Date
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AA5PR/R CQ WW VHF
John Klem
Half the battle was just keeping equipment and operator cool enough to get through the weekend. The only major failure was the battery booster, which popped under the stress Saturday afternoon.
Propagation on 6 m was in and out, but overall pretty good. I need to remind myself to occasionally look at the S-meter to accurately judge signal strengths when in low-noise locations, but it seemed that there was often plenty of margin for SSB (or FT4, at least) yet people were pretty seriously stuck to FT8. I had to work for exactly 1 SSB contact. He seemed grateful too.
The high points of the contest for me included:
Every contact I had on 2 m
Working K7KQA (who was hoping for DM76), Mike WB2FKO in Florida, and an EA8 station
Seeing for the first time the canyon that the Canadian River flows through east of Wagon Mound
Total contacts 124, multipliers 87, score 11,397.
John, AA5PR/R
Propagation on 6 m was in and out, but overall pretty good. I need to remind myself to occasionally look at the S-meter to accurately judge signal strengths when in low-noise locations, but it seemed that there was often plenty of margin for SSB (or FT4, at least) yet people were pretty seriously stuck to FT8. I had to work for exactly 1 SSB contact. He seemed grateful too.
The high points of the contest for me included:
Every contact I had on 2 m
Working K7KQA (who was hoping for DM76), Mike WB2FKO in Florida, and an EA8 station
Seeing for the first time the canyon that the Canadian River flows through east of Wagon Mound
Total contacts 124, multipliers 87, score 11,397.
John, AA5PR/R