Sunday, August 4, 2013

WQ6X makes it to the NAQP Cw Contest - barely

Because the NAQP is only a 12 hour contest, unless I guest-OP an already setup station, I tend to put together simplistic portable operations, as I did this weekend operating from Concord Ca. in the East Bay (EB) section.
For this event, there was no operating desk, only the laptop sitting on a chair, with me sitting on the floor. Because NAQP Cw is largely computer-driven fancy operations are often not necessary. As you can see, I threw together a variation of phased hamsticks atop a simple wooden pole wire-tied to the fence. From one vantage point the antenna "almost" qualified as a stealth antenna. The ICOM 7000 was in as good a form as ever, never missing a dit or a dah. I only wish the bands were as good as the radio.
With a somewhat low solar flux (108), while the A/K-Indexes were low it didn't prevent a considerable amount of atmospheric noise on both 40 & 80 meters. As you can see, I made attempts on both bands. 160 was quiet, although there were no signals to be heard as well. 10 meters was also lacking altho I see there were reports that KH6ZM was quite busy on 10-meters.
While other countries are encouraged to join us in NAQP, there were a dearth of signals heard. JA stations were plentiful but were busy in some sort of "QSO Party" on their own. Because of my minimal antenna I can imagine that my signal was rather weak. I could not get a fix on what direction my hamstick array was favoring so I mechanically turned it from due-north to southeast looking for the best signals; which were from W4-land & W5-land. While I could work easily W8, W9 & VE3, W0 gave me little action outside of KS & Co. W1, W2 & W3 were largely unavailable to me. So were my hamsticks actually cloud warmers?
Many stations were not patient with weak signals. Instead of persisting with a weak signal they chose to call CQ for another 3 - 5 minutes. It would have been quicker to work me first. Kudos to Loco XE2MX for persisting with me on 40-meters to pull me through.
One of things I like about NAQP is that sending Name & QTH for the exchange is not as impersonal as sending something such as 599-KW. I also like some of the more original names such as: Gord, Gator, Axel, Rusty, Marko & Loco. It was also nice to see a couple of YL names this time.
So where were YOU during NAQP?

2 comments:

  1. NAQP Cw was full of screw-ups amongst the members of SCCC Team #3 (the group I was assigned to). Aside from my incomplete Hamstick antenna, one of our members ran his amp the entire time and submitted a high-power score which of course became a check log.
    So N6GP andI made up the whole team #3.
    Look for me this weekend in NAQP SSB as WQ6X operating from N6GEO's shack, to get more experience with the Flex 1500 radio.

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  2. Also look for me as WQ6X in the SARTG RTTY Contest.
    Notice the weird operating hours for that GiG.
    0000Z-0800Z, Aug 17 and
    1600Z-2400Z, Aug 17 and
    0800Z-1600Z, Aug 18

    What's interesting about this is that it allows for two 8 hour sleep cycles at different times - unique for Radiosport events.

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