ARRL Sweepstakes Contest, CW
Call: VO2AC
Operator(s): VE3FU VO2AC
Station: VO2AC
Class: Multi-Op LP
QTH:
Operating Time (hrs):
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160:
80:
40: 14
20: 52
15: 33
10:
------------
Total: 99 Sections = 44 Total Score = 8,712
Club:
Comments:
Well, that didn't go as planned. Everything was working during CQWW SSB and I
was looking forward to Sweepstakes CW as I had more time to spend in the
contest. Sometime after CQWW SSB the SWR became extremely high on 160m, 80m,
40m, and 15m on the HF9V. Not being able to physically be there and triage the
problem is extremely frustrating. My Father did the best he could based on my
instructions (changing capacitors, moving the feed point to bypass the 160m
loading coil, disconnecting the coax from the base of the HF9V and putting a
dummy load on the end, etc), but nothing we did made any difference. In the
end, the SWR was too high on 160m and 80m for the internal tuner on the TS-480
to handle. It wasn't much better on 40m, but at least the TS-480 internal
tuner could handle it. Unfortunately the noise level was really high on 40m
and I couldn't hear very many stations. It's very discouraging to see a band
map full of stations and not be able to work them. I tried calling CQ, was
spotted by the Reverse Beacon Network, but only a few made it above the noise.
15m was unusually quiet and sounded like an open ended coax. The internal tuner
would provide a match about 50% of the time, and when it did I could watch the
SWR meter jump all over the place, from 1:1 to over 3:1, every time I
transmitted. The high winds all weekend probably had something to do with
that. 20m and 10m were the only bands that didn't need the internal tuner, but
I never heard anything on 10m. 20M was going OK, but I noticed a lot of people
were asking for repeats on almost everything. At first I attributed it to
condx, but when I listened in VE3 to my transmissions it was hit or miss
whether or not anything was being sent correctly. Although the sidetone
sounded correct, the RF I heard in VE3 had dits or dahs missing from
characters, characters were run together with no spacing, etc. (This might
have been happening on the other bands also but I couldn't hear myself well
enough to tell). I tried resetting the controllers on both ends multiple times
but the problem was still there. I don't know if it was the latency / timing
with the “high” speed internet up there, or RFI (possibly the same issue
causing the high SWR on the other bands). Either way, it's an expensive trip
there to diagnose it in person :=)
In the end, the frustrations became too much and I didn't put in nearly as much
time as I had hoped.
I apologize in advance if issues on my end cause a busted QSO, or worse yet
cost you the NL mult. Hopefully you were able to work one of the other NL
stations on. I heard VO1BQ, VO1HP, and VO1MP.
At least I was able to set the Muli-Op Low Power record for NL, unless someone
else entered the same category this weekend :=)
73,
Chris VE3FU / VO2AC
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