03/18/2002 | KB0VVT Low power multiop 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 13 year old daughter Rebecca, KB0VVT, and I decided to put in our first ever full effort in the ARRL Sweepstakes CW contest. I am very proud of the effort that Rebecca put into this contest. She operated at least 12 hours and with her effort we were able to get the Sweep. Rebecca says she likes CW contests better than phone contests but does not operate all that often given her busy schedule. She manages to spend time operating the CW station during Field Day and during a few contests in November. She also participated in the Kansas City DX Club Hospitality Suite Pileup Contest at Dayton this year. She only was able to get about a third of the call signs that the winner accomplished but that is not too bad given her age and the fact that this was only her second pileup contest ever. She also beat Dad's score in that contest and on the RUFZ program. When the contest started we were both a little flustered by some people putting "nr" in the exchange while others did not. We had used the NA logging programs practice mode previously and it did not add the "nr" to the exchange. We later decided that the "nr" in the exchange was a nice feature and added it to our exchange as well. This contest requires a real exchange! Rebecca adapted to the contest rather quickly while I had some trouble. Most people were very patient with me but some just gave up and started CQing before I was able to finish the QSO. I was too slow to respond in some cases because I would forget which function key to press while under pressure to complete the QSO. I fixed that situation during the next contest by putting Post-It notes above each function key. 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 know Steve said he could not even operate on 80 meters if we were on there as well. 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 -- KB0VVT