[ADXA] Taking My Own Advice!

[w5znjoel at gmail.com]

Greetings ADXA Folks,

 

Most of you know my schedule has been really jammed up the past four weeks
with an international trip right in the middle. The CQWW CW DX contest is
this weekend and I've been moping around trying to decide if I really want
to jump in. I don't care for phone or digital contests, but absolutely love
a CW romp. Earlier in the week I thought maybe I'd just piddle around with a
few Q's and watch football (my third favorite sport behind DX''ing and CW
contests!).

 

Yesterday around mid-day I finally got caught up with several work and
personal matters that had been pending my return and started thinking about
the contest. I remembered Chuck, KM5G's post a couple days ago about ADXA
needed to make a good club effort in the contest this year, and then I saw a
vision of my old basketball coach, Joe Pitts, point that long skinner finger
at me and say "GET IN THERE!!!!!!!!" so I got my butt out of the chair (it
was in the chair taking a nap, NOT chasing DX!) and started checking the
radios and antennas. Everything looked very, very good. The 40 thru 10-meter
antennas were FB, the low band RX antennas were all great. On my "to do"
list for almost a year has been to replace the 75 Ohm quarter wave matching
lines on my 80 meter 4-square. The existing ones have been in place for
several years and I just wanted some new ones. I had a new roll of RG-11 in
the shop since last October for this very purpose, so I fired up the network
analyzer and cut four new phasing lines and got those installed. I had also
identified an issue with the SW parasitic element on my 160-meter TX array.
After a bit of trouble shooting, I identified a bad relay that switched it
to a director element. I replaced the relay and all is well.

 

This morning I checked out the two radios I use for single op contesting
(K4D & K3S) with N1MM and everything is all set. So, all I need now is for
the clock to strike 0000z and Coach Joe to point that long skinny finger at
me and say GET IN THERE.............

 

And for the rest of you folks, you know what to do !!!!!

 

73 Joel W5ZN

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