2008 ARRL November Sweepstakes (Phone)
11/21/2008 |
N7RVN
I had a blast working at 50 watts the entire contest. Doubled my contacts this year over last (at 70 watts)so that was a boost. Loved the fact that a friend trusted me with his TS-2000 (Limited edition no less) enough to babysit it for the contest again. Worked 70 sections and had both Hawaii and Puerto Rico in my grasp only to have them yanked away. Since the tweak to the antenna this summer, things seemed to work fairly well.
I did have the local cable repair technician come over and help me with a rope pulley issue this year mid contest, so I could get the dipole where it belonged.... thanks Dan. My ears improved dramatically after that adjustment.
Overall, I mostly sat rather than use the hunt & pounce method. I tried to nestle in-between some strong stations and sat there repeatedly calling CQ, quickly, so as to maybe catch someone spinning the VFO between them. It worked for a long time until another powerhouse decided to park there. I would go find another place to sit.
While working pileups, I have always tried to find a single station, work him and move on to the next. It kills the concept when asking for a station with 6 in the call and a 4 call answers. On the other side of the coin, it is really frustrating to have a Puerto Rico station ask for the "7 romeo victor station" and a 8 Victor Mike answers and is recognized. This doesn't happen all the time, but I think it merits a mention, since we are all trying to accomplish the same thing, working another station. Just a little of patience will go a long way to help the poor guy typing (or penciling) in his log, the portions of a call he is trying to work, then deleting (erasing) that for someone who is too impatient to listen or wait his turn for acknowledgement.
On 80m I found an in-between place and my Nebraska station was spotted causing a pileup from 10:53z - 12:20z when Mother Nature's call was getting too loud to ignore. When I returned 3 minutes later, there was another station on frequency lapping them up.
I may be confused about the Multi-op category. I thought that only 1 transmitter was able to be used at a time. I found 3 mega powered stations this year, side by side on the same band (taking 1.2 mHz) working contacts, all with the same call. I found this with 2 different call signs. Am I missing something?
See ya all next contest. -- N7RVN
I did have the local cable repair technician come over and help me with a rope pulley issue this year mid contest, so I could get the dipole where it belonged.... thanks Dan. My ears improved dramatically after that adjustment.
Overall, I mostly sat rather than use the hunt & pounce method. I tried to nestle in-between some strong stations and sat there repeatedly calling CQ, quickly, so as to maybe catch someone spinning the VFO between them. It worked for a long time until another powerhouse decided to park there. I would go find another place to sit.
While working pileups, I have always tried to find a single station, work him and move on to the next. It kills the concept when asking for a station with 6 in the call and a 4 call answers. On the other side of the coin, it is really frustrating to have a Puerto Rico station ask for the "7 romeo victor station" and a 8 Victor Mike answers and is recognized. This doesn't happen all the time, but I think it merits a mention, since we are all trying to accomplish the same thing, working another station. Just a little of patience will go a long way to help the poor guy typing (or penciling) in his log, the portions of a call he is trying to work, then deleting (erasing) that for someone who is too impatient to listen or wait his turn for acknowledgement.
On 80m I found an in-between place and my Nebraska station was spotted causing a pileup from 10:53z - 12:20z when Mother Nature's call was getting too loud to ignore. When I returned 3 minutes later, there was another station on frequency lapping them up.
I may be confused about the Multi-op category. I thought that only 1 transmitter was able to be used at a time. I found 3 mega powered stations this year, side by side on the same band (taking 1.2 mHz) working contacts, all with the same call. I found this with 2 different call signs. Am I missing something?
See ya all next contest. -- N7RVN
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