Ken Harker WM5R
1997 ARRL November Sweepstakes, Phone, N5XU M/S

Not terrible, but 90 fewer QSOs than last year. With only two operators bothering to help out, and one of them having to work over the weekend, we did not have "fresh" operators at all times. One or more operators would have been very helpful. On the assumption that at least some people did not show up because they thought they did not have enough experience, I think we'll try and set up some more opportunities in the next year to get people on the air and comfortable with HF operating (10M Contest, NAQP, WPX, etc).

This was the first phone contest using the club's new callsign, N5XU. Because this callsign is based on the old 5XU station that used to be on campus in 1921 we also used a check of 21. That generated far more comments than the previous check we've used in the past, 55 (which when started using it was a wild guess). Of course the clubs using "09" and "12" probably got even more comments and requests for repeats. It didn't slow us down too much though.

We worked a sweep again for the second straight year. NM was our last section, which we picked up about 1.5 hours before the end of the contest.

We thought AK would be the most difficult mult to get after it along with AR and NM were the last on our list. After running stations on 15 we moved to 20 to work one of the KL7's posted on the PacketCluster. All but one had gone away by the time we got there. KL7J was calling CQ but we were not having much luck right away as the QRM was bad. We quickly checked one of the other KL7 spotted frequencies and voila, there was KL7J who just happened to move to that very frequency and started calling CQ. Got him on the first call. Timing, and luck is everything.

Another weird one happened on Saturday night. After running stations on 40M I decided to spend a few minutes on 80M, hopefully S&P'ing a new mult or two before I had to leave for the evening. One of the stations I hoped to get was W5WMU in LA, since I knew they were on. I looked around, worked a couple of new mults then called some other station (not a mult). I got a request to move up 2 from that QSO and found out W5WMU moved us up to work us! Why? I have no idea, as surely he didn't need STX for a mult.

The ops at W5YM (Univ. of Arkansas) took advantage of the PacketCluster to post their location. It worked for at least one QSO, as we moved to 80M to pick up the new mult.

One of the more interesting QSO's was with NI6R "bicycle mobile" in California!

Other college club stations worked: W2SZ, W2KGY, K3CR, W3EAX, K4KDJ, K4UCF, W4ATC, W5YM, W6BHZ, W6UE, W6YL, W7UNR, W8SH, W8YY, WB9JBF, WO9S, W0EEE Can't recall how many colleges we worked in the past but 17 clubs seems like a lot so I hope this turns into lots of logs submitted as well.

Contest Logging was done with TR LOG contest logging software. The following reports and log were created using TR Log's post-contest processor.

• Contest Log