Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Definately Spartan, but a Sprint?

Whelp,
managed to QRV on 20m for the June Spartan Sprint.
I can hardly believe it!

KG4GVL is QRV!


Working nights is a pain for a lot of reasons, there's stress of not being home when my kids are  home, the stress of not being available for social activities, no time for radio when everyone else is doing things like sprints, or nets. There's stuff during the day too, and I do QRV when I can, but there's not the Spartan Sprints, or NAQCC sprints. There's pluses too, like how I don't have to send my kids to daycare, and the pay is good, and the company I work for is a good company to work for, I'm just looking for the sweetspot where I can have my cake, and eat it too.

Enough bellyaching, let's talk SP!

I took a lot of gear for this operation, too much really, I wanted to use my St Louis Vertical, and when I got to work, I realized that I was missing the jumper that goes from my tuner to my radio. Fortunately, I brought a couple of end fed antennas, and since I wanted to try 20m (20 had been good to me during the WPX contest at night), I decided to put up the homebrew end fed for 20m.
Setup went well, and baring any production issues, I eagerly awaited an opportunity to clock out for "electric lunch".

Close to 21:30 local time (01:30 UTC) I realized that production issues would prevent me from taking a full lunch, but that I needed a break, so I took 10 minutes to go outside for an "electric coffee break". I turned the SW-20 on, spun the dial, and best guessed where 14.060 is. I've got it pretty well pegged on this radio, and it wasn't long before I heard one VERY STRONG signal on 14MHz. It was W3KC, in MD running 5w! The end fed was mostly oriented on a slant, with the bottom end in the North West, and the top end in the South East. The far end was bent over a tree branch, so I don't know how I managed it, other than the antenna was mostly straight, ran to a fairly decent height, and had about a 30 degree pitch or so.
That was the only contact I managed. I did hear some TX station, WA5??? but couldn't grab him, QRN is fierce in the work parking lot.
I went back inside happy to make one QSO.
73,
GB Hoyt

No comments: