CQ WORLD WIDE DX CONTEST -- 1996
Call: W4ATC Location: NCSU, Raleigh, NC, USA
Mode: SSB Category: Multi Single
Ops: KS4XG (Pete, 46), N3QYE (Jim, 32), KT4LD (Andrew, 16)
Score to be credited to Potomac Valley Radio Club
BAND QSO QSO PTS PTS/QSO ZONES COUNTRIES
---- --- ------- ------- ----- ---------
160 0 0 0.00 0 0 nothing
80 49 99 2.02 11 29 Vee @ 80'
40 83 220 2.65 18 50 2 Dipoles @ 75'
20 460 1094 2.38 36 138 TH6 @ 85'
15 189 529 2.80 22 69 TH6 @ 85'
10 17 48 2.82 5 8 TH6 @ 85'
---------------------------------------------------
Totals 798 1990 2.49 92 294 => 768,140
Total operating time: 48
Run station: IC735 + 4x811A amp putting out 600(80) to 950(20) watts
Rad Shack DSP, CT 9 with rig control.
Mult station (receive only): TS820S, 15 and 20m Dunestars.
Excuses: A dog ate our cookbook.
Forgot to stock up on pork rinds.
Story:
This started out a couple months back when Jim invited me to use the
North Carolina State University club station for a single op CQWW
effort. The club station is at the top of one of the EE dept buildings,
a 60 foot high monster with an overall roof area of just under an acre but
with a big "hole" over a courtyard in the middle. Jim had overseen getting a
TH6 mounted to an elevator shaft extending above the roof some months before
and it seemed that with a few clever wire antennas and an amplifier I'd be
able to get out pretty well and get some good experience. (I've been
licensed about 1 1/2 years and consider myself a contesting novice).
After starting on the wires Jim expressed interest in taking part in the
contest so we aimed for a Multi/Single effort and we steered the next
couple of PVRC meetings to take place at NCSU to be sure to get him
in as a member. (Jim's been licensed for about 3 years but has less
contesting experience than me). As I schemed up an antenna strategy and
tried to wear out my copy of EZNEC we began building supports on the roof and
I searched for an amplifier. After getting great advice from the contesting
reflector about a choice I found a Clipperton-L and did an overnight drive
to Atlanta and back to get it to NCSU in time to try out during the Cal QSO
party for a shakedown. I wish I'd looked "under the hood" before driving
it back, however, as when I got the thing home at 4am I popped the lid off
only to find portions of the bandswitch were missing (cooked). The nice
thing about driving 800 miles in one session is that it makes you tired
enough to withstand this kind of disappointment <g>.
KI4HN heard of our predicament and lent us his Clipperton for the latter half
of CQP and we had no trouble learning to use it. The TH6 accepted the power
without complaint and no side effects with other equipment were noted. But
after a week we were once again amp-challenged as my efforts to get my
Clipperton repaired didn't work out and I had to return it for a cheerful
refund. At this point Jim had arranged for the NCSU club to buy an amp from an
estate sale. When it came out that the amp was homebrew many alarm bells rang
in my head but I only voiced moderate concern to Jim at the time. I wish now
I'd used the line from the Monty Python film ("Run Away! Run Away!"). When the
amp arrived at the school's station I put pursuit of my own amp on hold and
concentrated on the antennas.
Meanwhile the antenna plan before the "big SWR letdown" was as follows:
Run station:
10-20 meters - TH6
40 meters - dipole facing E/W, extended double zepp to Europe @ 75 feet
80 meters - two element wire yagi to Europe at 75 feet
160 meters - punt (could not find anything that played with EZNEC)
Mult station:
all bands - 102' dipole (with a major 20m lobe toward Europe) @ 75 feet
We put up four 21 foot poles with pulleys on top along the roof perimeter wall
with brackets in such a way that wires strung from the two pairs would be
exactly broadside toward northern Italy. We didn't spend much money on those
poles and were over-optimistic about the load they would take. Turned out the
pull from the weight of an 80m wire dipole and its feedline was bent them like
pole vault poles. So the EDZ wasn't going to work without reinforcement which
we added the next weekend. But the bad news was that the 80m dipole wouldn't
tune properly. It's feedpoint impedance was "impossible" until I realized what
a massive collection of metal was positioned close to it. But since we didn't
have a tuner that would handle high power we had to have a low SWR, so we were
stuck. The wire yagi for 80 went out the window and we went to plan B, which
was a simple dipole positioned closer to the middle of the roof so it was
mostly over the courtyard.
