03/08/2003 | N2BA This is our first multi effort in the ARRL Phone contest in a long while, and we had a blast. After 2 hours of snow shoveling, Jim, KA2FIQ and Brooke, N2BA finally cleared enough driveway to park 2 cars off the road. Then we had to transfer everything to the house through all that snow, and hook everything up. It is amazing we only missed the first 90 minutes of the contest. Jack, K2BMI came us on Saturday, and thanks to a neighbor's kindness was able to park in their driveway, saving him from most of the manual labor.

We operated with one KW station, on the main tower, and a second spotting station running 100 w to a C3. Because we didn't pay attention to band changing rules, we've submitted as Multi-Multi, though I bet we have only a dozen or so disqualifying Q's.

This was KA2FIQ's first DX contest, and I think he really liked it. He started out a bit tentatively at first, but by the end he was quite a heavy hitter. He had a great VK/ZL run in the middle of Saturday night, and some amazing runs on 15meters at sun rise.

It was a lot of fun, operating rather casually, concerned as much about the food and conversation as the DXing....Kind of the only way any of us can take the QRM of a Phone contest. CW....well, that's another mater! -- N2BA