2005 ARRL International EME Competition
12/29/2005 |
KD3UY
I would like to thank the ARRL for the fine contest. I had a lot of fun! In particular, the addition of the Assisted Category was a good rule change for me, I would not have participated otherwise. There has been much discussion regarding separate categories for CW, Digital and mixed. My vote would also be for separate categories, whether on the same day or different days. However, if the rules stay the same, that is also fine with me, I will certainly enter next year.
My station is small, just two 4 wavelength yagis. My biggest handicap is trees. I do not clear the trees until about 15 degrees of elevation so I never get ground gain. On the plus side I do have polarity rotation, which certainly resulted in more successful qsos. Although I had no smoke producing Murphy attacks during the contest, I did get a TVI phone call from my neighbors on the second weekend, necessitating a strategy change. Instead of much CQing, I spent my time hunting new multipliers and calling them with as little power as possible. This probably hurt my score some but not too bad. Now my neighbors have a nice filter which completely stops the TVI, so more CQing next year.
My efforts this year were single Op, all 2M, all digital - 62 qsos, 39 multipliers, for 241,800 points. In the coming year I hope to improve my ability to scan for digital EME signals and hopefully run unassisted next year. Since this was my first contest in a decade (my first and only previous contest was an AMSAT contest in the days of Oscar 13), my primary goal was to not humiliate myself. For a puny 2 yagi station I think I did OK, and I had fun! -- KD3UY
My station is small, just two 4 wavelength yagis. My biggest handicap is trees. I do not clear the trees until about 15 degrees of elevation so I never get ground gain. On the plus side I do have polarity rotation, which certainly resulted in more successful qsos. Although I had no smoke producing Murphy attacks during the contest, I did get a TVI phone call from my neighbors on the second weekend, necessitating a strategy change. Instead of much CQing, I spent my time hunting new multipliers and calling them with as little power as possible. This probably hurt my score some but not too bad. Now my neighbors have a nice filter which completely stops the TVI, so more CQing next year.
My efforts this year were single Op, all 2M, all digital - 62 qsos, 39 multipliers, for 241,800 points. In the coming year I hope to improve my ability to scan for digital EME signals and hopefully run unassisted next year. Since this was my first contest in a decade (my first and only previous contest was an AMSAT contest in the days of Oscar 13), my primary goal was to not humiliate myself. For a puny 2 yagi station I think I did OK, and I had fun! -- KD3UY
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