04/18/2002 | KG0UT LOW POWER MULTI-OP STATION ICOM 775 DSP KENWOOD TS-850S 2 Dunestar Model 600 bandpass filters 40 foot Universal Tower with KLM KT34A tri-band beam. Alpha Delta DX-A twin sloper mounted on the tower. Cushcraft R7 Vertical. My wife Barbara KG0UT and our 13 year old daughter Rebecca KB0VVT, and I decided to put in a full family effort in the ARRL Sweepstakes Phone contest this year. The girls did a very fine job and we were able to get the sweep this year. For the most part this contest was very enjoyable and we had a lot of fun. Of course, there was the "stupid woman" comment that my daughter received as well as a couple of guys harassing her about not having a number in her call. That is interesting since the 1000+ other QSOs did not mention that there was a problem. And then there were the guys that decided to key up on our frequency for extended periods of time. I think the Auto notch filter is the best kept secret of all the gee whiz DSP feature available today. I know that the auto notch would be better in the IF stage, but when you have that baby "on" you can hear stations through the offending carrier. I love it! Our friend Steve K0OU, lives only a couple of blocks away and normally runs High Power during contests. You can imagine the QRM our stations give to each other. We tried our best to tip toe around Steve as much as possible but occasionally we would invariably run into each other when we both were after a much needed multiplier. Steve and I both use IC775DSP transceivers and I think we receive each others transmitted phase noise along with normal QRM. This appears to be especially true when on the same band. I got a first hand lesson from Steve when I attempted to operate several KHz down the 80 meter band from him Saturday evening. All I could hear was a S9 plus white noise SHHHHHHH when ever he transmitted. There are some that want the rule to be changed to make the contest shorter. I would prefer to keep the contest just as it is now. It would be nice if there was a Multi-Op Low Power category. Some of the big guns were wanting to make the contest about 6 hours shorter in duration. How about this idea? Make all the High Power Categories shorter but keep the Low Power and QRP categories as they are now and add a Multi-Op Low Power Category. Best Regards, Dave, KG0US -- KG0UT