ARRL 160-Meter Contest (2017)

ARRL 160-Meter Contest

Call: NR4M
Operator(s): NR4M
Station: NR4M

Class: SO Unlimited HP
QTH: VA
Operating Time (hrs): 20

Summary:
Total: QSOs = 1331 Sections = 80 Countries = 47 Total Score = 403,225

Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club

Comments:

Normally, K7SV and I do this contest as a team. This year Larry decided that he
wanted to try it from his home QTH, so I was on my own.
I figured this was going to be 'interesting' as I really don't do nights well
at all.
For a while my EU Beverage had been working/not working and we were not having
any luck figuring out why. Sure as heck, when I started the contest I did not
have any EU Beverage. As it was, things went OK, if you subtract no Beverage.
Good activity from both US and DX sides.
I stayed up until about midnight when I just had to get some sleep. The plan
was to sleep some and then get back up well before dawn and work some more
stations.
Suppose that worked OK, but I understand that there was still a lot of good
contesting going on after I went QRT for the night.
I was so disappointed in NOT having my EU Beverage, instead of going back to
sleep, I spent most of the rest of the day rebuilding the EU receiving antenna.
Replaced just about everything but the actual antenna wire. When I was done, I
had somehow created a very, very quiet antenna that worked quite well for the
rest of the weekend.
Second night found me working a bunch of Europeans like I had NOT done the
night before. Lots of fun and some big signals out of EU.
Like the night before, I went to bed about midnight. I really wish my system
was 'wired' to let me do nights, as between the two nights I lost about 8 hours
of prime operating time, that you just can not make up.

Had only ONE 'frequency fight' and that was with an op from a well known multi
operation. Firing up 100 Hz away is NOT a clear frequency! Then CQ'ing like
mad and ignoring my protests. With a few hundred miles between the two
stations, it's not like he didn't hear me. He found it was a waste of his 10
minutes. Ops of multi's and the holder of the callsigns, need to remember that
this display does not speak well of the callsign holder. If this kind of stuff
is going on, it's because it's allowed to happen.

This was also a good shake-down for some repairs I had done to an Acom 2000a.
Worked without a hiccup.

Tx antenna is pair of phased wire verticals, over a hodge-podge, but
substantial bunch of radials. This was put up as a temporary antenna about 10
years ago...

Thanks for all the Q's.

73 de Steve, NR4M