[PVRCNC] NAQP-CW @ NC4KW (W0UCE, AA4FU, K4QPL, N1LN)

[Bruce Meier]

                    North American QSO Party, CW - January

Call: NC4KW
Operator(s): W0UCE, AA4FU, K4QPL, N1LN
Station: N1LN

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

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:  167    42
   80:  358    53
   40:  546    57
   20:  294    54
   15:  140    38
   10:   19     5
-------------------
Total: 1524   249  Total Score = 379,476

Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club

Team: 

Comments:

NAQP CW is one of my favorite contests. The length of this contest is just
about right. The 12 hours provides the opportunity to enjoy all bands
(hopefully), have some good runs, some S/P to search out those elusive mults
and most important, have a great time with friends. Our team (Jack-W0UCE,
Jim-K4QPL, Alan-AA4FU and I-N1LN) were successful in all counts.    

It almost did not start that way. The mid 20 meter rotor decided not to
work. Late Sunday afternoon during CQWW was the first time this occurred.
>From then on it has been fine. Due to recent knee surgery, I am not able to
do any tower work, so I was quite pleased to have it repair itself. Well, so
much for rotor failures and contests. It worked on Thursday night for NS
Ladder, but on Saturday - NOTHING.  Fortunately it was locked at 286
degrees.  Close enough for the weekend. Thanks to Mr. Murphy for almost
stopping there. The only other issue we had was with N1MM.  For some reason,
when we had AUTO CQ on, it would send the CQ macro 3 or 4 times and stop.
Fortunately, it took us some time to notice that issue as we rarely had to
call many times without a reply.

The high bands just never really got going for us. Based on reading other
write-ups, we got on 10 meters too late. We started on 20 and 15 and stayed
on 15 for too long.  We did OK there, but missed some never to return 10
meter action. The 20 meter mult count was fine, but we were well down in Qs
from last January. The low bands really helped make up our short fall.  The
Qs on 40 just kept coming and coming.  Both 80 and 160 were a bit noisy, but
the beverages and the K9AY really helped manage that. When the bell rang at
06:00UTC we were 101 Qs down from last January. Those missing Qs would have
pushed us over the 400,000 goal.   

Surprises of the contest.   

1.We only had 2 sections with all band sweeps, California and Oregon 
2.We never worked Hawaii on ANY band

Thanks to everyone for the Qs, the repeats and especially to everyone that
moved for us to help with the multipliers.

73,
Bruce, N1LN
aka: NC4KW)