This morning, I decided that I still wanted to operate a little in the CW Sweepstakes contest. The only problem was that the only antenna I had up was the 40m dipole that was activating the garage door opener. So, the first thing I did was to take that down.
The next step was to build a 10m dipole. To do this, I simply cut down the 20m dipole that I was using earlier.
Since a 10m dipole is short enough, I decided that I’d try hanging it vertically instead of horizontally, with the idea that I’d get a lower angle of radiation. I couldn’t get it completely vertical, but nearly so, and the SWR was pretty low, so I thought I’d give it a go.
This time, I didn’t activate the garage door opener, but the signal was still clearly coupling into the computer speakers. The problem is that my home office is directly over the ham shack. For convenience, the anchor point for the antenna is directly above that, meaning that the antenna is pretty close to the computer. Why I didn’t have this problem on 20m, but rather on 40 and 10, I don’t know. I guess that’s a mystery for another day.
At any rate, not wanting to screw around with ferrite cores on the computer speaker wires just yet, I decided to hang the dipole horizontally. This cured the problem, and I was able to operate a little in the Sweepstakes.
By this time, it was 11:00 am. With an e-mail from a fellow FISTS member describing the protocol, I jumped right in. The first couple of QSOs, I really bungled the exchange, but the operators were gracious enough to stick with me. I appreciated that.
Over the course of the next 45 minutes or so, I made nine contacts. A couple of times, the ops on the other end couldn’t believe the single-digit contact numbers I gave them and asked me to repeat. I got a chuckle out of that.
My signal was never the strongest on the band, but at first, if I could hear them, I could work them. About noon, however, something changed and I couldn’t raise anyone. Very strange. It looked like the power was going out, but it just wasn’t reaching anyone. After about 45 minutes of that, I gave up.
At any rate, I learned a few things about contesting:
- I need a lot more practice if I plan on doing this again.
- It might be a good idea to get a memory keyer to prevent wear and tear on the hand.
And, finally, put up the antenna the weekend before the contest!
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