OK, so a one-hour event doesn't quite qualify as an adventure, but it was indeed different! 😀 I have come to adore the CWops CWT mini-contests each Wednesday and I almost always run them full QRO - or close to full. I will rarely run one at 100W, but I never did one QRP ... until last night.
I recently built a QRP Labs QCX QRP transceiver for 80m - my third QCX (others are on 30m and 20m). I wired up a USB interface to do CAT control of the 80m QCX and got it working with N1MM+ logging software. The particular interface I used has the necessary TX, RX, and GND connections, but it also has a DTR pin. I wired this pin up to key CW and successfully configured N1MM+ to key it. All was set!
As my first real test, I decided to try it in the 03-Dec 03:00 UTC running of the CWT. I didn't expect much, because the CWT's high activity levels can make it tough to get through the pileups. For the first 6 minutes, I tried with my trusty old Force-12 EF-180BV vertical. Nothing! I switched to my low 80m dipole, usually better for 75m phone, but hey, I got some answers!
After the hour was done, I was very pleased with a total of 44 QSOs! Obviously, CWops members have great ears! Of course, you need to go with a different strategy with QRP. You certainly cannot "brute force" your way through it, as I normally can do because I have big power, decent antennas, and a superb QTH. So, I keep the same antennas and QTH and just turn the power down by 99.999%! I tuned for the really big signals and timed my call properly. Most of the other ops came right back to me (remember those great ears!) and I only had to fight for a handful of the QSOs. In every one of those cases, it's because I made a bad choice and called a weaker station, making him work much harder to hear my puny signal through the din. Lesson learned.
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