[PVRCNC] AD4L 2006 SS phone (high power, no packet)

[Pete Soper]

Thanks to Howie  N4AF for the use of his fine station.

I'm not in position to list band status but will be claiming 1001 Qs and 
80 mults for 160080 points and 20 hours, with maybe 18 of those running 
and two S&P. Most contacts were split evenly between 40 and 80 meters,  
but I had a short stint on 15 and milked 20 for a few Qs. The two times 
I checked 10 it was dead quiet.

I mostly camped out on a single frequency for very long stretches and 
was satisfied to just maintain some rate, with drastically fewer band 
changes than in the past. I'd always started the contest on 20 in the 
past but this time went straight to 40 because signals didn't sound loud 
on 20 but I knew Howie's station kicked butt and took names on 40 
meters. So I put up with the broadcast stations and being bracketed by 
other run stations 2khz above and below. Later that night the switch to 
75 meters was very nice, with Howie's four square being a quite amazing 
antenna. It was extremely effective for optimizing contacts and 
minimizing murderous QRM. I think this was the first long stretch spent 
on a 1000MP and I enjoyed it very much. To be honest the adjacent signal 
rejection didn't seem particularly different from that of my TS850 
except that the audio sounded much cleaner with heavy QRM. I wish I'd 
taken the time to determine if the MP had a digital autonotch filter, as 
I spent a very long time working Q after Q on 40 with a killer Euro AM 
broadcast heterodyne in my ears and no way to ooch up or down even 100hz 
because of the guys crowding me so hard. The regular notch filter on the 
MP was less effective than the one on my 850, and I didn't think that 
was possible. :-) But the MP was very easy to operate in combination 
with the Alpha 99 running at 1500.000 watts and there were very many 
"booming signal", and "60 over S9" type reports and S&P was mostly a 
pileup buster. The exception to this was that around mid-afternoon on 
20m I had to keep checking the amp to see if it had tripped out and I 
was running barefoot, as pouncing was taking a half dozen repetitions of 
my call. But Howie's XM240 and quad loop were a very potent combination 
on 40 meters. I think the station was definitely loudest on 40, followed 
by 80 and 15 (for the short time I found that band open), with 20 a 
distant fourth. The latter was likely because I didn't pick my times on 
that band very well: my band selection was just plain lazy this time 
around. Finally, during the very long runs on 40 and 80 I never got a 
break with the QRM and so only the loudest stations could get my 
attention. In the past I've had some relatively quiet run frequencies on 
75 that provided very nice rate. I think that made the basic difference 
between ending up with 1k Qs instead of the 1200-1400 I'd estimated 
might be possible.

On the Sunday there was a period around 2pm local, if I recall right, 
where conditions on 20 meters were extremely weird. I made a contact 
with a guy in SCV that sounded like a back scatter contact. Back scatter 
from over 2000 miles away? He confirmed that it sounded totally weird on 
his end too and he'd tried different antenna directions to no avail. A 
few minutes later I made an MDC contact that (not surprisingly) sounded 
like exactly the same back scatter propagation. What's up with that? The 
other thing that struck me was how unproductive 40 was in the morning. 
In the past I'd had endless streams of Michigan, Illinois and Indiana 
stations to work around 7-10am, but this time there was only a dribble. 
Howie and I wondered if things would be better after folks had a chance 
to get home from church, but my rate actually cratered at that point and 
I  scoured the bands and then spent a while in the blessed weak signal 
environment called 15 meters. It was then that an Alaskan station gave 
me his #3 with a signal level 1/2db over ESP for my next to the last 
mult. I'd come across a guy running from Alaska but he was perfectly 
clueless managing the pileup and had folks trained to dump there calls 
nearly continuously and just wasn't loud enough to punch through. 
Actually, my theory is that as well as the inconsistency of timing and 
responses, when you can't get a whole call and very quickly work that 
guy and whittle the pileup down you're just doomed. So he was responding 
to the last few letters dump in later and later, causing people to 
double and force him to ask for endless repeats.

Sunday afternoon I remembered I had a 14 hour day waiting for me on the 
Monday, so I couldn't afford to continue the test to the end, crash a 
few hours, and then drive back (straight into an appointment and then 
work). Instead  I set a goal of 1k contacts and clawed my way to that 
(plus one for insurance)  in time to shut down at 7pm and get home in 
time to kiss the daughter good night and have a full nights sleep. I say 
"clawed" because I got virtually no responses to CQs on apparently wide 
open, quiet frequencies and had to scramble at the end. But moments 
before I reached the1k mark I was back on 20 meters and came across a 
NWT station very casually making contacts and I was next in line about 
the same moment his callsign was sinking in. Sweet. I'm sure the 
thundering herds were all over him as soon as somebody put him on 
packet. But that was mult 80 and a wonderful way to close out.

I'd gotten about a 90 minute nap on the Sunday morning and 10-15 minutes 
on Sunday afternoon but felt absolutely fine after the 150 mile drive 
home. In fact this was the most comfortable contest I've ever done, with 
none of the extreme body torture I've suffered in the past. I think it 
was the soy milk (vs Mountain Dew) and vegetable stew Howie whipped up 
(vs bags of junk food), but especially the fact that I made myself 
maintain proper posture and periodically got up and stretched.  I had 
had a big hassle with two discs in my neck earlier this year and needed 
to do the right thing to avoid pinching the nerve bundles again. All 
went well on that score. But when I woke up Monday morning I felt like 
death warmed over and just got through the day. It turned out I was 
coming down with something and ended up in bed all day today and didn't 
get a stitch done.

There was one funny moment at the beginning of the contest, though, as I 
realized that keeping my head straight meant looking through the wrong 
part of my trifocals. I couldn't read out serial numbers to the other 
station! I had to do something expedient until the rate slacked off, so 
I employed the universal solution and slapped a piece of duct tape to 
the side of my head in such a way that the glasses were held high enough 
to look through the medium distance lenses. Later I was able to take 
that off and replace it with folded up cardboard taped under the nose 
bridge. Howie's wife Lynn came in a few times to use their computer and 
I suspect she either thought the duct tape on my temple was the goofiest 
thing she'd ever seen or else "situation normal", depending on what 
Howie and the rest of his multi-multi crew have had to devise in the 
past. :-)

I just read the K4QPL score report and am pleased that PVRC made a good 
showing this year. And it was a pleasure working so many other PVRCers 
both in NC and to the north.

Regards,
Pete