NG1G 2011 CQ WPX SSB @W1AN

There sure have been a lot of great scores submitted! Congrats to everyone for a fine job. For the M/S operation at W1AN, the weekend did not start out auspiciously. Due to an inaccurate oil gauge, I let myself run out of heating oil Thursday night/Friday morning, and spent much of Friday afternoon trying to get the system primed and firing. After a trip to Home Depot at 9PM for a new (but not completely correct) nozzle I got it running like a top. John, W1AN was on 40M putting Qs in the log until I got there just before midnight.

After about an hour of “catching up” I took over and continued our low-band operation into the night. Have I mentioned my distaste for 40M phone operation? Both 40M and 80M provided decent run rates and by the time Mike, K1DM, showed up Saturday morning I was ready to give up the helm for a while. I went back to Warwick to get the correct nozzle for my burner and got some rest, returning early Saturday evening.

During the day, Mike, John, and Ed, W1PN, divided most of their time between 15M and 10M. 15M has really come alive as others have mentioned, and it yielded many Qs and multipliers.

Upon my return, John, Mike, and I sat around for about 3 hours and discussed a great many things, almost none having to do with contesting. For my part, I was not looking forward to another night on the low bands but I gave in around 0330Z and got on with the business at hand.

Bill, W1WBB, arrived Sunday morning and after turnover went on the prowl on 15M. John, Bill, and I kept our eyes peeled for multipliers on the high bands and alternated operating to keep up our Q rates and get those mults. Near the end of the contest we were doing a better job of using those 10 band changes per hour to maximize opportunities on all the high bands.

Overall, we had a relaxed operating style. Very relaxed. There’s no doubt that had we operated in a more serious manner we could have scored much higher, but everyone seemed to enjoy the slower pace. It is, after all, about having fun.

Thanks to John for letting us operate at W1AN. It’s a real pleasure being a big signal. Thanks also to Nancy for her wonderful hospitality and great food!

We used N1MM logger and I must say, it has some features I really like. We did experience some glitches though, but they weren’t show stoppers. Otherwise, everything worked perfectly as usual. We worked KI1G on 3 bands but I don’t think we worked any other club members.

73,

Pat, NG1G

Call: NG1G
Operator(s): W1AN, K1DM, W1WBB, W1PN, NG1G
Station: W1AN

Class: M/S HP
QTH: CT
Operating Time (hrs):

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
————
  160:    0
   80:  145
   40:  429
   20:  236
   15:  384
   10:  177
————
Total: 1371  Prefixes = 753  Total Score = 2,916,369