Sweepstakes 2017 had a change for us this year as we were not in Nevada but worked it out of a campground in Arizona. This added a new place and a new state for us to work from. Our daughter Kristin (KC0INX) had to be at a conference in Phoenix AZ this year at 16:00 Sunday, so for us to be able to work as much of Sweepstakes together as possible we chose to do it from a campground north of Phoenix AZ. When we reserved our space in the campground we looked at it the best we could but we did not notice the small group of mountains to the east of us. We worked out of the camper with a Spiderbeam antenna with a 40 meter add on. We had an Icom 756 Pro III fed into an Elecraft KPA-500 Amp. It seemed to work fine but with the antenna at only 25 feet we had trouble holding a run frequency. We were limited on height due to the park restrictions. We were able to put up an inverted V for 80 meters, but it too was a little on the low side also.

This is our sixth year doing Sweepstakes as a portable operation and our 16th year of working Sweepstakes together. Kristin belonged to Barc Jr., run under the direction of Ellie VanWinkle N0QCX (sk). As a club we worked Sweepstakes with a lot of kids and elmers. Kristin got her love for contesting from Steve London (N2IC) an elmer who took the time to teach and show the youngsters how it is done. Kristin is now married to an officer in the U.S. Airforce and they get moved around a lot so we work Sweepstakes where we can. It has been a lot of fun for us and it gets to be a challenge as well to get things up and working. Maybe next year I will learn to use Google Earth better for our site selection.

We will look forward to working as many of you as possible next year.