CW

For the second time we had the pleasure of hosting an op from another country in WPX CW. This year Nodir EY8MM was attending training in the US, so he made it to Dayton and did the contest with us. Who'd have thought we'd be working Eur on all six bands with over a hundred Qs on 160 and over 300 on 10M.

NR4M crew had a great time in WAE CW. Still working out kinks as we get the new contest station set up. Had problem with software configuration for serial numbers for the first hundred or less qsos. Notified DARC so no-one will get docked points. We'll CU next year with more weapons!

We're getting much closer to having NR4M ready for the big time. The core antennas are in place for 80 through 15 - 80 = 4SQ and appear to be working well. 40 = pair 4 el OWAs 190/100ft, 20 = 5/5/5/5 top at 160ft, 15 = 5/5/5 top at 120ft.

With flares occuring later in the week we didn't know quite what to expect for the contest. In general the bands seemed to be quite good. 10 certainly could have been better, but we're thankful for the Qs we did make on that band, with many of them being skewed path Eur. Again very few station problems with the biggest one being a computer problem on 15.

Don't want to jinx things, but we essentially had no technical problems during the weekend. Even the computers behaved remarkably well! To date we've been limited to a single rig on each band. We had hopes to have a second rig on 40 and 20 for this contest, but continue to have problems with isolation between rigs. Decided to delay rather than wipe out the front end of another radio!  Thanks to all for the Qs and patience on the low bands in the midst of mother natures crashes!

Another fun M/M from the Goat Farm (NR4M) with antenna limitations. The gang had a great time. Only lost about 4 hours due to thunderstorms. When storms weren't in close, the low bands were reasonably quiet.

Once again we had a terrific time putting the hardware at NR4M to work in the M/M category. We managed to get a few new antennas up, which increased the fun quotient! It was great to have W4PRO and N4FX from the Tidewater area join us this year. Once the contest started everything held up well.

Doing a M/M from NR4M brought back lots of old memories and generated a number of new ones. The new station is still under construction. We had four stations set up, with 10/80 and 15/160 sharing rigs. We used Win-Test for the first time. Beyond a few data entry glithes, it performed great throughout the weekend.

Sure was great to have the core NR4M team back together again. WK3W and his son Henry operated with us for a while as well. If one doesn't count not getting the 160 antenna to work as being a Murphy visit, the only place we saw the bugger was in the computers (of course). Once the contest ended Steve NR4M found a bad CAT5 cable on the machine that was giving us fits!

When things come together as they did at the Goat Farm (NR4M) over the weekend, the investment in time, building the station, begins to pay off! We had a terrific crew who really pounded the bands and had a huge amount of fun in the process!