01/03/2004 | K9LA Last year in the SKN event I used my General station (Viking Ranger II and Drake 2B) to make contacts. This year I decided to use my Novice station - a DX-20 and an NC-60.

Thank goodness I started getting ready early this year. The last time I used the DX-20 (and the NC-60) was in 1992. The DX-20 wouldn't load up properly now, so some 'fix it' time was required. Soon it was working great on 40m, putting out 25w.

The NC-60 still worked, so I thought I was ready. Then I remembered that the only crystals I had for the DX-20 were in the old Novice band of 7150-7200KHz. That wasn't going to work for SKN. Luckily I remembered I had two crystal oscillators for receiver sensitivity and two-tone IMD measurements. One of those crystals was on 7039KHz, so I was in business.

Although I only worked three stations this year, I again enjoyed my brief trip back to the "old" days. I also found it interesting that I remembered a little trick with the NC-60 from my Novice days. With the bandspread dial (0-100) set to 100, I tuned in CHU on 7335KHz with the main tuning dial. Then the bandspread dial nicely covered the 40m band - 7000KHz was at 21, 7150KHz was at 43, and 7300KHz was at 77. Of course the tuning rate left a lot to be desired. One turn of the bandspread dial equaled about 150KHz - a far cry from my OMNI VI Plus at 5KHz per turn of the dial. I must have had a nice feather touch in my younger Novice days! -- K9LA