In fact, OM7RU call could be in multi category: me and Mr. Murphy.

He started to give PA to standby mode from time to time, due to relay alarm, on Saturday noon. Then I had 50 W out. I had to press OPR button to switch to full power. It was becoming hundreds times, less or more often till the end of the contest… I tried to repair it, but lost 1 hour for sleeping, without success…

Storm during Saturday evening. My sons were lightning observers and I ran with one ear to their reports. In addition, any high voltage line insulators are water sensitive and rain caused QRM of S9. I heard only S9+ for an hour… I lost 40m antenna on Sat/Sun midnight. I wanted to swap of coax to another port of ANT switch. But cabinet in the backyard was full of wasps and I didn’t have the spray. In addition, our territory is victim of slugs invasion, including walkways, coaxs and cabinet, nothing pleasant. I lost 1 hour for sleeping without success… I found unconnected soldered 40m connector in the garden during Sunday day break. I lost 1 hour for sleeping this time finally with success…

Conditions was interesting. I tried to check of CONDX on Wednesday evening before WPX. I worked NA, SA and AS stations with antenna beaming to north at cca 2200Z. It was the same during both WPX evenings on 20m and 15m. 10m was closed and unusable. Nice both mornings, rare JAs, but a lot of long path NA west coast QSOs. Low bands was opened quite nice, with less QRN on first two nights. I miss real higher Q/h out of EU pileup during the whole contest, even I spent Sundays afternoon on 40m, due to higher point gain due to lack of 40 previous night…

A lot of points had been lost by all vis major problems, but I didn’t want to give up, when I had green light for full time contest participation from my wife, hi. Thinking about at least simple SO2R again.

Thanks to all participants!

Final score:   3 964 378
Category:      SO AB HP
Rank:          WW #106    EU #43    OM #2

 

Call: OM7RU
Operator(s): OM7RU
Station: OM7RU

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Dolna Micina
Operating Time (hrs): 36
Location : Northern Europe

 

Summary:

Band     QSOs
--------------------------------------------------
160:      56
80:      284
40:      587
20:      814
15:      268
10:       25
--------------------------------------------------
Total:  2034  Prefixes: 878 Total Score: 4,142,404

 

Club: Dozen Dashes Contest Club

 

Used equipments:
 Yaesu FT-1000MP MarkV Field
 ACOM 2000A
 MicroHAM microKeyer, MicroHAM StationMaster
 WinTest
 UltraBeam UB ONE rotator

Antennas:
 160m: Vertical (35m tower + 2 elevated radials)
 80m: OptiBeam OB1-80 rotary dipole @34m
 40m: InvVee @21m
 RX: K9AY RX loops for 160, 80 and 40m
 20, 15, 10m: Cushcraft A4S 3 el. tribander @31m

 

73!
Riki, OM7RU

www.tucek.sk/om7ru