01/07/2003 | K6DGW Pretty good contest this year. Condx from the Sierra Nevada foothills in
No. Cal were quite good. I managed about 184 QSOs (haven't counted the
mults yet) in single op low power. I was surprised at the lack of PSK
activity in the test, however.

The contest did motivate me to clean up the kludge I am using: WinPSK
on the laptop under NT 4.0, Hamcom on the laptop under DOS (mode changes
require reboots!), and TRLog on the normal station logging computer.
Operationally it's a challenge. Not sure what I'll do yet, but I've
enlisted the advice of our Club's Digital Guru.

I'll be glad to QSL for county and grid, and I upload all my logs
to eQSL.

Observations:

1. Casual ops should consider CQ'ing some rather than just S&P. I heard
several mults (NV for example) that I never had the chance to work
because they were just calling the CQ's. One midwestern station asked
me if I could drive the 100 mi over the hill and work him from NV!

2. I'd like to see serial number be a part of all exchanges ... RST
is a "gimme", and with computer loggers remembering from one test
to the next, constants like SPC, Sec, Zone, etc are nearly so.

It was a fun weekend, I'll see everyone in the NAQP CW next Sat.

73,

Fred, K6DGW
Auburn, CA CM98
Placer County -- K6DGW