Today was just a fun day for playing with ham radio.
I got started about 10 am. The first thing I did was add some 40m elements to the 30m dipole antenna in my backyard. This turned out much better then I hoped. I lowered the antenna, soldered on the 40m elements, hoisted it back up. I stretched out and secured the 30 m elements at almost 90 degrees to the 40m elements. When I measured the SWR, it turned out to be about 1.15 at 7.040 MHz without any tuning. The SWR on 30m did jump, however to almost 2.0, but since I wanted to work the Fists Sprint and the Mid-Atlantic QSO Party (MAQP), I wasn’t too worried about that, not did I take the time to try to tune it.
Next, I put a little real RF to it. I found an open frequency and called QRL? This brought a howl from my wife who said I was triggering the garage door opener! This had happened to me before, but I thought it was because of the used balun that I was trying to use. Apparently, though, that’s not the case.
This situation is especially frustrating because I’ve operated on 40m before with a Slinky antenna in several different locations with no problems, and I’ve worked 30m with a dipole in exactly the same configuration with no problems. For some strange reason, the garage door opener just doesn’t like the full-length 40m dipole. Another confusing thing is that I actually have two garage door openers–exactly the same model–and only one is affected.
Oh, well. Figuring out what to do about that is a project for another day. I had contests to operate! I unplugged the garage door opener and sat down to do just that.
About 11:30, I tuned around and heard a station calling CQ. I called him back and got a nice 599 report from Luray, VA. At that point, happy that the antenna seemed to be working just fine, I went upstairs to have some lunch.
Just after noon, I went back down to the shack. I was under the impression that the Fists Sprint started at noon, but it actually didn’t start until 1 pm. The Sprints always start at 1700 UTC, meaning that the fall and winter Sprints do indeed start at noon, but the spring and summer Sprints start at 1 pm.
Having some time, I tuned around 7.050 looking for another QSO, and heard some stations calling “CQ MAQP.” It was the Mid-Atlantic QSO Party. I looked up the rules on the Web, and jumped right in. I made about a dozen QSOs before tuning up the band a little (the Fists frequency is 7.058) to join the Fists Sprint.
I pounced on a few stations calling CQ to warm up and then looked for a frequency to camp out. I set up shop on 7.060 and had really good luck for the first hour. Then, the activity tailed off a little bit. I just kept plugging away at it, though, and eventually the activity picked up just before 3 pm (1900 UTC) and stayed good for the next hour. At 4 pm (2000 UTC), after working only three hours of the four-hour Sprint, I called it quits. My score was just over 7,500, my highest score ever in a Sprint.
At one point during the Sprint, a station asked me how much power I was running. I replied, “80 W.” He said, “I don’t believe it.” When I said, “Well, it’s true,” he answered, “Well, you’r’e the loudest 80W I’ve ever heard.” I guess the antenna really is working well. :) I certainly had no trouble working guys and got a lot of 599 reports.
After dinner, I wandered down to the shack to make a few more MAQP QSOs. I worked a few stations, but then kind of lost interest when I worked most of the guys calling CQ, so I thought I’d turn on the 2m rig and see if any of the guys were on the repeater.
I struck up a conversation with Dik KC8UXT, and we were shortly joined by several other stations, including N8AMX and N8CBW. One of the things we discussed was our upcoming Dayton trip. Before we all signed, three people joined in the round-robin, expressing interest in the bus trip. We may have sold three more seats, which is very cool.
After clearing the repeater, I put on the headphones once again and worked a few more MAQP stations. When I hit 20, I quit. I’d had enough ham radio for one day…
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