NAQP CW

The NAQP CW contest was yesterday, and for the first time, I signed up for an NCCC team. I made it clear I was only going to be able to operate the last two hours of the contest, and I ended up exactly where I wanted to be - on team 6 of 6.

As it turned out, I was able to escape for about an hour and 20 minutes during the day, and was able to fiddle around on 15 and 20 (and even on 10 for 2 QSOs) while they were open. I think my S&P skills are improving, and I made 46 contacts on the high bands between errands in the house.

After my wife and I got the kids to bed, I headed out to the shack to focus for the last two hours. I was really happy with my antenna's performance on 40 m. I felt loud, as I was answered first a few times when there were multiple stations calling. I was even able to call CQ and keep up about the same rate that I'd been doing S&Ping across a band full of fresh meat.

The only badness happened near the end of the contest. I miscopied a callsign while S&Ping, and went to correct it after the QSO. I noticed that N1MM started to act strangely after that - the input window was colored light blue, and it didn't seem to be reporting dupes by changing the callsigns red. Well, I had managed to put things into "quick edit" mode, and didn't realize this until I'd made 10 contacts. The problem was that it logged everying with the same time and frequency, even though I'd changed bands. D'Oh! I emailed the contest organizer after I'd submitted my log, and exlpained the QLF. Hopefully, they can keep the stations I worked from getting penalized for my error.

On the plus side, the 153 raw QSOs in 3 hours 20 minutes was a personal best for me as far as rate goes, and I was really starting to feel a lot more confident in both S&P and run mode.