Ken Harker WM5R
2008 ARRL November Sweepstakes, Phone W5KFT (WM5R, op. )

Thanks to Bryan W5KFT for letting me operate from his station in the Sweepstakes again. We took a lightning strike last spring that broke a few things in the shack. The only thing that's still not repaired is the Top Ten Devices band decoders, so I had to remember to manually switch the SixPak and the bandpass filters this time around. Fortunately, there are relatively few times in the Sweepstakes when one has to change a radio to another band as an SO2R operator.

On Saturday, I had an acceptable rate starting on 20 meters, but making the transition down to 40 meters this year turned out to be a disaster. It wasn't until sometime in the 0300 UTC hour (probably when a lot of east coasters had already migrated to 80 meters) that I got going again. This was my worst Saturday performance in a long time and it just kind of demoralized me. There's literally no way to recover in this contest if you have a couple of bad hours on Saturday.

My Sunday was a lot more variable than previous years - instead of having consistent 60-70 hours, I would have a few hours well above 70 QSOs/hour and then a few well below that. In the end, I had marginally more Sunday QSOs this years than last, but not nearly enough to make up for what I lost on Saturday.

I never found a Puerto Rico station. Based on post-contest discussions with others, I should have checked 15 meters earlier on Sunday than I did.

I finally beat K5TR in a contest, but I don't think I can let this one count.

Station W5KFT:

Beverages - 900' long, fixed 30° (NE), not terminated

 80 - Sloping dipoles - NE, NW from 150', SE from 135'

 40 - Cushcraft 40-2CD @ 150', rotatable
      Cushcraft 40-2CD @ 70', fixed NE

 20 - Hy-Gain 204BA @ 157', rotatable
      Hy-Gain 204BA @ 105', fixed NE
      Hy-Gain 204BA @ 53', fixed NE
      Hy-Gain TH7DXX @ 75', rotatable
      Hy-Gain TH7DXX @ 45', fixed NW

 15 - Hy-Gain 155CA @ 135', rotatable
      Hy-Gain 155CA @ 90', fixed NE
      Hy-Gain 155CA @ 45', fixed NE

Radio 1:  Kenwood TS-850SAT, Ameritron AL-1500
Radio 2:  Kenwood TS-850SAT, Ameritron AL-1200
Headset:  Heil Proset
DVK:      W9XT Contest Card
Software: TR Log 6.78
Other:    Ameritron RCS-8V switches, ICE bandpass filters, 
          Top Ten Devices DXDoubler, WX0B SixPak, CDE rotors

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

• Rate Sheet
• QSO Distribution