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

[Jim Jordan K4QPL]

Congratulations, Pete, on a job well done. And although we said it last
month, Howie is an absolute star in supporting the club and its members.

I remember doing SS SSB from there a few years back and agree that 4-square
is the best thing since sliced bread for 80M.

I'll bet you didn't let Howie take a picture of the improvised visual
adjustment system but we can all imagine!

Hope you recover well and have a great Thanksgiving.

73,

Jim, K4QPL
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Pete Soper" <pete at soper.us>
To: "pvrcnc" <pvrcnc at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2006 11:56 PM
Subject: [PVRCNC] AD4L 2006 SS phone (high power, no packet)


> 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
>
>
>
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