12/12/2006 | NS3M I have been preparing for this contest since I jumped back into the Amateur Radio hobby back in May of this year, and it was nowhere as exciting as the VHF contests I worked in September and June of this year, but I got the chance to work it nonetheless.

I had decided right away when the equipment started coming back out of the boxes, that the 10-meter contest would be my goal and I had put in for the time off 6 months early, corporate downsizing allowed me to put even more time into getting things ready.

I had my 10 year old Antron-99 vertical, but that will be replaced next year as it looks like it lost the contest with time, and it won the ugly contest. It was the antenna that made this years' contest happen, but there are much better options out there than when I started out in this hobby.

The G5RV gave me a few contacts, and picked out some of the weaker DX signals because of the HUGE amount more wire in the air as compared to the A-99, but seems to be very directional comparitively, next year there will be a 10-meter rotatable dipole on the other tower.

The 10-meter beam never showed up, I was told I could use a friends' 4 element beam, and have everything needed to get it up in the air, but without that antenna I decided to try and load my 6 meter beam through the tuner, heard NOTHING, so that option was out too.

I also had a problem with a couple logging programs, and the fact that noone makes something super-simple that actually works, I had one that couldn't figure out I wanted to make changes, and made each entry into a hassle. Another program decided to make a couple of my contacts dissappear just when I was starting to get the hang of it. Another program I have used in the past and actually really liked, is DOS based, and this XP machine won't run it properly, so that was out too.

I ended up with a scratch pad, and paper logging, and checking each call down the short list before making the actual contact.
I was also pleasantly surprised that I worked CW as well as I did, but that was also computer, and memory keyer assisted, otherwise I would have never made those contacts. I noticed from others' soapbox comments the useage of a voice keyer, that will be a welcome addition that will also make my list of needs for next year.

To the new hams having trouble with the 5-wpm code, try 25-40 in a contest, I thought it was actually kind of fun doing it this way.

I liked it so much, and the band from Northwest Pennsylvania was not forgiving to say the least, that I was only able to squeeze 5 phone contacts out on Saturday afternoon, the rest of the time I stayed in the bottom 100khz of the band.

I would also like to thank my XYL Debbie KB3NYR for sitting in and making some contacts, she was totally confused by the code, but had a blast working the pre-programmed information in the keyer, and reading what was going on, on the computer screen. She got me into the Multi-Op class, as my usual operator friends weren't able to attend this year.

The bands will improve, and so will my station. -- NS3M