Last weekend was the Michigan QSO Party. I had intended to operate with W8UM, the University of Michigan Amateur Radio Club. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out.
Instead, I operated from home. While not a stellar performance, it was respectable. I made 251 contacts over about eight hours of operation. My total score was somewhere north of 48,000 points.
I started out on 20m, but band conditions were really poor. I worked a couple of FL stations, a couple of TX stations, and four German stations. After running into a dry spell, I decided to QSY to 40m.
On 40m, I had much better luck. I parked myself on 7046 kHz, and had many good runs. It’s nice being the DX for a change.
Just before I QSYed, Tom, W8TAM phoned. He was also having a tough time on 20m. He needed to take a break and asked if he could come over. When he did, we talked about this and that as I worked the contest.
That’s one of the beauties of using N1MM contest software. You just set it up to send CQs, and then you can converse with someone in between calls. Seeing that I was having good success on 40m, Tom decided to head back home and work 40m himself.
Just before dinner, I decided to try 40 m phone, figuring that I’d make a few QSOs up there before eating. 45 minutes later, I was still working them. They wouldn’t let me QRT. That was a lot of fun.
After about a two-hour break, including a short nap, I headed back down to the shack. I worked 40m for a while, then QSYed to 80m. That was reasonably productive, until I decided to take a break and lift weights. After about an hour on the Bowflex, I tried 80m again. This was just before 10 pm.
By this time, I’d pretty much had it. I was getting tired, and activity seemed to be winding down. Even so, I was thinking that I might be able to hit the 300 QSO mark. After about an hour with only a few contacts, I gave up on that and set my sights on 250 contacts.
After QSYing to 75m phone, and working a couple locals—KT8K and N8SBE—I hit the 250 mark and decided to call it a night. One thing I learned is that I don’t do so well on 75m phone. Several stations I called could hardly hear my barefoot signal, even though they were S7 – S9 here.
RFI problem
I had to deal with one problem during the contest—RFI in the shack. When I connected the USB keyboard to my laptop, I began to get random keystrokes. This was kind of strange, as I hadn’t had any problems at all with RFI since installing my Cobra antenna in the fall
Fortunately, the fix was pretty easy. Somehow, in connecting and re-connecting things, I had positioned the coax cable connecting the tuner to the radio quite near the ladder line. Moving the coax away from the feedline cured the problem. I also put a snap-on choke around the coax cable, but I’m not sure that helped all that much.
More stations whose callsigns spell words
One cool thing about operating the contest was working stations whose callsigns spell words. Stations that will be getting my QSL card include AH6AX, W0EAR, W8BUD, W8AWE, N2AN, AA2AD, K8TAO, WA9TOP, K8SKY, and K5ME. Of those ten, two are all-time new ones (ATNOs)—K8TAO and K8SKY.
Overall, it was fun. I made a lot of contacts and learned some things. Even if you’re not a contester, I’d encourage you to try operating your state’s QSO party. State QSO parties are generally very laid back affairs, and being the DX for a change is a lot of fun. And, it doesn’t matter if you’re an experienced operator or not. Other stations want to work you.