CQ Worldwide DX Contest, RTTY
Call: K4XD
Operator(s): K4XD
Station: K4XD
Class: SOSB/80 HP
QTH: Raleigh, NC
Operating Time (hrs):
Summary:
Band QSOs Pts State/Prov DX Zones
----------------------------------------
80: 500 742 50 48 14
40:
20:
15:
10:
----------------------------------------
Total: 500 742 50 48 14 Total Score = 83,104
Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club
Comments:
Now that the dust has settled, I'm pretty happy with the results, but it was
looking mighty grim at the start... definitely one of those "NOW WHAT?!?!"
weekends... I usually fly back from MD to NC for the weekend, but was just
south of Washington, DC Friday afternoon so decided to drive home. I got home
at 2230 GMT, took my wife to dinner, and got back home at 2345, ready to go
with a SOSB/80 effort in one of my favorite contest modes. I fired up the
rigs, reconnected the antennas, and brought up WriteLog. Checked the macros,
everything looked good, and when the band exploded with signals at 0000 I was
all set to S&P my way to a clear spot and start CQ'ing my brains out. Only one
problem... despite the fact that everything looked like I was sending a nice fat
700W signal out into the ether, not a single CQ'er would answer my call.
"Hello, hello, is this thing on?!? Now what?!?!" I had made several
successful RTTY QSO's the previous weekend, and in those famous last words,
"nothing had changed." The ICOM 756proII scope showed a nice big signal,
MMTTY's FFT display showed a nice big signal, the wattmeter showed a nice big
signal... but every call was answered with "CQ WW de W1XYZ W1XYZ..."
Watching the minutes turn into tens of minutes, I checked all my software
configurations, dropped out of WriteLog and tried WinWarbler, same results.
Suddenly I was invisible. Was I in one of those movies where you pass to the
other side but don't realize it? "Ghost Contester." I developed a lot of
empathy for QRPers.
After 30 minutes of unsuccessful troubleshooting, I tried listening on my Eton
E-1 receiver with the power down to 1W on the Icom. There was a nice big
signal alright -- a nice big carrier with no modulation! From who knows where
inspiration struck... I had been plugging and unplugging the cables from the
sound card last weekend to make sure I could send with AFSK on the second
radio... what if I jiggled the DB-9 serial plug loose? Bingo!! The plug in
COM1 was not seated all the way. For those of you, like me, who don't always
tighten down those little screws because it makes removing the plug harder and
"the plug never comes out anyway..." Wrong, it does! Seating the DB-9 firmly,
I went back to the dials and was back in the land of the living, I had a voice
again. My first QSO was at 0117 so I missed the first 77 minutes of the
contest. Oh well..
S&P'ing up the band, I worked a mix of about 20% EU and 80% K/VE, then settled
in on 3583 at 0140 and ran for almost an hour, mostly 2's, 3's and 4's but a
fair number of VE's too. Things slowed down a bit so I decided to do a sweep
and picked up a number of central and southern EU's. At 0325 I finished the
sweep and went back to CQ'ing, this time on 3562. I continued in this pattern,
70% running and 30% S&P, switching when the run slowed down or the sweep was
showing nothing new.
I tried a little SO2R with the other radio on 40M just to keep my brain active,
but with mixed results. My setup last season was very simple for SO2R - two
soundcards, one dedicated to each radio, and two CAT interfaces, ditto.
WriteLog did all the switching work on RTTY, and it pretty much just worked.
Now I have an EZMaster in the middle, and am running FSK on the Icom. It's
great to have FSK simply because it makes it easier to use the Icom RTTY
filters, which do make a noticeable difference in improving copy on weak
signals. However, I had a lot of strange problems -- the Icom PTT would drop
out before my CQ response macro finished sending, so I would send "599 N" and
then notice the red transmit light on the Icom had gone out but WriteLog's RTTY
window was still merrily typing out "C NC 5 5 <yourcall>" like it was actually
sending the reply. I had to quickly open the Alt-K keyboard window and type
the response manually. Or hit the macro key again and send another partial
sequence, or maybe a full one. "Now what?!!?" I found the MMTTY setting for
TX was set to Sound + ComTxD (FSK) instead of just ComTxD (FSK)... probably
from my desperate attempt to get things working earlier. When I set it back to
ComTxD (FSK) the partial send problem went away. But then I noticed that when
I clicked on the second radio box in WriteLog before the first radio finished a
CQ, the CQ would end but the PTT stayed on, sending a carrier only, with some
funny spikes appearing in the MMTTY FFT window. If I kicked the foot petal, it
would shut off. "Now what??!" Never did figure that one out.
