[NLRS] prelim June Q-Party report---LONG

[Dave Aho]

Well all,

    I never got things going as soon as I wanted...it
took longer than originally planned to get the van
physically back from the shop for a rear spring fram
mount replacement and a weld ed on reciever
hitch...THAT is not coming off unless the frame pulls
off...*LOL*  Thanks to Heavy Duty Components here in
Eau Claire. (I am back in Eau Claire now and napping
after this message...*L*)  Charlie----I got all four
spikes out of the ground, and I have the tilt over
base with me.  I was single op down there.  KB9LVK
could not make it down with me for these four
days...It did work out well though operator wise.  I
got into the hang of "stereo" running.  Just ask
KB9PJL when I scared the daylights out of him when I
blasted thru with 6 and 2 meter at once.  Anyhow.  I
of course was paper logging, and when I wake up today
I will start preparing the scores manually.  I got
down to EN44gm at about 6 or 6:30 pm Friday....and
never got everything hooked up in the "BUTT"  (Big
Ugly Travelling Thing) untol about midnight.  I had
setbacks in getting the tilt up base situated and the
tower in the air. First off, since it is a tilt base,
it has 3...count them: 1, 2, 3...legs two of which are
the pivots and teh third being the locking point.  BIG
spikes about 1.25" diameter and about 3 feet long are
used to anchor the base.  I spiked them in about
halfway..found I was winded..*L* ugh...out of shape. 
said that was good emough as I would need to remove
them later by hand. I positioned it next to the
windmill tower for running a rope winch to erect it
(planned on 30')  Remember the legs...I was about to
mount the bottom section on and found I positioned the
base with the pivot points near the tower....had to
pull the spikes spin the base 180 and drive them in
again.  out of breath again.  I got the three sections
together, and found that it was too heavy to tilt up
with the configuration I had...and I was NOT climbing
higher than the 30' that I di on that windmill without
some kind of harness...plus I am not good at heights 
(yet).  It was also getting late, and I still had both
towers to put up.  Once I had the 6 meter tilt up
tower ready to tilt into place it went smooth.  The
144-1296 stack went up excellent.  I had a brain fart
in trying to figure out how to run coax into the van,
but that didn't last long. as it went thru the driver
window.  by the time I got the table set up in the
back with everything on and hooked up it was way past
my projected op time for tests at midnight, so I got a
few winks, got up about 9 and finished some keyer
recordings for CW, and ran a little 2 and 6 prelim
contacts.

  Saturday:  As this is really only the second contest
for VHF I ran....the Sept rover did not count in my
book as I was running only FM and only got a decent
score for running the grids I did....I am still
learning, I had fun on 6 when it was open all over the
place, made a bunch of multiple band contacts.  I was
disappointed in my setup though....the 432 should have
worked a whole lot better than it was...although it
did seem to boom thru every ONCE in a while.  I was
disappointed to not work Bill K0AWU on anything other
than 144..but we did give it a couple tries.  It
seemed on the higher bands that Murphy reigned in that
if I could hear someone, they could not hear me, and
vice versa.  I had no problem on 6 meters, but it was
flaky Sunday.

    Sunday:  I prbably worked more 2 meter here,
though I did get a good scattering of 6 in here also. 
I also worked more of the higher bands this day also. 
I was impressed though with the 1296 performance.  I
think the band was up and down big time Sunday though
as I had good copy with KB9PJL, but no copy with
N0AKC, If you saw the yagi, you would understand why I
was suprised....*LOL*  the 432 would NOT meter down
past 2:1 which is probably the main reason it was not
up to snuff.  Bill, I spose we should have tried 222.1
first then gone to 432..*LOL* as that was a good
sounding band.  I heard KM0T out there, but never got
the beam around to get him in time on 2 before he went
to 6 and pointed away from me...*L* (At least that is
what I am guessing what happened..*LOL*)

    Anyhow, thanks to all of you that helped out,
especially those that could put up with all my
miskeying  (when I ran the paddles) and the possibly
confusing excerpts from the memory slots in the keyer.
 I got good at sending certain phrases, and not too
good at recognizing  incoming code, though it was ok
if I knew what I was looking for, THEN I could read it
better in the faster speeds.  I won't name names/and
callsigns as this is getting longer and longer anyhow,
but just suffice to say THANK YOU to everyone I
worked, and to those I tried to work thanks for being
patient anyway..*L*  It was a fun weekend, though
tiring.  If everything works out I may see if I could
op out of there in September also.  The unofficial
scores will be posted as soon as I sort thru
everything as I think I have a couple dupes in there,
but it should be a pretty decent score.

         TNX and 73,

             Dave...N9TTX

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