|
I thought about the category quite a long time.... To be assisted or
not to be assisted: that´s the question... I chose assisted again
because it´s more fun (for me) and as I´m also a DXer it promised
some new band points on the low bands especially.
Station was ready and tested the month before during CQWW SSB, so
all should go well, I thought. But things turned out to be
different...
After a few hours in the contest while running on 40m the IC781
stopped transmitting. I switched it off and concentrated on the
other radio for a while. After 15 minutes or so, the 781 ran again.
But only for half an hour and then small smoke clouds came out of
the back of the radio... game over for my main radio!
While logging QSOs on 80m with the 2nd radio I changed the 781 and
installed my spare radio, a IC735. But I didn´t want to use it as
main radio so I also switched around the positions. The left radio
became 2nd radio and the right radio the main radio.
Unfortunatelly I didn´t think about the SO2R box and so it didn`t
work anymore and my SO2R-switching was reduced to a simple audio
switch, with whom I could switch the audio from left over split to
right.
Moreover the radio control didn´t work right with the 735 and also
the 765 had problems, so I couldn´t use the bandmap....klicking
onto a spot worked, but tuning the VFO resulted in a black
bandmap.
Next problem occured saturday afternoon. I thought it was time to
switch the 2nd A3S into stack with the SteppIR. Unfortunatelly the
A3 must have had a loose screw or something in a trap, because using
more than 300W caused bad arcing on the antenna...
Bye bye to my "better" multi beam from now on.
Fortunatelly my 2nd A3, which is only 12m high, worked until the
end, phew!..
Apart from these "minor" things all went quite well and
worked more mults than ever before. Especially 80m worked fantastic
with the dipole, I never worked more than 100 countries on that band
before.
On 10m I was quite lucky and was on the band on the right time!
(sunday morning) I was able to catch up with mults as I had only 3
countries on 10m on saturday. The band even showed a short opening
to the UK with good signals, but only for 20 minutes or so.
Quite astonishing what can be worked during the bottom of the sun
spot cycle, but CQWW has it`s own rules with great activity.
Long live CW!
|
