11/04/2002 | K7IR WA0RJY (retired from contesting) and I decided to do a "fun" multi-op from the wilds of EWA at the fine station of K7IR in Moses Lake. This turned out to be a good decision - both fun-wise and score-wise. Jack and I have operated together from W7RM and in numerous Field Day operations, so we have developed a certain tolerance for each other's bizarre sense of humor and predilection for obscure references to British comedy. So - we loaded up the car and head for Beverly...uh, no...I mean K7IR.

The station is right on the shore of the freshwater lake and sports a 120' tower with a stack of C31XR's, soon to be replaced with 3-element SteppIR's. A two-element 40-2CD and a rotatable 80-meter dipole live at the tippy top, along with a plastic owl. Inside (see photo) lives an Alpha 87 and a comfy operating position which we customized rather extensively. Our radios were an FT-1000MP driving the Alpha and a TS-850 as the second radio.

First, some repairs needed to be done. The TIC RingRotor on the middle yagi was inoperational and the coax had been yanked off the balun. Up the tower I went. Everything bears the calling card of the local Moses Lake fauna - birds. Luckily, repairs to the balun went quickly and I was able to get the antenna pointed ESE - the only required direction for SS from the Pacific NW. Also luckily, it wasn't blowing a gale and the wind chill was non-existant. Along with the big tower, a low 80-meter inverted vee was installed on a 60' crankup tower sporting a SteppIR yagi. The low vee turned out to be quite valuable, illuminating the West Coast with very high-angle (i.e. - straight up) radiation.

Inside, we got everything running without RFI or other grounding problems - always a concern when lashing up a temporary High Power station. It was not for lack of cables and wiring. 2100Z rolled around and we were off.

Great conditions were in evidence on all bands. 10 was hot, hot, hot and surprisingly, 80-meters was not noisy or lossy. We had short-skip on 10 into California along with transcontinental answers to our CQ's on 80 - when was the last time that happened? Sunday was the usual crawl - you can really tell when kickoff time happens at 1PM Eastern Time.

By Sunday morning, we were two sections away from a sweep - Yukon/NWT and Newfoundland - what a surprise. I knew VY1JA had promised to be on, but propagation is always iffy. Gus, VO1MP, usually makes an appearance, but it's hard to figure if he will be a pouncer or a pounc-ee. The moral of the story is CQ and hope your partner finds one or both. I found Gus working N7WA on Sunday. Gus was tuning around so I flipped a mental coin and hoped he was headed higher in the band. A CQ-ing hole was only 5 kHz up, so away I went and pretty soon I was rewarded with a NL multiplier. That left VY1/VE8 - the toughest section. The one that separates the sheep from the goats. The mug-maker. But where was J?

28016 was where J was. With a huge and semi-ruly pileup. Sunday pileups on J have this surprising tendency to get a little, shall we say, continental? If werewolfs come out when the moon is full, our inner children come out when J makes an appearance. To make it worse, he was only about S-5 and very, very fluttery on the direct path. Oh, woe - this was going to be tough. Then inspiration struck - backscatter! I usually operate QRP where backscatter is not an option. However, Mr. Alpha and a couple of long-boom yagis might change things. Pointing the antennas at the South Pacific brought VY1JA up to a solid S-7 with no flutter or buzzing - we had a chance. It's irrational, I know, but I like mugs, so we blew about 30 QSOs chasing J and finally cracked the pile. Poor J - he had the flu and was in his little shack up there in the Arctic snows, freezing, so we could act like hose-heads and get our sweeps. Thanks, OM!!

From there it was anticlimatic...and slow. With several hours to go and little on that hadn't been worked, SS becomes a "character building experience." Lots of tuning and lots of CQing with little to show for it, but the bands did begrudge us a trickle of QSOs as football lost its hold on contesters across the country. Maybe ARRL could arrange to have SS weekends correspond to the football bye weeks. Shoot, we even have a section named after football - NFL. Just kidding.

The last goal was 1100 QSOs and it was looking like time was speeding up as we got closer. Relativity or something. 50 to go. 40 to go. 30 to go. 25 to go. 24 to go. You get the idea. At 0230Z Mr. 1100 was in the log and we pulled the plug. It's a three-hour drive back over the Cascade mountains to Seattle and I had a ferry ride on top of that, so we had some disassembling to do in a hurry. Funny how quickly it all comes down after it takes so long to put together.

Back in the car and headed west, we considered the results. 1100 Q's and a sweep for 176600 points. Not a record, maybe a Top Ten, but fun and we tried to be sure nobody missed EWA. K7OX, WA7LT, K7MM, and others were all in there, too, so hopefully you got EWA if you tried. If not - there's always next year!

Thanks for all the QSOs, folks - see you in two weeks from home as W7VMI with some of the young contesters here on Vashon Island.

73, Ward N0AX and Jack WA0RJY -- N0AX