The September 2007 VHF Contest results are in
My QST finally arrived with the September results and a couple of surprises.
Despite what I considered a meager score submitted at just over 76K the K3LFO Rover standings were:
5th place overall Nationally in the Rover Category with a “Top 10” listing in QST!
1st place Rover in the Atlantic Division!
1st place Rover in the North East Region!
Another surprise was a reduction in submitted score to just over 70K. Where did 6000 points go? It seems that besides the usual mistakes of entering a call or two incorrectly, 8 contacts did not show up on the other stations log! Now a couple of those may have been hitting the wrong band switch in the logging program. One or two may have been mistaken compleations. But, I noticed some that when you look at our log they were part of a sequential run up the bands with one station. Now when you run the bands with a stations you don’t just jump over 222 and go to 432 without a completion. My conclusion is that about half of these were logging mistakes from the other station for which we were penalized. We’ll try to be more accurate next time!
This was our first outing with 2304 abord and it performed quite well. Add 2304 at 50w, our new 150w amp for 1296, and a beautiful tropo opening from FM08 through New England and we really kept busy!
Murphy strikes less and less each time we go out. The system has become very reliable with exception to a couple of old RF cables that need new connectors and normal ware and tear on things. The 1296 looper took a tree strike a while back and needs to be re-tuned but still did a great job.
Even though it was not quite what you call a best effort, we are really proud of the results. We do not make advanced scheds, we don’t grid circle, we don’t pack rove, we haven’t run digital modes (yet), we try to work anyone we hear, and we don’t look for ways to manipulate the rules. We just go out in the RV and have a really fun weekend!
73, and see you in June,
Jim K3LFO
