[PVRCNC] NCQP NC4KW(@N1LN) Club Mixed HP

[Bruce Meier]

North Carolina QSO Party

Call: NC4KW
Operator(s): N1YXU KM4WHL KG4NEL WA4PSK N1LN
Station: N1LN

Class: Club Mixed HP
QTH: NC
Operating Time (hrs): 10

Summary:
 Band  CW Qs  Ph Qs  Dig Qs
----------------------------
   80:   78    121      0
   40:  266    352      0
   20:  110    523      0
   15:                   
   10:                   
    6:                   
    2:                   
----------------------------
Total:  454    996      0  Mults = 126  Total Score = 423,104

Club: North Carolina Kilo Watts

Comments:

What a fun time!  I would like to start by thanking the NCQP committee and especially Marty, W4MY, for his untiring efforts and success with the promotion of the event. Our group enjoyed outstanding activity from in-state, out of state and the DX community for the entire 10 hours.

This year our team decided to take a break from being a bonus station and get back into the competition. Thanks to the new rules we operated In-State Club Multi-Two High Power. We decided to give the amps an easy day so the power was reduced to between 600 and 800 watts because 1500 was just not needed. As expected this turned into a three band contest with 80, 40 and 20 all in great shape. Perhaps a few Qs could have been made on 10 and 15 but it was just not worth spending any time trying.

We also added a new member to the team this year. Sarah (KM4WHL) is the daughter of Howie (WA4PSC). She is new to ham radio, so this was her first contest outing. She spent some time watching and listening to my wife, Laurie, N1YXU, who is very experienced and has been contesting with us for years.  Sarah and Laurie soon exchanged chairs and roles. It took Sarah a few minutes to become comfortable, but believe me, it was ONLY a few minutes. She quickly started to work the pile-ups like a pro with the rate meter getting above 120 Qs per hour several times. She is competitive and she is HOOKED on contesting!

We switched ops about every hour to allow some off time but more to give everyone the opportunity to enjoy the pile-ups and help add to our Q and mult count. We tried to keep one station on SSB and the other on CW but although the CW rates started off high, they seemed to continue to drop throughout the contest. So the CW station would jump between CW and SSB on the currently assigned band while position 2 continued to operate SSB on another band. As you see from our numbers 20 SSB was the most active with 40 SSB and 40 CW coming in second and third.  I had the opportunity to open 75 SSB from the CW station resulting in my highest rate of the day peaking just over 300 Qs per hour. That was FUN! Jim, KG4NEL, ended up putting the highest single Operator Q count in the log for our team with a 393 total.  

When the clock struck 01:00 UTC the headsets were put down and amps put on standby and we discussed our results. We beat all previous year Q counts even when we were operating as W4DW. The mults were down 3 from what I thought we would work, having missed DE, DC and SK. We had 68 counties and 88 DX QSOs in the log from 34 countries even though we could only count 1 mult.  (IMO the 1 mult DX rule needs to be discussed and hopefully changed.) Finally we were able to work all the Bonus Stations and counties, so our score includes the full 500 bonus points.

The Team:

KM4WHL  Sarah
N1YXU  Laurie
KG4NEL Jim
WA4PSC Howie
N1LN   Bruce

Thanks to everyone that called us.   It was a fun 10 hours.

73,
Bruce, N1LN and the NC4KW (North Carolina Kilo Watts) team