[Moon-net] Contest and Story

[Gary Crabtree]

Hello to all

This will be my first posting ever about a contest and maybe my last. 
I decided to run 100% JT unassisted this year.  My reason was to just 
see how many stations I could work on JT mode.  The bad thing was on the 
first weekend my amplifier blew up as I was getting on the second 
night.  It did not get repaired until Tuesday.  I had to order parts for 
it.  I had a second amplifier but it did not have a tube in it nor had it
ever been wired up to be able to run.  With only three and half hours 
sleep, I was not going to try that and kill myself.  Now I have both 
amplifiers up and running so that will never happen again.  I decided to 
stick to my plan anyway even with a day lost.  My station setup is not a 
normal station for EME.  I run four computers and three different 
radios all going to the same antenna.  I transmit with the same radio 
all the time.  The other two are use to scan the band to find new 
stations if nobody is answering my CQ.  I use a four-port power divider 
with a 50 ohm load on one port to feed the radios. Each radio has a 
dedicated computer.  The forth computer is for my auto-tracking.  For 
the JA stations I listened 40 kHz below my Tx frequency as K1JT 
recommended on moon net.  I managed to work a lot of the JA stations.  
There were stations that called me on CW while I was running JT.  I 
could see their signal but I do not have speakers set up to hear them.  
I need to change that so I could answer any mode.  I am sure there are 
stations that did not like it because I only ran JT this year.  The way 
I feel about contest is I think a station does what he or she wants to 
do to have fun.  This is only a hobby.  I have been doing EME for over 
25 years. The best thing I like about EME is being a station's first 
contact.  I worked a new station last week for his first.  It was 
LU1CGB.  He also called me in the contest and W5UN Dave told me he also 
worked him.  I got a E-Mail from him saying he was very happy and that 
he was going to upgrade his station so he could run CW also.  This is 
where the new CW stations come from.  First we have to get them on the 
band.  Then they get excited and build better antennas.  I am against 
splitting up this contest by modes.  I agree with SM5BSZ.  Splitting may 
help CW at first but it will kill CW in the long run. I think every 
operator has the right to do what they want with their station.  This is 
a hobby.  We are supposed to have fun.  I know I am having fun on all 
modes.  In the contest in three days I worked 164 station and 68 
multipliers.  If I had changed to CW, I could have made a bigger score 
but that was not what I wanted to do this year. I hope this letter does 
not make anybody mad of what I think.  This is just my own opinion. I am 
now getting close to 200 DXCC countries on two meters.  I hope to do 
that in the next two years.  Thank you very much for a great contest.  I 
will be glad to work anybody on any mode. 

KB8RQ, Gary
24X13 element
http://www.spasalon.com/kb8rq/
KB8RQ at SPASALON.COM
kb8rq at Yahoo.com