07/13/2003 | K7ED "Oh, conditions outside are frightful
and the rate is not delightful.
But despite the aurora's glow,
QSO, QSO, QSO!"

Not the best conditions, but operating in a team makes it a lot easier to power on through and keep logging. WA0RJY and I activated the Paladin Contest Club call, K7ED, as on of the WRTC-Style Teams operating low-power multi-single under modified WRTC-2002 rules. (For complete info on this contest-within-a-contest, see http://summitschool.com/faculty/wrtcrules.html)

We didn't even hear a European for the first six hours of the contest, but 20-meters kept the rate meter alive and we figured it was bad for everybody, so just go! This simplified the use of the second radio greatly.
"Is 15 still dead?"
"Yeah"
"OK, you want to call CQ for a while?"
"No, go ahead."

As with most contests, life becomes a relative thing after you get used to the flow of a particular contest. Pushing the rate meter to a new high (such as it was) and comparing performance between the operators generally takes center stage, and this contest was no different. Working a new HQ station, or seeing the bands gradually come back to life are the fun moments - such as an LZ2/QRP calling in on 20 after the big HQ stations CQ'ed in our face for an hour. Totally unexpected.

We did enjoy good 20-meter conditions on Saturday night (EU sunrise opening) and it's obvious that the EU teams in our competition had quite a lot more to work on 10-meters. There's always next year, right?

Since we were limited to the single-wire antenna on 160-80-40, I put up a new 40-meter Extended Double Zepp (80' of wire on either side, fed by 76' of 450-ohm window line) that did quite well. I would like to give this antenna a workout when conditions are better. It loaded nicely with the internal tuner on 80 and 40 as designed, and even took power well on 160 - completely unexpected and we were rewarded with a smattering of QSOs on Top Band. The high band antenna was a 3-element SteppIR yagi that kept us going and got through pileups quite well. Nothing was easy with 100-watts, but all in all, the antennas did fine. Radios were an FT1000MP and FT847 with Inrad filters and some external gadgetry to share audio between the operators. Running TR in a two-PC network completed the station.

I hope you all had fun - thanks to the other 17 teams that participated in the WRTC-Style Competition. We'll definitely run this again next year!

73, Ward N0AX -- N0AX