to be bad with power passing thru it. Now My Kenwood TS850 seemed good, although I noticed My vertical antenna was not tuning as well as earlier in the week. That was going to be a problem for My other radio, a Yaesu ft-857D with no Auto tuner. It is also the only Radio hooked to the PC for logging to N1MM. My 260' dipole always needs a tuner to match it and really only has good "DX" ears from 20m on up.Below that its a "cloud Burner".
I came up with a unique solution-- I'd use the Kenwood and unhook the Yaesu and put it on a dummy load and manually track the frequency to the Kenwood . This way N1MM would log frequency and change bands and also show correct band mapping. Tedious but at least now I was making contacts.My vertical was still acting strange-- working some bands ,but not as well on others. I did go out and visually inspect it but with three feet of slushy snow 75' between it and Myself, decided to just head back to the basement and return to the contest.
Later I was able to hook up the Yaesu and use it for 40 and 20m but 15m was still acting strange and the Kenwood was more convenient with its Auto tuner. All these issues did slow Me down and I only tried S & P mode and tried to stay away from the really busy 20m and only attempted 40m later in the evening. Sad to say the much hoped for 10m opening never happened up here. I watched it open on Sunday SE and SW but never reaching up here. 15m ended up being the most enjoyable band and I'd like to personally thank all the South American and Carribbean stations I was able to log. I did have some success to Europe and Africa but had an absolute wall to Italy!! Different from last Year when the Italians were logged many times.
With a small station luck sometimes comes into play. I was able to log an Aruba station when hearing someone tuning up and -bingo they called CQ and I was ready and waiting. Long before they were spotted. Once spotted the , mayhem begins!!
I was hoping for better totals but feel fortunate to have participated considering the "issues" I had with My station. Dx is always fun to log!
Final score was 12,636-- can only hope to improve next time!
73--Tim
No comments:
Post a Comment