[PaQSO] Blunder stories

Mon Oct 19 06:28:19 EDT 2009

OH Boy, I humbly withdraw my claim to first place, and bow before the king.
:-)

I guess a dent in the brain bucket beats a dent in my truck.

Thanks,

John, KD8MQ

On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 12:49 AM, Glenn O'Donnell, K3PP <k3pp at k3pp.com>wrote:

> 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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