2004 ARRL November Sweepstakes (CW)
11/09/2004 |
N8CPA
There is no broom on my tower this year. And there will be no mug for my coffee. But I'm sitting on my excuse, which if it weren't available, I'd make up something else , I'm sure. But for this year, the death of my chair is the most immediate, convenient and compelling excuse for my failure to do better than I did. Either that or, even after 10 tries for a sweep, I suck at SS!
On Friday, my old reliable chair started slipping downward. It had been creaky for a while. But the latch that held it in proper height gave out on Friday. I turned to answer the phone or something and suddenly, after a loud "Crack," my knees rushed up to meet my chest. I turned the chair over and fiddled with the latch a bit. I thought my attempted repair had worked. But Saturday morning, as I sat down to set the clock of my logging computer, the same thing occurred, just as WWV sent the top of the minute tone. This time, my knees rushed up to meet my chin.
So the chair had given up the last of its pneumatic integrity. As a result, a portion of Saturday afternoon, when I should have been relaxing and pumping myself up for the contest, went to assembling the chair's replacement--as did a portion of the physical energy I had saved for the contest. After a trip to Sam's Club with my XYL, I got the project started.
Now understand: My wife does not like to be around when I assemble anything. It has to do with concerns about the color of her air. She is too young for blue hair and worries that blue air may stick to her coif. Since neither of my hands is completely functional, I use verbal tools to augment the mechanical advantage of the little hex keys that are packaged in such furniture kits as the chair I purchased. My vocabulary is my version of power tools. So after my wife took off to a girly hobby meeting with her sister, I started the assembly and the associated swearing. Ninety minutes and 900 deprecations later, I had a new chair.
It only took a few more choice ones to squeeze and pinch the chair into my radio room. I was sitting in it by the time the pre-contest RST tests started at 2030 and I answered a few. I started running at the top of the hour, and within 30 seconds started hunting and pouncing. I logged my first Q at 2101. Not yet comfortbale with my new chair, I settled on a Section Hunt strategy.
It was difficult to sit there and concentrate on the contest in the unfamiliar furniture so my rate was very slow. My best hour I think I hit 27 Q/HR on Saturday night. I was tired, so I didn't stay up too late. I made my last Q (#103) for Saturday about 0315Z. I was asleep within an hour.
I started again at 1036Z Sunday morning, making QSO #200 just before 1700Z. It took 7 1/2 hours to make the next hundred contacts, after I wasted about 45 minutes trying to bust a hopeless pileup on 20 to work VY1JA. Unfortunately, the band opening to NWT did not hold. I never did find AK, or PAC. I didn't even hear them. And for some reason, AL, MS, and VT were only sparsely represented. They were the last sections to finally make it into the log. I found AL early Sunday. But finding MS, is worth mentioning.
I heard a call sign that resonated with me for some reason. It was a 4, but I thought I remembered the call from studying last year's log. If I was correct, he had been in MS. So I answered his CQ. No need to curse my memory, at least.
For the next 7 hours, I would be 4 short of the sweep. VT was among the last of signals I could hear unaffected by aurora. After logging it, I started a systematic search of useable bands hoping to find pileups to mark the remaining 3 sections, AK, PAC, and NT. But I didn't stay at it for long before exhaustion, from the previous day's exertions and maledictions, set in. I withdrew from my section hunt around 0130Z, really just too weary to continue to try to copy through the aurora.
So the raw results for my 10th CW-SS effort stand at 306 contacts, and 77 out of 80 Sections. But the news is not all bad. For the first time, I managed to work all contiguous US Sections, and left only NT unscathed in Canada. But still no Clean Sweep because of that !@#$%^&& chair! -- N8CPA
On Friday, my old reliable chair started slipping downward. It had been creaky for a while. But the latch that held it in proper height gave out on Friday. I turned to answer the phone or something and suddenly, after a loud "Crack," my knees rushed up to meet my chest. I turned the chair over and fiddled with the latch a bit. I thought my attempted repair had worked. But Saturday morning, as I sat down to set the clock of my logging computer, the same thing occurred, just as WWV sent the top of the minute tone. This time, my knees rushed up to meet my chin.
So the chair had given up the last of its pneumatic integrity. As a result, a portion of Saturday afternoon, when I should have been relaxing and pumping myself up for the contest, went to assembling the chair's replacement--as did a portion of the physical energy I had saved for the contest. After a trip to Sam's Club with my XYL, I got the project started.
Now understand: My wife does not like to be around when I assemble anything. It has to do with concerns about the color of her air. She is too young for blue hair and worries that blue air may stick to her coif. Since neither of my hands is completely functional, I use verbal tools to augment the mechanical advantage of the little hex keys that are packaged in such furniture kits as the chair I purchased. My vocabulary is my version of power tools. So after my wife took off to a girly hobby meeting with her sister, I started the assembly and the associated swearing. Ninety minutes and 900 deprecations later, I had a new chair.
It only took a few more choice ones to squeeze and pinch the chair into my radio room. I was sitting in it by the time the pre-contest RST tests started at 2030 and I answered a few. I started running at the top of the hour, and within 30 seconds started hunting and pouncing. I logged my first Q at 2101. Not yet comfortbale with my new chair, I settled on a Section Hunt strategy.
It was difficult to sit there and concentrate on the contest in the unfamiliar furniture so my rate was very slow. My best hour I think I hit 27 Q/HR on Saturday night. I was tired, so I didn't stay up too late. I made my last Q (#103) for Saturday about 0315Z. I was asleep within an hour.
I started again at 1036Z Sunday morning, making QSO #200 just before 1700Z. It took 7 1/2 hours to make the next hundred contacts, after I wasted about 45 minutes trying to bust a hopeless pileup on 20 to work VY1JA. Unfortunately, the band opening to NWT did not hold. I never did find AK, or PAC. I didn't even hear them. And for some reason, AL, MS, and VT were only sparsely represented. They were the last sections to finally make it into the log. I found AL early Sunday. But finding MS, is worth mentioning.
I heard a call sign that resonated with me for some reason. It was a 4, but I thought I remembered the call from studying last year's log. If I was correct, he had been in MS. So I answered his CQ. No need to curse my memory, at least.
For the next 7 hours, I would be 4 short of the sweep. VT was among the last of signals I could hear unaffected by aurora. After logging it, I started a systematic search of useable bands hoping to find pileups to mark the remaining 3 sections, AK, PAC, and NT. But I didn't stay at it for long before exhaustion, from the previous day's exertions and maledictions, set in. I withdrew from my section hunt around 0130Z, really just too weary to continue to try to copy through the aurora.
So the raw results for my 10th CW-SS effort stand at 306 contacts, and 77 out of 80 Sections. But the news is not all bad. For the first time, I managed to work all contiguous US Sections, and left only NT unscathed in Canada. But still no Clean Sweep because of that !@#$%^&& chair! -- N8CPA
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