[NLRS] Prelim contest scores & report

[Dave Aho]

Once again it was an interesting contest.  I was ORIGINALLY planted at the farm of N0AKC's inlaws in EN43, and the contest was going decent considering the bands were heavy with QSB.  One minute strong signals and in the middle of a word would drop to noise level.  EVERY fly in the States of MN, IA, and WI came to visit and seemed to stay.  I was hard pressed to not get a mouthful every time I went from one end of the van to the other...*L*  I think some flies migrated to the campsite of KF0Q I think as he said he had lots of visitors....prospective ham operator maybe??  *L*  Anyhow, in the middle of a band run and contact around 7:30 or so the power went out ( I was using the mains at the farm with no gen).  I waited for about an hour and slowly tore down the easy tower in hopes the power would come back up....no such luck.  By the time I got things packed, it had not come on yet.  I ran across utility personnel, and they said they thought an underground line deteriorated...hadn't
 found it as of 10 pm.  So I headed back home to Eau Claire....Flies unfortunately tagging along.
 
EN44:   Raised tower and was on air about 2pm local.  bands were very quiet.  mostly locals, but did happen to work KA0PQW, KF0Q, K0NY/R, K2DRH, NE9U, +a few others on various bands.  We gave it a good try on 432 many times, but the QSB was so bad complete contacts were not to be had.  Also heard on bands were K0AWU on 144, 222, & 432, WB9Z on 2 meter (he got all my info exept the "X" in my call...Ugh!), K2DRH was heard on 432, KM0T was heard on 50, 144, & 222.  There were a few others I heard but never got the beams turned around in time...or realized I was trying to xmit voice while in CW mode...or calling on the wrong rig....oops.  Anyhoo, had a good few runs with the locals, so the score in EN44 should be OK.  I don't think I classify as "rover" as I used commercial mains, but I did call CQ on 146.550 FM on route Sat. night...gotta check on the rover ruling...otherwise I will be submitting 2 logs.  Anyhoo, since I was as usual using the "SPM" logging program (scratch pad manual)
 instead of CT, I don't have scores yet...but will post ASAP.  Thanks to all those who had to put up with my less than perfect CW, and all those that I made contact with and/or gave a good try with.  Hope SOMEDAY to run the bands with Bill (K0AWU), Mike (KM0T) and everyone else in the far lonely reaches of gridland.  
 
       TNX and 73 from EN44
 
                          Dave....N9TTX  (sometimes /0)


---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software

--- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts ---
multipart/alternative
  text/plain (text body -- kept)
  text/html
The reason this message is shown is because the post was in HTML
or had an attachment.  Attachments are not allowed.  To learn how
to post in Plain-Text go to: http://www.expita.com/nomime.html  ---