[FQP]W5O Operation

[Michael B. Murdock]

Thanks to all who contacted W5O, the Clearwater Amateur Radio Societies 50th anniversary and FQP special event station. We had a blast. I will get the logs combined and posted later this week. 10m was open on both Sat and Sun but was being ignored by most. 15 was hot and 20 was crowded as usual. The pileups on 20 where great.

The only serious problem we had was a S9 noise floor that came and went on both Sat and Sun. We tried to find it on Sat and disconnected the power mains but it was outside the building. On Sun when it came back I was getting so frustrated that I took my HT, tuned it to the AM aircraft band and started walking the neighborhood. After 20 minutes I tracked it down to a single powerpole that was "screaming". A nice neighbor had left a landscaping timber nearby and we applied a bit of "ham ingenuity" and applied a significant amount of kinetic persuasion (we smacked the pole) with the timber. The noise went away and never came back for the rest of the contest.

73 & OJ 

-- Mike (K4NW)