NJ QSO Party Puts DVRA Back on the Map

Club members new and old took part in this weekends NJ QSO Party. Starting Saturday we had 18 hours to rack up as many contacts as possible using CW or Phone. 10 meters through 80 was fair game and the team rose to the challenge. The team enjoyed the fruits of the recent renovations and received many compliments on the drastic changes that have taken place . We had visitors from our section leadership, VE’s, past club members and YL’s.

A contest wouldn’t be a contest unless Murphy visits – and although we had our challenges with wiring, settings and hardware – all in all the station gear performed excellently. Running phone on 20 and 40 Saturday night up to the close of the contest period at midnight, Dom N3DD and Rory NJ3U ran the Omni with the Kenwood linear and made the “DX Hot Spot” listing as stations far and wide worked our pileup. Mike AC2MW and Lloyd N2KPC worked many QSO’s 20 barefoot as the Ameritron amp wouldn’t cooperate. Still the run rate was high and most of the contacts where made during between 8 and midnight .

Sunday brought a change in equipment configuration as we substituted NJ3U Rorys Yaesu FL2100b to give 800 watts of power to the signal, and both station teams began working with headphones to reduce noise and allow focus to increase the first time call capture.

The N1MM logging program ran flawlessly on the clubs two brand new networked HP computers, registering over 696 contacts along with 76 multipliers for a unverified raw score of over 55,352.

Thanks to everyone that helped get the club to this point in our history. The place looks great and while there are still plenty of things to finish up the overall consensus was 50 over 59!