Very good Bruce! I thought that I did well considering I was barefoot using my TS440 and a homebrew fan dipole that is only at about 15 feet. The wire went up on February 1st with AL-mer, N5XZ, being my first contact on HF. Ended up with WAS on phone across 10, 12, 15, 20 and 40 meters with W1AW portables and over 9000 points in the challenge all on phone. I heard K1ZZ on most bands as well as K1RO but could not compete with beams and amplifiers in the pile-ups. Did work Kay once as well as W1VT whose wife became a silent key about 6 weeks ago. W6SX and N6JV multiple bands as well. Above all I had a ball and made new friends along the way. Heard many BVARC members including you, W5RH, KE5OBY, N5DTT, K5WRN, WS5H, N5AFV, K5LJ, K5HM, N5MT, WN5A, W5HFF, KC5JAR, KF5EYC, K5CAM, and others.
What a fun event! Anticipation of it was the catalyst behind my getting my General a year ago after 16 years of being a tech. Now to get to work improving the antenna. I didn't want to touch it until after the event for fear of messing up what seemed to be working at least reasonably well. 73... and I hope that everyone else had as much fun as I. Have a happy and prosperous New Year! Scott KD5FBA Scott Medbury 16802 Aprilmont Drive Sugar Land, TX 77498-1941 [email protected] -----Original Message----- From: BVARC [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Bruce via BVARC Sent: Wednesday, December 31, 2014 6:31 PM To: BRAZOS VALLEY AMATEUR RADIO CLUB; Houston ECHO Society Subject: [BVARC] ARRL Centennial Well, the year is over and so is the ARRL Centennial celebration. For those that dabbled and those that were serious, I am sure I speak for most, it was a lot of fun. I started 2 months late (bought my new radio the last week of February) and was not able to get double Worked All States. But, that is okay, I still got Worked All States, Mixed, CW and Phone. I added all the special territories and DC. By Thanksgiving, I had 7,500 points and was happy with that certificate. Getting another 7,500 points to earn the top certificate at 15,000 seemed almost impossible as it took me 9 months to reach 7,500 points. With concentration on the 100 plus point counters, by Christmas day, I hit 15,000 and today I ended with slightly over 20,000, maybe even 21,000. Those that I found multiple bands/modes the most were W1VT 7 times, K1RO 9 times, W6SX 6 times and N6JV 8 times. I worked Kay, N3KN, twice and Dave, K1ZZ, 4 times. I heard N5XZ several times whilest chasing my score and he was way ahead of me in points. I think W1HQ was the hardest to find and work. Until this week, I only worked them once. Last Friday, I found them another time. Today, they were on the most but I was not home to catch the extra points. All my operating was on 10, 12, 15, 17, 20, 30 meters. My 40m dipole does not seem to work any longer and I am not sure if it is coax or antenna problem. I can hear perfectly, just cannot transmit. That could have got me a lot of night time contacts. My antenna is a Force 12 C4 (10, 15, 20 with the 40m dipole). Go figure how it works on 12, 17, 30 without an external tuner. The magic of electrons. 73...bruce -- Bruce Paige, KK5DO AMSAT Director Contests and Awards ARRL Awards Manager (WAS, 5BWAS, VUCC), VE Houston AMSAT Net - Wed 0200z on Echolink - Conference *AMSAT* Also live streaming MP3 at http://www.amsatnet.com Podcast at http://www.amsatnet.com/podcast.xml or iTunes Latest satellite news on the ARRL Audio News http://www.arrl.org AMSAT on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/amsat _______________________________________________ BVARC mailing list [email protected] http://mail.bvarc.org/mailman/listinfo/bvarc_bvarc.org _______________________________________________ BVARC mailing list [email protected] http://mail.bvarc.org/mailman/listinfo/bvarc_bvarc.org
