K4TMC 2025 Jan NAQP SSB Un-assisted

[Henry Pollock - K4TMC]

North American QSO Party, SSB - January

Call: K4TMC
Operator(s): K4TMC
Station: K4TMC

Class: Single Op LP
QTH: NC
Operating Time (hrs): 7.5

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:    0
   80:    9
   40:   16
   20:   45
   15:   59
   10:   39
-------------------
Total:  168    91  Total Score = 15,288

Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club

Comments:

Since they were predicting a wet and cold weekend at the Atlantic Beach, NC
portable site, I decided to try my hand at the NAQP from home. After
reviewing the recent CW results I was left with the feeling that the
potential main course bands were going to be 20M & 40M with maybe 15M being
an appetizer and 10M may bring some great hors d'oeuvres.  Handicapped by
compromised antennas in the attic I had to quickly decide what to use for
covering 40 thru 10M. First though was to lower the 3 10M Moxons to the
attic floor and then staple some wires in the roof peak beams to come up
with a hatted dipole of some kind, a’ la the Force-12 Sigma verticals.  Then
I thought, why not use two of the Moxons as the hats. So, what I wound up
with is a dipole using the center Moxon’s driven element, with jumper wires
connected to the reflector elements/booms of the other 2 Moxons; and
disconnected the coax jumpers from those 2 Moxons. Amazingly, the K3’s ATU
was able to match the antenna on 40 through 10. The cherry on top of the
desert was that the antenna even tuned on 80M!

First mistake…Oops, Contest Fathers, I have sinned! I forgot (excuse – 73
years old) to log onto the Online Scoreboard. By 1300 Sunday morning it was
closed. Yes, I read and saved Doug’s ‘double All-Caps Bold’ note from
Tuesday. Next time, I’ll have to put a sticky note on the contest laptop
and the K3 screen.

This was a fun effort, although somewhat disappointing after my
438/100/45,552 results back in August from the beach.  I was pretty happy
with how it was going…until I moved to 40 and 80. My band noise was S5 on
40 and S7 on 80, uggh! Just too much going on in my dense urban
neighborhood. Unless this was a fluke, future home contest efforts will
have to be limited to 20, 15 & 10.

I started the contest S&P on 10 for the first hour working 29 QSOs and
gathering 19 Mults, then jumped to 15 for the second hour and worked 33
QSOs and another 19 more Mults. Back to 10 for 30 minutes and got 9 more
QSOs and 5 Mults. Back to 15 for 20 QSOs and 4 Mults. Moved to 20 at 2115
and worked 35 QSOs and 17 Mults. By 2245 I started bouncing around between
10, 15 and 20 looking for new stations for an hour. Moved to 40 at 2340 and
only managed to work 16 QSOs and 10 new Mults over an hour’s time. Took a
90 minute break to have dinner, time with the wife, and a little TV
football. Around 0245 I tried 80, but only managed to snag 9 QSOs and 7 new
Mults over the next few hours, along with multiple breaks and quick knob
turns through 40, 20, 15 & 10. I missed a number of states that I heard
answering run stations. I tried a few short runs on 15 and 20, and picked
up a few new mults, but eventually was squeezed out by stronger stations.
Best catch was WH7Z as he was fading into the noise on 10 at 2300 during
one of my knob-turn efforts.

Hoping I can make it to the beach for the August effort again.

Rig: Elecraft K3+ with Heil HC4 mic element

Antennas: see first paragraph above.
73,
Henry - K4TMC