2009 ARRL November Sweepstakes (Phone)
11/24/2009 |
AB2ZY
Bought a place on Caroga Lake this past summer. My wife and I are planning to live there when our youngest graduates from high school in 2011. I've been building a station there as it's a place where I can run a legal limit amplifier without annoying a certain neighbor who'd have every legal right to complain about the antennas on my suburban lot. The station at the lake consists currently of an HF6V vertical with 60 radials, an Icom IC756 PRO III and an old Yaesu FL-2100B amplifier.
At any rate, I drove up to the lake - about 50 miles - on Saturday and set up shop. As I was getting the logging program configured, I decided to check to make sure I was still in the ENY section. Well, it turns out Caroga Lake is in the NNY section, which kind of peaked my interest since NNY is largely unpopulated. Maybe I have a chance to get first place in my class!
Come 4PM EST, I start working stations on 40m. I don't go at it like I'm killing snakes. Around 9PM I've got maybe 120 QSO's and decide to go check in with the gang on 3.787 and hang out there for a couple of hours. I eat dinner at midnight and work some more stations on 80m until about 2:30AM when I decide to call it a night.
Next morning I hit the radio around 10:30 AM (I'm not an early riser). I get distracted in the early afternoon by the pathetic Giants almost losing again to the more pathetic Falcons, but by 3PM 20m and 15m are well open to the West coast and I've got about 55 sections worked. I wasn't aiming for a sweep, but that's closer than I thought I'd be. I was operating as a B so I wasn't using a spotting program. By carefully hunting around those bands I was able to get up to 75 sections by sundown when those bands shut down. I ended up missing New York/Long Island (NLI), Mississippi (MS), North Dakota (ND), NWT (NT) and Alaska (AK). I had 250+ QSO's by 6:30PM when I shut down and packed up to go home.
If historical scores are typical, I figure that I amassed enough points to place first in class B in my section, which was my original goal. Of course, if history is a guide, I may be the only person submitting a log in class B in NNY! Next year, I can see that a sweep is possible from that location with my meager operating skills, so I'll probably go U and use a spotter to go chasing after the missing sections, and especially to find out where AK and NT are while there is still propagation to the east coast.
Most unusual QSO - W2GDJ of ENY on 20m at noon. He's literally 45 miles away, but was my only QSO in ENY. 20m at that distance is tough to work! I could have worked him simplex on 2m!
Although my main passion is chasing DX, this is a really fun contest to work. I look forward to it.
Al -- AB2ZY
At any rate, I drove up to the lake - about 50 miles - on Saturday and set up shop. As I was getting the logging program configured, I decided to check to make sure I was still in the ENY section. Well, it turns out Caroga Lake is in the NNY section, which kind of peaked my interest since NNY is largely unpopulated. Maybe I have a chance to get first place in my class!
Come 4PM EST, I start working stations on 40m. I don't go at it like I'm killing snakes. Around 9PM I've got maybe 120 QSO's and decide to go check in with the gang on 3.787 and hang out there for a couple of hours. I eat dinner at midnight and work some more stations on 80m until about 2:30AM when I decide to call it a night.
Next morning I hit the radio around 10:30 AM (I'm not an early riser). I get distracted in the early afternoon by the pathetic Giants almost losing again to the more pathetic Falcons, but by 3PM 20m and 15m are well open to the West coast and I've got about 55 sections worked. I wasn't aiming for a sweep, but that's closer than I thought I'd be. I was operating as a B so I wasn't using a spotting program. By carefully hunting around those bands I was able to get up to 75 sections by sundown when those bands shut down. I ended up missing New York/Long Island (NLI), Mississippi (MS), North Dakota (ND), NWT (NT) and Alaska (AK). I had 250+ QSO's by 6:30PM when I shut down and packed up to go home.
If historical scores are typical, I figure that I amassed enough points to place first in class B in my section, which was my original goal. Of course, if history is a guide, I may be the only person submitting a log in class B in NNY! Next year, I can see that a sweep is possible from that location with my meager operating skills, so I'll probably go U and use a spotter to go chasing after the missing sections, and especially to find out where AK and NT are while there is still propagation to the east coast.
Most unusual QSO - W2GDJ of ENY on 20m at noon. He's literally 45 miles away, but was my only QSO in ENY. 20m at that distance is tough to work! I could have worked him simplex on 2m!
Although my main passion is chasing DX, this is a really fun contest to work. I look forward to it.
Al -- AB2ZY
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