[JMS] W1HRX on the AWA AM QSO party

[Dennis Petrich]

Hello all,

Well, to say the least, being able to use James Millen's, W1HRX, call last
weekend during the AWA AM QSO party was an unbelievable honor and one heck
of a lot of fun. 

This was my first time to do some serious contest style AM work with my
James Millen 500w transmitter featured in ER and the JMS web site.  The
transmitter didn't miss a beat putting out over 250w of plate modulated AM
for over 4 hours...  The 90700 VFO didn't budge during the whole 4 hours
because I would check zero-beat every now and then on W2AN's rock bound
signal and I never had to tweak it...

Part of the fun that night was hooking up with Dave operating W2AN at the
AWA museum running James Millen's vintage 1939 transmitter.  Dave and I tag
teamed to give dual Flagship points to over 60 stations during the evening.

The HRO-5RA1 I was using is a great receiver but it wasn't designed to deal
with AM pileups and SSB interference the likes of what was going on that
evening, so after 4 hours of working many low power 25w AM stations Saturday
night my brain went to mush.... If you had a 100w or more signal copy was
made much easier due to the adjoining QRM.

I was especially excited to work one station that was running 6w from a 6AQ5
being modulated by 6AQ5's; the band was in great shape making communications
with low power signals easy.

W1HRX managed to work 82 stations on 75m, 10 stations on 40m and 18 stations
on 20m including HH2JR in Haiti.  I would have had a higher total on 40m and
20m if some local QRN had not wiped out those two bands for almost 3 hours
on Sunday.

I hope all of you who were able to work W1HRX last weekend but if not
there's always next year....

73's, Dennis k0eoo