[NLRS] 10 GHz and up contest, first weekend (LONG)

[Chris Cox, N0UK]

Quick summary; good news and bad news!

Once again, a goodly-sized contingent from the Northern Lights Radio 
Society made the trek Up North for the first weekend.  I was part of the 
group that were destined to run the length of Lake Superior's North Shore 
from Duluth up to and back from Grand Portage, MN.  A small group 
comprising VE3KRP, VE4MA, K0AWU, and K0KFC headed for the north end of the 
lakeshore in Terrence Bay, Ontario, and the bulk of the group headed to 
Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

Kick-off time was set for 0700 CDT (1220Z) on Saturday morning.  We on the 
north shore met at the Thompson Hill rest stop at the southern end of 
Duluth.  The air temperature was hovering around 43 degrees F - a far cry 
from last year's 80+ degrees!  Once we found the MI guys it was 
immediately obvious that this was not going to be a repeat of the 
outstanding condx from 2003.

For starters, apart from the record-low temperatures over the northland, 
Murphy was in attendence and had brought along his good friends Sod and 
Damn for moral support.  His cousin was also in attendence over at the MI 
encampment too as I understand.  On our end, Glen, KC0IYT, found that his 
rig falling over the day before had suffered catastrophic damage and would 
neither receive or transmit.  Doug, N0NAS, was experiencing intermittent 
transmit failure.  As for myself, it was evident that I was plagued by 
some transmit problem too as my signal locally was weaker than the 
also-weak signals being received from 313km distant.  It turned out that 
the Qualcomm amplifier in my transverter had died, and I had made the 
conscious decision to MINImise my load by only bringing "essential" 
spares, as I was going to be running the north-shore from my new MINI 
Cooper (which has not the BIGGEST cargo-space known to man!).  

Oh, that is the good news; the MINI averaged 35.5 mpg over the course of 
the weekend!

Anyhow, Doug managed to stabilise his rig; Glen availed himself of the 
spare station that  Dave, N0KP, had kindly brought along;  and I operated 
the weekend at the QRPP 10mW level available using the DEMI transverter 
barefoot.  Last year, that would have been little if any disadvantage as 
conditions were stupendous throughout the weekend.  Not so this weekend.  
Fortunately, most of the UP ops were comfortable with working weak CW, and 
many of the QSOs would have been impossible on phone.  Condx did improve 
as Saturday wore on - and as we got closer together as we headed NE along 
the shore - and by mid-afternoon, even my measly emanitions were being 
copied at S9+ signal levels.  That allowed me to switch to USB, and sped 
up the QSO rate.  Incidentally, at the peak I was able to work all of the 
guys and gals across in MI in under three minutes.

Sunday, in a nutshell, sucked the big one :-(  As hard as they tried, 
those over in MI just could barely hear anything from me.  I managed to 
eke out 5 - that's FIVE - QSOs all day long.  I wish to applaud Bruce, 
W9FZ, for working as hard as he did to manage even that and only one other 
station was worked from one location on the second day.  I greatly 
appreciate the patience shown by ops on all sides of the lake as they 
waited for me (mostly in futility) to work a few more on Sunday.

I haven't toted the score yet (and I'm writing this over lunch sans my log 
sheets) but score is way down from last years first leg.  Maybe around 19k 
instead of about 38k.  AND there were nearly twice as many stations to 
work on the UP side this year.

Still, there's always the second leg to help bring the score up, and I did 
learn a couple of things.

1) It has been said that making no decision is the only really bad 
decision.  It was a conscious decision to NOT bring a spare amp!

2) Operating skill is NOT the be-all and end-all of contesting.

3) Alice (the COOPER) aka The Union Jack gets great mileage on the open 
roads.

4) I could never return to being just an SWL again.

5) The contest is too short for QRP.
 -- 
73  Chris Cox  N0UK, G4JEC, ex-AB0CN, ex-G8PTC  RNARS #1157  EN34jv33

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