NR4M - The Goat Farm

Team: PVRC Rappahannock 2. Comments: Few things went right.

Skip, KC4QP and I were just playing around for a while. Thanks for the contacts.

K7SV and I got our 'wires' crossed and wound up going over time badly. He thought I started last and I thought he was going to take a couple of hours off in the wee hours. Only missed it by about 50 minutes.

Operated when I could, on/off over the weekend. Mostly running, with very little S&P. My antennas are better suited for DX than close in stuff. I did wind up learning where I can, and can not, work using the higher angle back lobes of my antennas. Was consistently working the upper mid-west off the back of my SA stack at 35/70 feet pointing @155. Was much better than my lowest rotatable antenna @120 feet.

Good conditions, but there could have been more activity. Activity from SA was notably absent. We got receive 8 circle working (mostly) and 3 new Beverages working within the last few days before the contest, and they were a huge factor in our ability to hear stations. At times, there was considerable rain/snow static, which would have been a pain to deal with, if not for the receive antennas.

Great to see good propagation for the contest. Seemed this was the year for hardware failures, both before and during the contest. 'Stuff' happens. Too much food and not enough full time ops. Of course, if we had the ops, the food would have worked out fine.

Had 5 ops that had minimal contesting or ham radio or n1mm experience, do this operation was a bit less polished than others may have been in the past.  This said, it was lots of fun and much was learned. Conditions were great, especially on 10!  Been a while since it's been that good.  'Roasted' a remote switch box on 10 with all the CQ'ing, the power and 1.7:1 SWR on the stack.  Hey, that's the way it goes sometimes.