01/29/2005 | W6DWI "The Little Station that Could"

This is the first time I made a real effort for a contest.

I ran QRP portable from CM89 with 10W on 50/144/432 into 2/4/6 el quad.
Rig was FT-897 @ 10W w/ TCXO and 2.3 kHz IF filter. Portable power was
Internal batteries + 95AH deep cycle LA + 32W Unisolar flexible solar panel.

Great contest !!!

Nice to have the crew on in CN70.

To many ops all in a pile at 144.200 +or- 1 KHz. I could have worked more, if
some of these ops got a NEW RIG WITH A VFO. This was not a problem on 432.100
but it was at times on 50.125.

THANKS TO THOSE THAT HELPED ME with info and conducting on the air tests; I've
Surly forgotten a few, in alphabetical order
K6AAW,K6ALE,K6NC,K7XC,KA6VQV,KC6ZWT,KG6TDX,KJ6KO,KN6NG,W6OMF,WA6QAK.

EXTRA THANKS to Len, WA6KLK.

THANKS to those that alerted distant stations
to transmissions... \"hey there is some guy a bit to my north,south,east,west of
me with 10W that keeps over loading my receiver with his 4x4 phonetic calls can
you see if you can get your beam on him so he will give it a rest ! \"

THANKS to the distant stations that turned up the gain and pressed the head
phones to their ears, \" can you repeat the last letter 20 more times? \" Hope
you folks didn't overheat your rotors.

THANKS to all the casual operators that got on the air for a few hours to \"hand
out some points\".

THANKS for the call N6GEO /R CM86. It was a thrill to have my QRP station called
be the Rare grid !

Conditions were nice at the site on the West Side of the Valley at about 1000M
ASL. I was well above the fog and actually got a little sunburn. All the fog in
the valley helped propagation on 144 and 432. To bad the 432 noise was S8 to S9
90% of the time. I was at the site a whole day early to test my equipment and
relax. I also had the chance to talk with some passers by about ham radio.

My main goal was to work on my setup that plan on backpacking into a site for
the June contest. a FUN NEW ENTRY CLASS would MULTI OP PORTABE (pack in bigger
beams and more bands!!!)

As for score, I set a lofty goal for my self 10 grids on 2m and 1800 points.
Well I end up with 17 grids on 2m, 12 grids on 6m, and 9 grids on 432 with 8246
points.

Wow, now what next time ??? adding CW would help. Adding more bands might help.
I did miss a few I heard, CM94 and DM14 on 6m DM15 on 2m. Some grids were not
activated (that I know of) CN71,CN72,CN90,CM79, and DM08 come to mind. Logging
was all paper so I missed some people on some bands. So, I figure with some nice
fog and bigger quads 21 grids could be worked on 2m with just 10W !!! Other than
some raspy echoing CW at about 2am local no 6m DX was heard or worked. Best DX
here 6m KC6NIB CM95, 2m AF60 DM14, 432 N6TEB /R DM05.

73 all
see you in June
de Robin -- W6DWI