Sweeps 2016

So what was special about Sweepstakes 2016? Everything. First off, Sweepstakes is so much more than a contest for me. It is a chance for me to do radio with my daughter, Kristin, KC0INX and her mom KC0MOM. We have been doing Sweepstakes together since she was 12 and she is now 28. A lot has changed in those years. She married a fine young Air Force officer and has been moving around the country with him. She is also a 5th grade teacher, so Sweepstakes falls at a time of year when she has to work. Traveling to her was the only option to do Sweepstakes together so we have to do it Field Day style. When we first started doing Sweepstakes together it was in Colorado at our home station, but now we get to do it Field Day style. We have had the opportunity to contest in West Texas, Missouri, and Nevada. In Texas and Missouri we had a lot of space for antennas and reasonable power as we were camped in local state parks. In Nevada we have had to make do with Kristin’s rather small back yard for antenna space. This year we used a Spider Beam set up on the back of our camper. It over hung into the neighbors yards on two sides but they were ok with that. I had found the instructions for a 40 meter addition to the Spider Beam but when we tried to use it something went wrong (I had tested it in the California QSO party). So we hastily put up a vertical for 40 meters. With the sunspots dropping we are going to have to figure out a way to be productive on 80. If anyone has any ideas we are interested. We had an Icom 756 Pro III fed into an Elecraft KPA-500 Amp. We have been using Scott (N3FJP)s logging software and it worked very well for us again this year.

We had a great time on Saturday, but 40 meters did not work well for us so we ended up quitting a little earlier than we wanted. This year Kristin also had a conference to go to in which she had to leave us at 10:00 am on Sunday so it was up to her mom, Carol, KC0MOM, and myself, K2KR, to finish by ourselves. We did okay, but nowhere near as well as we have in the past. We did hit our goal of doing better than last year but there is still room for improvement. We hope to work many more of you next year than we did this year and we hope you had as much fun as we did, that is after all the reason we do this. Mike K2KR