[PaQSO] Blunder stories

[Glenn O'Donnell, K3PP]

Hi everyone,

I have two dandies from PA QSO Parties of yore:

ONE:
For the 1999 bonus station, I hosted the W3HA M/M. I had to erect a few 
extra antennas, one an extra 40m dipole so we could run CW and phone 
simultaneously. I too tried the rock-and-string method. My rock flew 
skyward, bounced off a tree branch and came hurtling back to earth. It 
didn't hit anything important on its way down, just square in the middle 
of my skull! It was a pretty big rock and it knocked me silly for a 
moment. Good thing I have one of those solid Irish heads!

One lesson learned: wear a hardhat when doing something stupid like 
chucking boulders into the trees. Do I? Um, well ... no.

TWO:
I forget the year, 2000 rings a bell, but I moved to 160m on Saturday 
night and immediately got an emergency call from my XYL upstairs. It 
turns out, my Inv-V (since upgraded to an Inv-L) was igniting that nice 
dry combustible material we call fall foliage here in the Keystone 
State! In the pitch black darkness we have here atop Mt. Crumpet*, she 
easily noticed the flashes outside the front of the house pulsating in 
cadence with my CW! I failed to check the antenna prior to the contest, 
forgetting that trees grow. The year's past growth came in contact with 
the ends of the antenna (aka, the high-voltage points)! I quickly ran 
outside and luckily I hadn't started a wildfire. I grabbed the garden 
hose and soaked the area for safekeeping and then I was banned from 160m 
for the remainder of the contest by the family fire marshal!

I chronicled this second one as part of an article published in NCJ. 
It's no longer on line and I'd have to dig up that copy in my stockpile. 
WA3SES also wrote a sister article in that issue with his story of that 
year's contest.

Do these top yours, John? Don't know, don't care! They're all funny!

VY 73 de Glenn K3PP

* Winters here remind me of the Grinch's home Mt. Crumpet, so I 
semi-affectionately call our hilltop QTH by the same name. 4WD is a 
necessity here, even as early as Oct. 15 as we just found out! 4 inches 
measured here that night!! What happened to global warming?

John Myers wrote:
> OK, let's try this again. It's been one of those days.
>
> I bet no one can top this one.
>
> It was back in the 90's, 94, I believe. I went solo to a campground in INN.
> I had to put a rope over a tree limb which was about 15 ft above my truck.
> So, using the rope tied to a rock method, I wound up, and tossed. The rock
> hit the limb, and headed straight down, bouncing off the side of my pickup
> truck, putting a real ugly dent in the side.
>
> To add insult to injury, the truck was leased. The dent cost me $250 at
> turn-in.
>
> Now, I park well out of harms way whenever we are chucking rocks.
>
> 73,
>
> John,
> KD8MQ
>
> On Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 1:29 PM, <wa2fgk at ezlinx.net> wrote:
>
>   
>> Maybe we should play, "Can You Top This"
>> The station we put together for our little multi op experience is seldom
>> used. Although we thought we had a decent setup for 20 meters to use as
>> the base with a 2 element quad at 80 feet.. Then a few dipoles would be
>> the easy part.
>> On Saturday evening I was the only operator left after 9:30 local. So I
>> stopped operating CW and switched to 80 meters. I tuned up the pair of
>> 3-500's and noticed that when the drive was all the way down on the Yaesu
>> radio, I was still running high power. I then checked the SWR quickly and
>> that was pretty low. It turns out the antenna tuner has two positions and
>> it was in the low power position. So half of the contest was run at 100
>> watts out of our KW amp.. I guess it proved that antennas are the most
>> important part of the contest station.
>> I then found a clear frequency and pumped the power to a cool KW and had
>> runs of 100 per hour for quite some time on Saturday evening.
>> The other strange thing was receiving a phone call from a friend wanting
>> to tell me about his experience. While he was operating on Saturday
>> afternoon, he noticed his SWR jumping. He had an auto tuner on his rig,
>> and it kept cleaning the SWR up. He took a break right before dark on
>> Saturday afternoon and looked up at his dipole and it was not there. It
>> turns out for several days prior to the contest we had 45 mph winds and
>> his dipole had broken. What amazed him was working stations with a broken
>> antenna.. I guess it was some sort of "GROUND WAVE".
>> Well that's all I heard so far from the Murgas ARC.
>> Another great reason to operate contests is being able to tell stories for
>> years to come
>> Thanks everyone
>> Herb at K3 Yellow Traffic Light
>>
>>
>>
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