Sweepstakes 1 N8VW 0

I did my time in ARRL CW Sweepstakes and was soundly defeated by the Sunday afternoon doldrums. Once 15m and 20m open, 40m becomes the land of unanswered CQs.

Rocky start due to problems with keyer memory setup, but got that solved. Short skip disappeared on 40m quickly, but switched to 20m, found a spot way low in the band and had a short run of western stations and even some back-scatter to mix it up. Then it was back to 40m to try again and, giving up on that, down to 80m for the night. 80m eventually became long, and I listened on 160m to see if anything was up and didn't here anything there, so I continued to CQ and S&P until I found myself falling asleep instead of pushing the buttons. Time was around 2am.

Since, I was just out to have fun, I set my alarm for 7am, and finally rolled of bed 45 minutes after it went off. Jumped on 80m and called CQ. Surprised at how weak the locals were even after sunrise. Jumped up to the high bands to try and find NL and VI. Found KP2M for an easy one and heard several lout MN and W1 stations, plus N4BP from SFL. How I wished for a bigger boom 20m antenna, K5ZG's only has short (has in 8 feet) boom 2 el quads.** They work great, but they just don't have the gain of a bigger antenna.

Anyway, spent the rest of the day CQing and S&Ping. Highlights were finding VO1HP, KE0A (ND) and, after finding a clear frequency on 20m, calling CQ and having VY1EI and KL2R call one after another for a sweep. I heard AL7IF several times, but he was always weak and I never was able to raise him, so glad to get KL2R in the log. VY1EI was freaking loud, I wasn't expecting that.

No computer issues to report, N1MM didn't eat my homework and only got stuck in the keyer will only send AGN mode once due to me typing 0H instead of OH.

Made use of getscores.org and got a note from N7WA that our little horse race kept him in the chair Sunday. Sorry, that I petered out Dink, come op from Ohio SO1R and you will understand, but it was fun while it lasted.

Next up, ARRL SSB. QRP from the home station?

**Hud really wants to get the big boom 20m he has in his barn up. Plus he wants to put up a 3el wire yagi for 40m pointed west. Woot!