12/11/2006 | N2WN Well Friday started off much worse than the Friday before CQ WW DX CW. I really feel for the folks in the mid West. We had gale force winds. Lost my 83'vertical around 7:30 AM, snapped the puppy clear in half, and it was working so nicely... What to do??? Dipole? load the 44' of it that was left? Nahhh, build a Tee from scratch. 48' tall 150' across the top, close enough, throw a couple radials out... tunes too low, throw a couple caps in, looks good now, narrow, but as one would expect. Will it play? Film at 1600Z...

OK, 15 minutes before the show starts, I blow a fuse. Of course, I don't have a spare here, it's an hour drive back home...but scrounge around and find one that will work, if I keep the power under 100 watts, so 85 it is, and away we go. The contest starts and so does the QRN. The big cold front that whacked the mid-west rolls thru. First two hours or more are hard hearing, even on the Rx antenna. It passes and all is nice and quiet finally! My rate picks up and the multipliers are rolling in. Managed to work ALL 50 the first 15 hours. If these check out, this will be two years in a row... Hmmm, maybe I can rent the shack out for 160M WAS ;o) I wish DXCC was so "easy".

No joy on a sweep, missing include: PR, MB, NWT (I never heard them) and SDG and NL (heard both in S&P mode). Funny last year it was LAX missing, plenty of them this year. Great participation, plenty of states well represented including the tougher ones. Nice to have LA and MS back in force...

DX was pretty good, although thought it was better last year for some reason. UU7J was really loud, and had good ears. DX Folks who called me included: CT1JLZ. KH6ZM and XE1KK. This was the first time I ever heard JA's on the Top Band, didn't work 'em, but I'm half way there!

As usual there were some I couldn't pull out. This was partially due to the fact if you were quiet too long, the frequency was considered vacant! Tough when you pack everyone into such a small spectrum.

More QSOs, one less multiplier this year, increased my score around 20K, depending on how the checking goes. Thanks for the intense weekend.

The first two pictures are the antenna, radials and me. The box hanging above my head is the balun to the 80M vertical with a pair of raised radials. The red object is a plastic coffee can used to house the autotransformer and balun. The last picture is of the actual antenna I used, it is the white line just to the right of the AB-621 mast, some of the top hat is just visible under the SteppIR. The view is to the north, looking uphill.

73,
Julius -- N2WN