09/12/2006 | K2QO/R Wow! A personal best for K2QO/R in a September contest. The auditors of KPMG may hack away at my score a bit but it looks like 354 Q's and 115 Mults from grids FN23, FN22, FN13, FN03, FN12 and FN02 for a grand total of 60,835 pts. All the equipment worked fine despite the smoke from burned insulation when I hooked up the 24V power backwards on Friday. For a couple hours the whole expedition looked iffy.

My shotgunner was K2ZR this contest. Dick is an ace CW op and used that mode to good effect on 6, 2 and 432 from the front operating position. I took the back seat with 222, 903, 1296, 2G, 3G, 5G and 10G. Turns out I could have left the latter 3 bands at home as no contacts were completed above 2G.

One change from recent past is putting the 2M station up front. With K2ZR hammering out contant CQ's, interstation QRM was preventing me form making easy Q's on the upper bands. This'll take some work to fix for sure.

Conditions. Well, on Saturday, conditions seemed poor to kinda normal at times. Guys would be S-8 on 222 while calling CQ and then in the noise on the reply. This happened enough that I changed out cables and pounded on the xvtr. On Sunday, this bizarre propogation corrected itself.

FM- We ran a dedicated 2M FM box and a 5/8 wave. This was a good move as we cleaned up working the locals from Rochester and Buffalo on Sunday night.

Loans- Many thanks to K2TER for the loan of microwave bands and a very nice 432 amp that made a HUGE difference. 100W in nice when your used to 20W from an FT-100D.

The List- Now it's time to work on the big list of fixed and upgrades. Gotta get them done before the SS in January.

73, -- K2QO