Ken Harker WM5R
1999 IARU HF World Championship Multi- Single - N5XU

N5XU participated in the IARU HF World Championship on the weekend of 10-11 July, 1999. We operated in the Multioperator Single Transmitter class, with KA5WSS, KM5FA, and N3TNN operating. This was a "casual" contest effort at N5XU.

We had terrible line noise all weekend. It was really bad on 15 meters, and only a little less so on 20 and 10. We get all sorts of noise on the bands at N5XU, but this was the first time I've heard line noise. Consequently, we spent a lot more time on 20, where we could hear a little better. With the club station located less than 300 feet from an electric power and distribution station that serves 150,000, and less than 200 feet from the construction site for a new five story building, this was bound to happen sooner or later.

Most of the equipment worked pretty well, except some part of the DVK wiring needs to be fixed - it was putting hum on the audio. So, we went without the headset mic, and did the contest with a desk mic and no DVK. We also had trouble getting the long wire to load up on 160 that evening, maybe because of fatigue, maybe because of the rain. We were probably radiating maybe 20 watts on that band.

Monique N3TNN, who upgraded to General a couple of months ago, joined us in the evening, and made her first DX contacts, with stations in France, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, England, Brazil, Yugoslavia, Germany, Italy, and Kaliningrad!

Ken KM5FA made a few CW QSOs, trying his best to go 18 or 19 wpm, which is still a little bit faster than his "comfort zone."

It was pretty fun despite the line noise. We also crushed the UTARC's previous best score for this contest.

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

• Continents Worked
• Multiplier Distributions
• Rate Sheet
• Contest Log