CX Soapbox

[Brian Carling]

The Classic Exchange was great! I ran an old Viking Valiant (1958)
and a Drake 2C (1965?) with my TO-Keyer, and a G5RV Dipole.

SOAPBOX:

The contest was GREAT fun!

I think the Awards for wildest signals should go to:

KS4C for the WILD chirp on his first transmission that I heard,
followed by a clean signal 10 minutes later when we DID finally QSO.

The Award for SHARPEST keying should go to the telegraphic clicks of
K1VVC's highly distinctive-sounding Meissner 150-B!

I was having rig trouble during the contest! The Valiant had been
popping for a few weeks, so I had been off the air actually for
months. Recently I replace the 866-As with a pair of 3B-28s and
installed all new electrolytics in the rig - all in anticipation of
the Classic Exchange.

As usual the rig started POPPING loudly about every 20-30 seconds and
I ran OK for the first hour of the contest but it was scaring me, so I
decided to tear into the station and fix the darn thing.

It took me three hours of troubleshooting but I finally found it! One
of the two 20 K - 10 Watt resistors in series across the B+ was
completely OPEN! The Screen supply would gradually charge up to the
full 790 Volts and then ZAP! Something would discharge it and it would
start building back up again!

Thanks, CX, for giving me the motivation to FIND and FIX this thing!

I happily returned to the fray at 2356 UTC to make a number of
enjoyable QSOs.

I found the AM segment of 75m unusable due to QRM, QRN and a lot of
folks on AM who were apparently not in the contest, but occupying the
freqs.

Say - WHY do we recommend 14.120 as a CW frequency?? That is a DX SSB
segment! I would have liked to have tried 14 Mc. Imagine the chirp and
drift we could have generated there, he he!

Best regards - Brian Carling "BRY" AF4K
****************************************************
*** 73 from Radio AF4K/G3XLQ Gaithersburg, MD USA  *
**  E-mail to:  bry at mnsinc.com                     *
*** ICQ 6124470  ***
**  http://www.mnsinc.com/bry/                     *
****************************************************
AM International #1024, TENTEN #13582. GRID FM19. Using a SWAN 250 on 6m,
Other rigs: Valiant, DX-60/HG-10, FT-840, TM-261A, Ameco TX-62, Gonset Comm. III
TEN-TEN #13582, DXCC #17,763 Bicentennial WAS

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