JARTS WW RTTY Contest
Call: VE7ASK
Operator(s): VE7ASK
Station: VE7ASK
Class: Single Op LP
QTH:
Operating Time (hrs):
Summary:
Band QSOs Pts Mults
------------------------
80: 9 27 7
40: 47 125 21
20: 100 280 36
15: 90 244 32
10: 75 190 23
------------------------
Total: 321 866 119 Total Score = 103,054
Club:
Comments:
I knew I would have a great time, and I did. I was mostly happy with my score in
this one. My mults could have been higher, I guess. Missed some time fixing
computer gear, napping (twice) and travelling to a kid's hockey game 60 miles
away on Sunday afternoon (bailed out with 103,000 points and 3.5 hours to go, so
he could play goalie).
At least it was a beautiful drive through autumn colors, and my son's team won
14-1, hi hi. Still, as I froze in the stands I thought of all the ops having a
great JARTS run to the finish. And I spent some time wondering how I could turn
the ice rink's soaring, massive steel rafters into antenna elements. (You've all
done the same thing, I know it.)
OK, back to the contest. I hit 200 Qs in the first 24 hours. I thought 400 might
be possible, barring interruptions. Alas, I finished with 321 -- still better
than any performance ever in any mode, except the CQWW RTTY last month. The
great news for me is that I did this from home.
This contest was one gigantic antenna experiment.
At the end of September, for CQWW RTTY I drove for an hour to a farm to use an
extended lazy-H at 70 feet, and a G5RV at about 80 feet. There, I managed 398 Qs
over 30 hours of operating. I was in my glory, working just about everything I
could hear on Day 2. I was ruined for low antennas once I heard and worked all
those formerly weak EUs (and Africa, too). I've never had a snowball's chance at
them when using a low doublet in my back yard at home.
Fast forward three weeks. I have been slowly building a hex-style 2-element,
5-band beam antenna for the past many months. It was on the ground at the top of
the driveway until a week ago. With JARTS only days away, I got up the courage
to put it in the air -- the 20M elements are at about 27 feet, hoisted on a
push-up mast. I worried the neighbors would complain, but they haven't. Yet.
In the days before JARTS, the hex antenna allowed me to work lots of DX and hear
countries I have only read about before. I knew I had something better than the
G5RV. Granted, the hex isn't comparable to even a three element tribander in
performance, but it's better than the dipoles and doublets I've been using till
now. It's made of bamboo, wires and hose-clamps -- cheap and only 20 lbs. in the
air, turned with a TV rotator. JARTS and November's CQWW CW are the two big
proving grounds for this spider's web. I now have a feel for the antenna, and
can hardly wait for the next contest to try some more.
Some photos and lots of info about my antenna project can be found at the Yahoo
"HEX-BEAM" group.
My JARTS highlights were:
=========================
Working 100 QSOs on 20M (my goal was to do that on at least one of 20/15/10)
Working Morocco -- not once, but twice! (Thanks CN8KD and CN8LY)
Working EA9IB in Melilla.
Working FS/K7ZUM -- Ken doing a FB job with the pileup from St. Martin. (And
extra FB because he heard me).
Being called by 3F8FDA, using a special callsign commemorating the 153rd
anniversary of Aguadulce, Panama. A one-day only call, I think. That's neat.
Being called by RK6BZ (and then hitting the wrong key on the "TNX" so MMTTY
started to send "RK6BZ sri QSO before")... hope he had jumped away by then, hi.)
Using MMTTY for the first time. Sure liked it. Can hear a pin drop. I have to be
more careful with macro key assignments. I left the "name of key to use" field
blank on one macro as I was setting up. Every time I hit the space bar I started
sending an exchange report, which isn't so good when you're trying to type a
quick message to someone. Took me a while to figure it out.... Solution: a
no-key macro should be set to "null." (Both MMTTY and the MMJARTS post-contest
reporting software worked like a charm.)
Actually working a run of stations (twice: once with eastern Ws; once with JAs).
That's only happened for me once or twice before. Sure is fun!
Working Mike KH6ND, Don AA5AU, and Jim AD6WL on five bands. Had AC6JT, AH6OZ,
JF1PJK, JS3CTQ, N6EU, W4UK, W7WW and W9HLY on four bands. 80M was mostly a loss
from here, with just 9 Qs and 7 mults.
Hearing and working VE6YR -- loud. No mooing. (See his RTTY Sprint post --
http://lists.contesting.com/_3830/2002-October/041815.html). In our final
contact, Bob told me he had just worked VE2ASK and thought it was me for a
moment. Our ages helped tell us apart, hi.
Working May WA1EHK in CT three times. Nice to see a few 00s in the age category
(EN7Z was another, though we didn't connect both ways well enough to log).
Working all W call areas on 20 and 15. Missed W3 on 40M and W2 on 10M.
Loudest station, everywhere we met: Gotta be N6EU. KH6ND a close second (but not
far off).
Biggest disappointment: So few VK/ZLs heard. I worked ZL2AMI (thanks Bob),
VK3DBQ, VK4UC, and VK6GOM. Nice signals from all, but that was it.
Biggest surprise: I was wondering why the G5RV was working much better (lower
SWR) for 80 and 40 on Saturday night. On Sunday morning, my seven-year-old son
informed me that his big brother (nine years old) "ran over that big black
thing" with his bike on Saturday afternoon. Turns out the coax choke near the
garden had, upon impact with a bicycle wheel, come off its 6-inch PVC form. The
RG-8 had spiralled out across the lawn toward the house. I will try it without
the choke now and see how it goes.
My 321 Qs is a vast improvement over any previous effort from home. I have a
long way to go and a lot yet to do -- my 80/40 antenna (that ol' G5RV) isn't the
best bet -- but the setup is getting better. Time is running out. Soon it'll be
too cold and too dark after work to do much outside and I'll be forced to stay
in and operate all the wires I have strung up. Or stand over the kids as they do
their homework. They'd rather help dad find countries on the big map.
Next investment, if I can somehow convince the XYL that they're for the kids:
filters for the FT920. Quite often, those linear amplifiers and stacked yagis
climbed right inside my receiver and started kicking things around, hi. Love the
920 in general; don't enjoy the easily swamped front-end without the filters on
a busy band. I know my score would have been substantially better with an INRAD
filter or two to tidy things up. Maybe I'll trade in the nine-year-old's
bicycle, hi.
I sure have a blast with these contests. Thanks to everyone for the contacts.
See you in the next one!
73, Bud VE7ASK
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