[PVRCNC] WPX CW NY4A(@N4AF) M/S HP

[Alan Knight]

First of all thanks to Howie and Lynn for a great time.

As I left home, I noticed a few drops of rain and some dark clouds to the
southwest, but didn't think much about it.  Looks like I got out of town
just in time to avoid the heavy rain and closed roads.  The rain stayed away
from Howie's on Friday night and things started out good on 40m.  However,
it wouldn't last long.  The 5 element quad quit working during the 2nd hour
and we switched to the 2 element Yagi.  Even without the quad, our QSO
totals were the same or ahead of last year until we tried 20m on Saturday
morning.  We never could get good runs going on 20 or 15 and around lunch
time the rain finally arrived.  We shut down for over an hour to let the
storm pass.  If that wasn't enough we also had a few problems with the 8
element 20m Yagi.  After the rain passed Howie spent a couple of hours
working on the quad, but it wasn't until late on Sunday that he found the
bad connection.  The 0 QSO total on 10m was due to a tornado that took down
Howie's 10m tower back in April.

Between the rain and antenna repairs our QSO totals started falling behind
last year's totals and by 9PM on Saturday night we had dropped about 400
QSO's behind.  We finally got a good run of Russian stations on 20m around
midnight and started closing the gap.  By the end of the contest we had
almost caught up with last year's QSO numbers.  40m was about the same as
last year, and 20 and 15m made up for the lower totals on 80 and 10m.  Even
though the QSOs are about the same as last year, the final score is a little
better due to having about 100 more multipliers.  I guess the lack of good
runs on the first day gave us more time to pick off new mults as they showed
up on the band map.

One of the advantages of being M/S was it gave Howie time to work on
antennas.  We also had a chance to take advantage of the pool in the heat of
the afternoons.

73,
Alan - AA4FU


                   CQWW WPX Contest, CW

Call: NY4A
Operator(s): AA4FU N4AF
Station: N4AF

Class: M/S HP
QTH: nc
Operating Time (hrs): 46

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
 160:    5
  80:  106
  40:  861
  20: 1093
  15:  402
  10:    0
------------
Total: 2467  Prefixes = 957  Total Score = 6,720,054

Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club