[PVRCNC] K4QPL SSCW SOLP

[Jim K4QPL]

What a great time for Time Warner to crash their incoming mail system! Can't 
access anything addressed to my ham radio email to read what others are 
doing so sending this "blind."

Band report will follow but raw score is:

776 Q's x 2 x 77 mults. Missed NNY, ND and NT.
Points: 119,504   23 hours.

Followed Ty's advice not to waste time looking for mults. Well, I mostly 
followed it but towards the end I did use the second radio to listen for 
pileups with no luck so guess none of these mults were running.

Very slow start. Just couldn't get a run going in the first hour or so with 
low power although I did hear some other "A" stations doing it. S&P'd for a 
while and then things improved.

Good activity from NC and particular thanks to all the PVRCNC-East members I 
heard. We had some past heroes on like W4MR(AA4NC) and K4MA. I enjoyed 
hearing our "future" with cw newcomers like KA1ARB and W4KAZ, and possibly 
others I didn't hear on the air, paying their dues and taking their lumps in 
the toughest cw contest out there. Several club members like K2AV, NX9T and 
K4CIA were also on to help out. I had to double check that precedence from 
CIA who only lives a mile away "Q??". Maybe Bill was just trying not to QRM 
me. Thanks.

"160 Minute Man" - sorry "160 Meter Man" W0UCE was knocking them out with 
some big runs and the "Man with the Broom" K3KO got the very elusive clean 
sweep picking VY1JA out of a pileup calling him.

Low Power unassisted makes it hard to get big numbers. For me it was mostly 
just hard work trying to keep runs going and using the spare time with the 
second radio for S&P. This is the first contest I've been real comfortable 
with it and learned to accept the occasional situations where you can't 
handle two stations and fills at the same time and someone gets impatient 
and leaves. I don't blame them. Thanks Bert, N4CW/1 for hanging in there 
with me! By careful antenna selection and compromising performance I was 
also able to S&P the same band I was running on within about 20 khz.

The big rush was 0100-0200 as my last hour Sunday. I grabbed on to the 
keyboard and after finding a hole at about 40 from someone who had timed out 
turned on the famous TR-Log "Duelling CQ" mode and started running 40 and 80 
at the same time. (It is like automatic CQ mode, but alternates between the 
two radios)  Must have been spotted as had a bunch of "U" stations calling 
me. Say, was I spotted on BOTH bands?? Fun, but I'd never try that any 
earlier in the contest!

Roll on SS Phone!!

73,

Jim, K4QPL