At 0619, I had 195 Q's in the log and was feeling reasonably OK about my goal
of hitting 400 Q's, although I was worried that the second night was going to
be slower than the first, and missing that first hour might come back to haunt
me. The rate was still pretty good, with one or two Q's per minute. Then
suddenly the amp faulted. I clicked the "Tune" button on the MFJ-998 and the
relays rattled like marbles in a coffee can, churning on and on and on for a
sickening 15 seconds, ending with an "SWR Too High" alert. "Now what?!?!?"
I immediately suspected that 5 hours of "key down" RTTY sending may have burnt
something out. Everything in the chain was rated at a KW or better, and the
Tokyo HyPower amp recommends decreasing power by "20 to 30%" when running RTTY.
It's a KW amp, and I was running between 500 and 800W, so I felt pretty safe
there. I suspected the MFJ auto-tuner, having read a review on eHam where
someone complained about theirs burning out. I swapped in the LDG autotuner
from the second radio, no improvement. I tried the 40M antenna (which is
actually a multibander) and no luck there either. Now I began suspecting the
SixPak -- but a trip to the backyard with a screwdriver and a flashlight was
not in the cards at 2:30AM. I know, I know, where's my maniacal commitment to
contesting...? I decided it was time to get 3 or 4 hours of rest and have a
look in the yard when it got lighter.
Well, 3 or 4 hours turned into 4 or 5, and I sat back down and it worked! For
one QSO....then amp fault and high SWR again. I tried swapping more things
around, and since 20M was open tried up there too, but no go, something that
was in the path to all the antennas was not happy. #$!, now in addition to
missing the first 77 minutes of the contest, I missed the productive couple of
hours surrounding the morning greyline on 80M. 199 Q's and holding... figured
I would get things fixed during the day and come back strong at sunset.
I had breakfast and went out in the yard. I moved the cable from the "Radio B"
side to the "Radio A" side of the SixPak, and switched the RG-213 cables coming
into the shack. Success! OK, must be the SixPak. I took it out of the
system, put my Ameritron RCS-12 back into the mix, rewired the controllers in
the shack, and played around on 20M for a half hour... and then "NOW what?!?!,"
the SWR problem returned. OK, SixPak vindicated... what the heck else was in
the line? By this time, the problem had gotten worse, so when the SWR shot up,
the received signals also dropped to almost nothing, like bleedthrough on the
relay box from a disconnected antenna. I decided to try swapping the cables at
the ICE lightning protectors just before the cables enter the house. Bingo!!
Everything was working fine again. Fortunately I had a spare ICE 303, so I put
it into the circuit and took the cover off the "suspect" one. Bad burned smell,
charred looking wire around the toroid... this baby has been soaking up some
current to keep me and the rigs safe, bless its little stainless steel heart.
That turned out to be the culprit. I read the ICE 303 data sheet and it said
if the SWR shoots up, it can be from a leaky or shorted gas discharge tube that
died for its country (well, that's my way of putting it).
Time to put the SixPak back in the circuit and rewire the controllers in the
shack. I'm getting too good at this, 14 control wires, 7 RG-213's, and a lot
of little screws... and finally, at 2124, I was making 80M Q's again. For
those of you working multiband who don't even think about 80M until 3 hours
after local sunset, I'm here to tell you that transatlantic Q's are happening
in NC two hours before sunset. I was really surprised at some of the EU's
coming in that early. I had worked most of them already, so not much new from
EU in the early hours, but if I had a "serious" 80M setup vs. my Cobra
Ultralight Sr. antenna I bet I could make some new Q's going the other
direction.
