[PVRCNC] NAQP - CW ( N1LN aka: NC4KW)

[Bruce Meier]

North American QSO Party, CW - January

Call: NC4KW
Operator(s): W0UCE, AA4FU, N4YDU, N1LN
Station: N1LN

Class: M/2 LP
QTH: NC
Operating Time (hrs): 12

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:  232    42
   80:  475    52
   40:  523    55
   20:  316    48
   15:   79    15
   10:    0     0
-------------------
Total: 1625   212  Total Score = 344,500

Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club

Team: 

Comments:

When the opening bell sounded we got moving. Well, almost. I recently
decided to run some CW contests using MM instead of WriteLog. One of the
computers had a few, OPERATOR INDUCED, issues (Me) with the CW memories.
The CQ was CQ NS instead of CQ NA.  The confirmation response that should be
TU NC4KW was a simple dit-dit.  After every RUN Q the K3 would change to S/P
mode.  After every S/P the K3 would change to RUN mode.   Humm, sounds like
I might have
missed a few items when I moved from the Thursday night Sprint to the NAQP.
Fortunately, this was only on the left K3.  The right memories were
programmed correctly and working fine, except it was on a dead 15 meters.
Sure would have been nice to get lucky and start the screwed up CW memories
on 15 meters. That was an excellent time for my fellow operators to show how
patient they were.  Thanks to Jack - W0UCE, Nate - N4YDU and Alan - AA4FU.

Those items were quickly resolved but on the way we lost a few RUN
frequencies at the expense of losing a few Qs....and we moved on.

We moved on until it was time to QSY from 20 meters to 80 meters.  I just
happened to be the operator on the K3 that was to move from 20 to 80. When I
keyed the left K3 on 80 both the computer and keyer generated CW on the
right K3, that was still on 40 meters, went nuts.  Yup, RF from somewhere.
But from what.  Well, the short story is that by reducing the power from 100
watts to 80 watts the problem would go away.  That little fix cost us
another 30 to 45 minutes of me screwing around with different XMIT
frequencies, antennas, putting ferrites on everything and cable rerouting.
Of course every time I tested another "unfix", Jack, W0UCE, would get
garbled CW on the right K3 and either slow him down or blow the QSO
completely.  So, we decided that 80 watts was just fine and off we went
again.  

Oh yes, almost forgot.  The middle 20 meter beam was frozen north for about
1 hour until the Tic Ring decided to thaw out and let us turn it.  That,
fortunately, was not a big issue.  We still had the bottom beam fixed on
SOUTH and the top, which still rotated, to move anywhere we wanted it to.

Now moving on to the fun. One of our contest goals for every event is to
have fun.  Once again we did that.  Early on we decided to switch ops every
hour. That gave us the opportunity to keep up on the various football and
basketball games all afternoon and evening.  We had an excellent lunch
prepared by my wife Laurie, N1YXU and another outstanding dinner prepared by
Jack (aka: Chef Archie).  We might even have opened a few beers, bottles of
wine and maybe a bottle of Scotch.  Yes, we enjoyed the MOMENT!

Thanks to all for the Qs, the patience until we got our issues resolved, and
the repeats when needed.  

See you with a slightly different crew in NAQP-SSB.  We will be running
WriteLog and, hopefully, not have any issues but still have FUN.

73,
Bruce - N1LN
(aka: NC4KW - Pat)

Station:

(2) K3s
160 meters: Vertical T with 4 elevated radials, Inverted-V
80 meters: Wire Vertical with 4 elevated radials, Inverted-V
40 meters: 2 element at 120, 2 element at 65
20 meters: 4 element at 105 at 70 and at 35
15 meters: 5 element at 95, 4 element at 60, 3 element at 35 
10 meters:  Who cares - dead band
RX: S, NE, N, NW, W beverages