Saturday, September 16, 2023

Salmon Run 2023

Rusty W6OAT and I are well into the Salmon Run today.

About six hours left in the first session before the break.

We're working all the stations that will give us multipliers and add to the score.

The bands have been relatively good, except 20 meters a bit noisier.  All together, a great Salmon Run so far, but we have many hours to go.

The adventure started on Friday afternoon when I took the ferry from my home QTH across the sound to Kingston and then travelled to Rusty's QTH.

We spent the evening going over our plan for SR and talking about the stations we want to work, and the rovers we knew of that would be in the Eastern Washington counties that are more difficult to hear.

After the setup was done, we worked on the N1MM macros and then setup the audio chain so we can both hear the signals at the same time when one of us is working the key.

I brought some hardware to allow us to use my key (Bencher BY-1) and Rusty could use his Vibroplex without any cable changes.   

In the evening Friday we played on the radio -- and I worked a handful of DX with his station using my call.  The feature I love about his station is the KPA and the 4 element SteppIR that lets us put the gain where we want.  Really nice setup!

The goal we established was to simply have fun.  We're up against some good competition for Salmon Run so it is going to be challenge to work numbers to get to the top of the list.  But that's not as important as having fun.

Although it's a bit fast, I set the key to work 23 wpm -- I can just about copy most call signs there, but Rusty is there to help always make sure we copied it right.  When Rusty's working the key, we run a bit faster, around 27-29 wpm and that really moves us along.

Well, back to the contest.  Just thought I'd give an update.

Thanks for all the QSO and QRS.   We have more multipliers to go!   Looking for those East coast Canadians and a few K States that would help us round out the list.




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