Here’s a short video clip of the contest. Pardon the poor resolution but the audio is fairly clear:
Comments:
Finally a contest where 160-10 were quite usable at some part of the day! Although I didn’t take part in this contest full-time, I still had fun doing Search and Pounce. My only goal was to get at least 100 QSOs.
My equipment for this contest:
rig: Yaesu FT-857D
amplifier: Dentron GLA-1000
antennas: Cushcraft A3S, Butternut HF9V, Inverted L for 160m
Conditions were better on Saturday than Sunday, at least for me. I did try calling CQ on one frequency for a while and that simply didn’t produce any QSOs.
This contest is fun since there are so many multipliers. It occurred to me that new hams can benefit from their call sign prefixes as well. Now I’m looking forward to the CW weekend. Hopefully I can clear the schedule to dedicate the weekend to it.
The bands were reflective of the season: mashed potatoes and gravy all of
Saturday. Thanks for the spots! That makes a huge difference when you’re a
little gun.
Used my Yaesu FT-857D and Dentron GLA-1000 (500watts max) into an Inverted-L for 160m (about 35 feet high) and a ground-mounted Butternut HF9V along with Writelog. I did fire-up my Yaesu FT-840 early-on to try my hand at some Search and Pounce on other bands but since I didn’t have the CAT cable connected, I had to log each QSO manually, and so it became easier to just go to that band (barefoot) on the FT-857.
Because I lent my amp cable to a fellow EBARC member, I could only control the PTT on my amp with a foot switch, instead of automatically from the rig and computer. In other words, if you heard me at all this past week on the bands, that was actually me, not a recording (though I was able to call CQ from the computer barefoot, but that was not very productive). So a big note for next year: make sure you have all your cables and computer stuff set up weeks before to ensure the suffering is not repeated at this level.
My eyes and body and especially my legs were just tired and exhausted. I’ve been on party benders that have left me more lucid than I felt after this contest hi hi!
Station: Yaesu FT-857D 100watts -> Inverted-L and Butternut HF-9V controlled by Writelog. My antenna farm didn’t grow as much as I wanted it to. However, the seeds are planted and once the budget settles I might have a full-time tri-bander up at least 30 feet.
Comments: There were some rather nice openings to the East Coast most of the time I was on. 15M was quite open from mid morning to early afternoon for long-haul.
Every contest I feel like I learn a little bit more about contesting. This time I was really making full use of my filters and it makes a HUGE difference as far as helping keep you from exhausting yourself trying to mentally slice through wider bandwidth of noise.
Other commitments precluded me from operating full-time. Will try again next year.
