CQ WW SSB Contest

[K3GMT]

The Milk House made a good effort using wires and 100 watts, during the CQ WW SSB contest this weekend. Howard (KB3RTB), Ken (N3IYX), Brandon (KB3SXG) worked most of the contest. Bob, N3SNZ, stopped by on Saturday and Sunday and made a few contacts.

Friday afternoon we strung up a 90ft, 40/80, from a tree near the Graystone building and a tree near Penn Allen Road. We also used a full sized 20/40 & shortened 80 strung from the barn to a tree in the middle of the lawn.

Friday was tough going with many overlapping signals. The big guns were working each other. Most of the activity was on 40 meters. We learned how to run "Split". We also learned that if someone spots a station in the telnet cluster with both frequencies, N1MM (the contest software we were using) will automatically set the split on the radio.

As expected most of Saturday's activity was on 20 meters. The long wire on the tower works great on this band. A little activity on 40 meters during the day but not much. We ended the night early because we knew there would be more interest in the "Little Pistols" on Sunday.

Sunday morning we decided to string up another antenna so we could work 15 and 20 meters at the same time. We took down the 20/40/80, and put up a 15/20 from the barn to the tower. This orientation did not did work well so we untied the end from the tower and moved it to the tree near Penn Allen Road. That did the trick. We worked 15 meters all around the world. In the afternoon 10 meters opened and we made a few contacts on the vertical.


We worked all continents. Here are a few highlights.


Iceland
Australia
New Zealand
Japan (twice)
Egypt
Morocco
Cape Verde Islands
The United Nations station in Geneva
Galapagos Islands (10 meters)
Hawaii
Alaska

We could hear many African stations but the pile ups were huge. We gave up on these multipliers. We have a Zone 31 multiplier but I don't know which island (I have not reviewed the logs yet)

Our logs will be submitted and our score will be aggregated for the club.

If we only had a beam and a 1.5 kilowatts..........