I always said if I had a beam or a decent antenna, I'd be dangerous!

A cold Saturday night towards the end of January...11:00 PM or so in Atlanta ....got this strange twitch, alternately striking my thumb and index finger, much like a jogger's body telling him its got to run...the only thing that's gonna cure this condition is a CW contest. Funny, my ears have a kinda fuzzy quality, the feeling I used to get working 160 meter CW at big-gun contest stations in the Potomac Valley. The XYL's busy on the phone setting a new world's record on the Dial America plan so I'll just snoop around on 160 meters for a few minutes. Hmm, plenty of signals in spite of using the 40 meter horizontal loop, and just what I needed, a contest! What was it we used to do with the 80 meter dipole??? Ah yes, short the braid to the center conductor and feed it like a longwire...wonder if that would work with 450 ohm feeders? The antenna tuner covers 160 so what the heck - - a few minutes browsing in the junk box produces a banana plug (perfect fit for center of an SO239 connector) and a brass alligator clip from a defunct tuner to hold on to the "twisted pair"..."Schaefer City" we used to say back in New York...Try it, what have you got to lose but the Differential T tuner and the TS940!...Darn, very little RF out and strange reactions on the SWR meter - What about the built in antenna tuner, will it work on 160? I punched the right buttons and low and behold it produces some RF. Some monkeying with the tuner gets me up to 75 watts and flat SWR. Looks like a winner! Throwing caution to the wind, I fire up the PC, start the logging program...who knows, maybe I'll have something to enter!...A quick scan of the band - its like thumbing thru a wireless version of Who's Who in Contesting! Well, we gotta start someplace! A very tentative call and W3UM pops right back - gads, this lashup's getting out of the backyard and the XYL's still Dialing America without complaining about thumping in the telephone! The next hour yields 56 QSOs, including one with KP2A (Ken's got far fuzzier ears than I if he can hear this set-up!)...the hour following was more like reality, 28 QSOs but an historic contact with Dick, N6AA. After thirty five years of QSO's with him on many continents, I finally nail him on 160! We've come a long way from his attic shack in Lynbrook, NY when, disguised as K2PHF, he'd give me pointers on traffic handling and contesting! The contest's getting tougher now, with the QSO rate approaching zero as I finally get a TI in the log, followed quickly with G4BUO he must have literally crawled in his receiver to pull me out!...The flame rekindled, I decided to try calling CQ (chutzpah, I think they call that!)...well, by golly I attracted another 10 stations or so, but after another G answered my CQ, I decided to fold while I was ahead. All told? 121 QSO's, 35 States, Canada plus 3 countries, not too shabby for an impromptu event, 75 watts, and no antenna on a frequency range just barely North of the broadcast band! I always said if I had a beam or a decent antenna, I'd be dangerous!