This was my 14th consecutive year doing a CQP county expedition from Mammoth Lakes in Mono County.  I left Santa Monica about 7 am on Thursday for the 300 mile drive to Mammoth Lakes and arrived about noon.  Last year I had lots of problems with my old nylon guy lines breaking, so I was confident that my 1000 feet of brand new black Dacron would make everything go up without any problems and it worked great.  I got most of my all wire antenna farm launched by 5 pm including dipoles for 40 & 80 meters plus my 3 element wire beam from 15 meters. 

I’m sure the high performance sling shot I borrowed resulted in some really extra high locations for my antennas.  This year my 80 meter dipole was higher than ever…probably about 90 feet, right at the very tops of a couple of tall trees.  On Friday I put the 20 wire beam up and finished setting up my station.

This was my first attempt at SO2R.  I recently purchased a TS-850 and Ameritron AL-80B 1KW amp to replace my old TS-450 and Ameritron AL-811 500 watt amp.  But rather that sell my old rig right away, I decided to keep it for a while to try my hand at SO2R during CQP.  I implemented my SO2R by setting up a second PC networked with the primary rig so I could log and transmit on either on either rig.  It worked quite well.   I used it mostly on Sunday morning when I alternated calling CQ on 20m CW and 40m CW to keep up a better rate during a slow stretch.

I sure missed 15 meters…usually my best band for CQP.  I put up my 3 element 15 meter wire beam at 50 ft in the pine trees for a total of 5 QSOs.  I had a few more 15 meter QSOs with my 40 meter dipole on Sunday after I had already taken down the wire beam.

As it turned out I had a family emergency and needed to shut down early on Sunday so I wasn’t able to complete a full-time effort this year.  I was hoping to make my first appearance in the top 20 single ops this year…but since I was only able to operate less than 19 hours, it’s a real long shot.  However, I did notice that several of the usual CQP big guns were at K7C and not doing CQP this year, so maybe I can back-in to a higher spot on the list after all.

Thanks to all!

Jim, W6KC @ W6ML in Mammoth Lakes, Mono County

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