[PVRCNC] Reunion DE AD4L

[Pete Soper]

Hi Guys,
             Well this test's design had a lot of enlightenment showing 
through the rules. I don't know what aspects of the rules are old or 
new, but all together they spelled INCLUSIVE. Loved that. 
Congratulations to the organizers.
    It took me until around 8pm local Sunday to find the intersection of 
about 11 variables that allowed me to get on the air. I thought I was 
done when I ran to RS and got a double DB25P gender mender, but it took 
two more hours of finagling. I finally gave up on getting automatic PTT 
as I only had a few minutes left.

But this was great fun, in a fumbling, bumbling way. :-)

I had a number of chuckles:
   1) Busted W3EI's call, 'cause I suddenly realized I had to send his 
call back, used the ^K window
       and moving my eyes from the logging text box to the ^K window I 
magically converted his call to
       K3EI (holding down control and hitting "K" put that letter into 
my brain, I think).  So I'm still staring
       at this call in the ^K window after I typed it and he repeats his 
call, but I never get the first letter and
       then I'm baffled by him sending the single letter "W". What the heck
       does that mean, I wonder? So I send all again,  but he/she had 
moved on. So then I looked back at the
       logging window and there was "W3EI" staring at me. Duh.
      
       Then I had to
       dig out the N1MM docs and read a lot of stuff and do a lot of 
searches to figure out that the magic
       to add to my F2 message is "!".  I decided to S&P for a while 
after that. Actually I think I made
       five attempts to run. I got one contact for my trouble (K4BAI 
below), but I'll do better next time.
   2) After the situation above, I noticed I still had my tuner set to 
dummy load from messing with
       my antenna/band selection (did the whole test 7.047 +/- 5khz). So 
I'm sending 100
       watts into the dummy load and a few milliwatts is leaking into 
the antenna, and W3EI copied me
       perfectly.
   3) K4BAI and I had trouble, I think, because at some point I had a 
brain wiring problem while
       concentrating on a "tab key dance" between logging window fields 
(was trying to type his name
       into the received number text box, or some such) and I stopped
       hitting the foot switch to send. So I think I was not actually 
sending repeats to John and he just
       sent a repeat or two and then gave up until I called "CQ" again. 
But I'm not
       sure, it might have been some other equally weird 
discombobulation was in effect too. Oh, and other
       times I for sure failed to release the foot switch fast enough, 
holding off the first part of a reply.'
   4) At some point I noticed my SWR was 22. I messed around with the 
tuner, took off the phones and
       noticed it was raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock. I was 
sure the rain on the ladder line was
       messing me up until I noticed I'd disconnected the antenna 
completely with a brain-disengaged
       move a few minutes earlier. The rain in fact had no noticeable 
effect on the antenna.

After the contact with John it was time to shut everything down and go 
tell my girl a bed time story. I was impressed again by the fact that I 
was able to scp my log to a K9FOX machine in Wisconsin (to fetch back 
from inside the house, 'cause I didn't have a floppy or a machine in the 
house that was powered up with a secure shell daemon running). The 
802.11 link from the shack to the house worked perfectly, as did the 
two-way satellite link to Scott's box.

I don't think I got my TUs straight during this test. I didn't listen to 
others making contacts enough to get that sorted. I'll get that right 
for next year.

17 * 6 = 102

TS850, G5RV @ 70' aimed NE/SW

Regards,
Pete AD4L