This was the second assault on Mono
County. This time around I invited Mac (W6BSY) my neighbor and
Larry (NF6S) to join me at the CW station. This was to be a
multi-multi operation with one transmitter on CW and one on
voice. The voice station was Bill (KB6LFM) and Jim (KO6GM).
The truck is parked next to the tent, not because that's handy, but because the tent is tied to it. The wind was horrible Friday. I came very close to being blown over while on the ladder putting up the beam.
Mac is a real serious contestor, He
lives two houses away from me and we have become good friends, in
spite of the fact that we interfere with each other when we are
both on the air at the same time. He always manages to turn in
impressive scores in the contests that he enters. I was really
pleased when he mentioned that he would like to join me in the
Mono expedition.
One of the nice things about having three guys to man one station is that it doesn't turn into a death march as each one can take a 5-6 hour shift and crawl off to the sack and get some rest. I said rest because, on these expeditions I don't think anyone sleeps, the adrenaline is running so high, except maybe for Larry.
Larry brought the most amazing tent I
have ever seen. This sucker was huge. I could have parked my car
in it and still had two bedrooms and a bath. Here he is trying to
figure out how it goes together. This was the first time he had
ever set it up, it took both of us to figure it out... where's a
5 year old when you need one?
Larry is a world class
operator, he has gone on expeditions to obscure islands and
really knows how to work the pile ups. He is a lightning CW
operator and can hold a conversion with you while working a
contact. I saw this on more than one occasion and I was amazed.
A funny thing happened late Saturday night, I was laying in my
sleeping bag and I heard the generator lug down for an unusually
long period of time. I didn't think much of it until the next
morning when Larry told me he had fallen asleep at the key and
was awoken by a friend of his on the East coast calling him. His
friend informed him that he had been sending CQ for 15 minutes
steady, in his sleep.
It was so cold up there that Sunday morning when Mac tried to
make breakfast, he found everything had frozen, the milk, the
eggs, everything. He still managed to put together a great
breakfast, then sat frozen in this pose for hours as the sun
brought his body temperature up to normal.
Bill and Jim were plagued with technical problems all weekend and
were not able to make very many contacts. I did not get any
pictures of their station... All in all we turned in a very
impressive score due to Mac and Larry's efforts. I, on the other
hand, found out the hard way, that you cannot lay off the CW key
for a few months and expect to be up to contest readiness.
On the way back home Larry was making plans to come back in 1996 and set up the mother of all stations, Lord knows he has the tent for it We'll see.... stay tuned for CQP 96.
If you are interested in joining our expedition in future
years, drop me a note. You do not have to be a licensed ham to
join in and operate.
Please email me with any comments at kim@knjcomputers.com
Oh well so much for CQP ..... back to CQP
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