12/16/2008 | K1WHS In northern New England the 10 Meter Contest should have been renamed the "28 MHz Ice Sculpture Contest". A humongous ice storm walloped the area Thursday and Friday. I had about 1 1/4" of radial ice that decimated many antennas in the area. I had no AC power here starting at 0600 UT early Friday morning . It is still out as of Tuesday night. I had lots of ice on my ten meter yagi and at Friday noon, just before the contest began, it looked like it was ready to collapse. Thankfully, the Sun melted some ice on Friday afternoon. Temperature was 31F, and by shaking the guy wires, I managed to get enough ice off to reduce the strain. The rotor will not turn, and with no power, I was forced to run QRP for the 10 Meter Contest. Using my Elecraft K3-10 at 10 watts, I managed to get 5 1/2 hours of "quality" time on ten meters. The reason "quality time" is in quotes is that the operating shack temperature was under 40 degrees, and my operating position is a metal table. BRRRR!! Both my hands and feet got cold. I could stand it for about an hour and then had to go in the house and warm up by the woodstove for an hour or two. This is definitely not quite within the definition of "quality time". I used a small gas generator to make enough AC power to keep the house running, but it was so cold in the shack that the flourescent lights would not even turn on. I had to go find a clip on incandescent bulb to light the shack up. If I had been smart, I would have rigged up more coax and move the K3 into the house next to the woodstove! Between servicing the generator and having the grandkids here, the amount of operating time was limited to under six hours, mostly on Sunday. The cold temperature was the biggest downside however to my limited operating. Most activity was on CW. With only 10 watts, it is hard to be even detected on SSB! My results were 71 QSOs and 25 multipliers, with only five of those multipliers on SSB. Final score is around 6700 points before I get dinged for having a tin ear.
I could not use computer logging due to the power and temperature situation, so I just logged QSOs in my trusty ARRL log book. One advantage to running QRP with an antenna that will not turn and is iced up, is that you don't need a dupe sheet. At my age, my brain is like a sieve, so when I would hear a station, I would quickly glance back thru the logbook to see if I already worked that call. I missed the efficiency of a computer generated log. A dupe sheet seemd dumb for so few contacts as well. Under the circumstances, I doubt that my score suffered much from my logging techniques. I think only being QRV for 5.5 hours and freezing my butt off was the big reason for such a low score.
I heard lots of DX and stateside mults, but could not even get a QRZ from many of them. I heard South America, PY, OA, CY KP4 etc., but no dice getting their attention with my peanut whistle. I sure tried, but propagation did not favor my little squirt gun getting through. I am not sure about K4TD's power level, but he sounded like a QRO station, and he heard me just fine with not the greatest of propagation. Good ears OM! I managed to work New Jersey and on SSB no less, finally getting the attention of N2EOC. That is a tough path from Maine with no propagation other than tropo scatter! N2EOC must also have a great receiver!! I nabbed PA and NY, but definitely needed CW to pull it off along with many tries. I did not spend much time on SSB. I figured the QRP would go a lot further on CW. One day I hope I will get to spend the whole weekend on ten meters. Lets also hope that ice sculptures are not a part of next year's event. -- K1WHS