Ken Harker WM5R
2004 ARRL International DX Contest, Phone, K5NA M/2

Richard K5NA and Susan K5DU invited me to join them this year in a multi-operator, two-transmitter operation in the 2004 ARRL International DX Contest, Phone. In 2003, we were competing against one another in the multi-single category, where K5NA beat our team at W5KFT. We hoped that by joining forces, we could do better in the multi-two category.

We really missed having a good 10 meter band this year, and had trouble keeping the second station very busy during the days. Around sunrise and sunset as many as four bands were open at a time, but in the middle of the day, it was all 15 meters, with the second station desparately looking for QSOs anywhere on 10 meters (which was not really open) and 20 meters (which suffered from high absorption.) It was not too much of a challenge to keep the two stations busy at night, with one station always on 40 meters and the other switching between 160 meters and 80 meters.

This year, the effort actually ended up with fewer multipliers than K5NA worked last year as a multi-single, but we ended up with more QSOs. That was mainly due to working 50 fewer multipliers on 10 meters this year.