10-Meter 2002 and ARRL DX 2003 Phone contests:
My favorite band is 10-meters, so I knew I HAD to brave the cold for this one. Anyhow, I set the Portatower up in the yard with and raised the A-3 and Antron up through the tree between the houses. Cold weather and feedline do not get along, so I had to fight stiff loops of coax while trying to feed it up through the floor of the house. The rig I used for the contest is the Galaxy Saturn Turbo. This is a base version of the RCI 2950 mobile rig. It puts out a fairly good signal..it is throttled back a bit, but it does cook out at about 150 watts. The speaker on it is something to be desired, but headphones work best anyhow for me in contest mode.
The DX contest was a bit different. The Rotor assy got a facelift during the Jan VHF contest also with a Yaesu G450XL Rotor instead of the NTE from before. I only used the A-3 for it as the antron was a pain to drag through the tree branches. I did use my Stealth antennas in the permanent locations every so often though. I planned on running all 5 bands, but I only ended up running 10, 15, and 20 meters. I ran the Turbo, my ft-101E, and the TS-120S. The microphones were alternately the Heil proset+, Turner SSB+2, Silver Eagle, and the Shure 404B (on the 120). Sunday rolled around and I was invited to go out to W0AIH's "farm" to do a bit of contesting, so Charlie (N0AKC), Justin (K9MU), and I went out there and had a ball. Thanks Paul for the invite.
10 meter contest: Total points: 44,660 with 290 Q's and 77 multipliers. Ranking was 1975th out of 3121 overall entries; 9th out of 41 in class for Central division, and 3rd in class out of 13 in Wisconsin. Not too awful bad I don't think.
DX Contest (Phone): Total Points: 43,344 with 168 Q's and 86 multipliers. Ranking was 1261st out of 2263 overall entries; 14th out of 47 in class for Central Division, and 5th out of 13 in Wisconsin.
The pics are numbered and explained below. Click on the thumbnail for a larger picture
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1. The setup for the DX contest. The 10-meter contest had 1 tower section, mast pipe, the A-3, and Antron, and an NTE rotor at the tope of the mast pipe. The DX contest utilized the Yaesu rotor at the base and a homemade wood thrust bearing at the top..and only the A-3 for an antenna.
2. The Porta-tower setup with the Yaesu Rotor.
3. The Turbo workhorse.
4. The station in the DX contest configuration--(and currently going through another facelift).
5. Collage view of part of the "farm"
6. More antennas.
7. Yet more antennas (the four towers are loaded for 160 but spaced for 80)
8. 15 Meter run. (Can't remember the operators call) And the 15 meter spot in the background.
9. Justin (K9MU) on the 10 meter spot with the 160 meter station in the background.
10. Again the call escapes me (I am bad at calls sometimes..*L*). But this is the 10 meter run.
11. Charlie (N0AKC) chatting...with homebrew "Tuber" (I knew it was called a farm for some reason) rack.
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