231 Q's by 0000, so I'm starting to think 400 Q's are possible. Same pattern
as before, run until things slow down to one Q every 3 minutes or so, then do a
band sweep. I add some new mults with OK, FM, OZ, OE and YV stations, glad I
decided to sweep. CQ'ing has been filling out the States and Provinces mults
pretty nicely, although where is OK?!? I have RI, DE, VT, NH but no OK?
Another sweep at 0140 nets Z3, LZ, EU and PA mults. I'm averaging about 1.5
points/Q, I figure if I was in the Northeast and could work the smaller EU
stations this would be higher, but all in all not really surprised, this is
80M... the band really sounds good, signals are strong, and the K9AY does a
nice job improving S/N (by lowering N).
I then begin my longest run of the contest, CQ'ing for all I'm worth from 0155
to 0659 netting 180 more Q's. Not a neck snapping pace by any means, but
again, this is 80M and at 449 I've blown by my 400 Q target for the contest. I
figure I can't go to bed with 449 so CQ five more minutes for number 450, and
call it a night. Two hours and 40 minutes later (not going to miss that
greyline two mornings in a row!), I'm back at the dials and sweeping 80M for
the usual morning 1's, 2's and 9's. At 1005 I get KH6, a nice mult!. I hear a
ZL working someone else and scramble to try go park close by and CQ hoping to
get his attention, but I never hear him again. Is there a polite way to grab
someone's attention in those circumstances? I really don't want to start
sending on someone else's run frequency, but I guess a short ZL2XYZ pse UP UP
de K4XD would be the only practical way -- but if everyone started doing that
it would be chaotic.
I almost fell out of my chair when a certain neighbor of mine, let's call him
"K4KGB," (call changed to protect the guilty), answered my CQ. Let's just he
is one of the last people I expected to find on RTTY. I think this mode may be
catching on...
The morning run continued at a decent pace until 1202, then it took 20 minutes
to the next Q and I figured it was time for breakfast. I had 480 Q's in the
log and my score was looking pretty good compared to last year's US/VE SOSB/80
results. I was too tired to figure out why, given the technical difficulties.
All I could think was if I was getting this many Q's, conditions must be really
good and the big guns were going to really be cleaning up.
A nap, some yard work, a little non-80M radio just to hand out Q's and check
conditions (good!!), and at 2146 I got back on 80M for the final push. Slow,
slow, slow. Conditions were still quite good, with EU's coming in early, but I
was really starting to feel that I had squeezed the single band dry. Drip,
drip, drip, a couple of K/VE Q's, rate around 10/hour... I started getting
duplicate calls from the big guns, I think they must have been so bored that
working a dupe was the only way to keep awake! At 2316 I decided to do
another band sweep, and was really glad I did, picking up YO, LY, and UA mults.
In the last 30 minutes, things got glacially slow. K4XD was definitely a
"tired call" on 80M at that point. 496... 30 minutes to go.... 497...22
minutes... 498... 14 minutes... 499... 13 minutes (real burst of speed
there!).... where is # 500??? 10 minutes, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, am I really going to
end with 499 Q's?? Then with 5 minutes to go, an 8 called me and put #500 on
the board. Another five minutes of fruitless CQ'ing and the bandscope was
magically transformed from wall-to-wall dancing signals to the normal calm of
static and a couple of pulsing CW stations. Another one in the books.
Thanks to everyone for the Q's, and thanks for tolerating my technical
problems, especially the half-responses repeated twice as my PTT died! This
was a great contest with a lot of activity and fun, already looking forward to
the next one!
73,
Rowland K4XD
Icom 756 Pro II
Tokyo HyPower (running about 600W - 700W most of the time, with occasional
"push to 1000W and hold my breath" moments to work the tough ones!)
K1JEK Cobra Ultralight Sr. inverted vee
Array Solutions K9AY
WriteLog
Screwdrivers, scraped knuckles and burnt lightning protectors
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
______________________________________________
3830 mailing list
3830@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/3830
|