[ILQSO] AF5CC-out of state perspective

[John Geiger]

Thanks for another great Illinois QSO Party!  I really look forward to this
contest every year.  This year I had the schedule pretty clear for Sunday,
although when you have a kid, no day is ever completely clear, and the
Patriots game wasn't being televised here in Dallas Cowboy country (I
really need to move), so everything looked good, except for the line noise
that has started after PSO replaced some hardware in my neighborhood.

Started the contest on 20m and propagation wasn't that good during the
first hour of the contest, but did pick up as the afternoon went on. By 1pm
signals on 20m were loud, but the activity seemed down from previous
contests. I only heard 2 mobile stations on 20 the entire contest: K0PC and
N9JF.  The noise blanker on my Yaesu FT450 takes out most of the line
noise, but also hurts the receiver dynamic range, so I had to put up with
some IMD products when the band did get busy.  Managed quite a few QSOs on
20, including some on SSB.

40 meters was another story. I have some sort of noise there that was
clobbering me.  It was a constant S5, going up to S7 at times, and that was
with the noise blanker on, the preamp off, and the noise reduction turned
on.  The noise is only S3 on 80 meters so there is either something else
causing noise on 40m (some people did move in next door after the house was
vacant for a year) or my homebrew G5RV type antenna has a lobe on 40m right
at the powerline noise source, and a null there on 80.  Copy was very
though on 40m for the first new hours, and I am sorry for all of the
repeats I was asking for. Only the high powered home stations really came
in above the noise level.  I went to 40m most of the time around 4pm or so,
and would check back on 20m but only picked up a couple of QSOs there.  It
seems that I missed quite a few mobile counties on 40 due to noise.

I went to 80m the last hour of the contest and activity was there but
rather slow, but signals were easier to copy than on 40m.

Not my best effort, but a higher score than I turned in for the last couple
of years.  Glad to work the people I did, and thanks to the mobiles and
portables for going out and making another great contest.

On Tuesday the noise guy from PSO visited my QTH and found 2 noise sources
with their equipment.  He thought they could get it fixed rather quickly.
Lets hope so, and lets hope it knocks out the noise on 40m as well.

73 John AF5CC
>From the always rare section of Oklahoma