The EDZ couldn't be finished until a few days before the contest. Big surprise
number two came as I found that the matching section and inductive stub
combination that EZNEC predicted would give a 150khz bandwidth at the 2:1 SWR
points turned into a 40khz bandwidth in the real world of many I-beams. Darn.
In the meantime we'd had an NC chapter PVRC meeting and Howie, K4PQL had
encouraged us to make the 80m antenna an inverted V hung from close ot the
TH6 tower. This provided to be a great idea although it took a lot of
compromises to baby the SWR down to 2.3 (around 3800). After flirting with
the idea of trimming and folding the EDZ up into a delta or diamond loop we
looked at our watches and simply took it down and planned for a dipole to go in
front of and slightly below the 80m V by running a support line from the tower
to a corner of the roof. I told myself at the time (Thursday night) that
since I was knocking off work after lunch on Friday there would be time to
make the support out of #10 THHN and both support the dipole from above
by a short length of dacron and use the #10 as a 1/4wl sloper for 160.
Meanwhile on the amplifier front an initial attempt to run it resulted in a
blown capacitor. A trip to the local amp repair shop got not just a
replacement but a number of improvements and a keying relay that would isolate
us from the 120v DC used by the amp's relay. Unfortunately we missed an
instruction and blew another capacitor. It went back to the shop for what
we hoped would be a simple fix but instead the amp was there until
late Friday afternoon. When it arrived at the station mention was made of
a problem with 15m. I assumed at the time this was something that could be
avoided with care.
As the final few days of preparation were taking place we added another
operator. Andrew had asked about planned CQWW activity in North
Carolina on the contesting reflector and I sent him an invitation to the
PVRC meeting. Just before the meeting he asked to join us for the contest
and after worrying for a second about the logistics we took him on
enthusiastically. Andrew's been licensed 4 years and contesting for 5,
with operating experience well beyond that of Jim and I. Around this time we
discovered the club's IC725 had a failed AF circuit from amp misadventure
#1 so we asked Andrew to bring his TS820S as a mult/backup rig.
The day of the contest I hauled the rest of my stuff to the university and
began building the stations. We'd decided the previous night to bag the EDZ
and just put up a second dipole for 40m. Meanwhile Jim was camped at the amp
repair shop and Andrew was in a neighboring town waiting for Jim to give him a
ride. So I built the second 40m dipole, mentally tossed the 160 antenna
back into the bit bucket and trimmed my nails with my teeth.
We finally got together around 5pm and the real adventure began. Between the
pressing need to erect the second 40m antenna and install a remote antenna
switch and the need to check out the amplifier in situ Jim and I had our hands
full as Andrew helped out wherever he could. I focused on establishing some
amp settings so Andrew would at least have the tribander and one 40m dipole
at the start of the contest. The amp wouldn't operate at all on 15 or 10 meters,
going into a fast self-cycling of the keying relay until the HV was turned
off. Lack of power on 10 didn't bother me but I was heartbroken about having
to operate barefoot on 15. I voiced concern but Jim dismissed it as no big
deal and Andrew laughed ("you don't need an amp on 15 meters"). However
I'm convinced that power on 15 meters for a few hours each day might have
helped us run effectively and gotten us to our goal of 1000 Qs.
This was about the time I realized the true meaning of the "multi" in
"multi/single" as our lack of experience working with each other under the
gun became very clear. I had really blown it big time, grossly overestimating
what we could accomplish before the contest started and I made things a
lot worse by changing my mind every hour as I realized we had to scale back
even more than I'd thought the previous hour. This stressed the hell out of
Jim and we both took turns snapping at Andrew. Luckily we all realized we
were in a feedback loop and lightened up and soon after we got the final
compromise antennas in place and the stress level dropped drastically. We had
no packet, no mult station, no backup computer, and it was soon time for Jim
and Andrew to hit the sack as Jim had to work at the university the next day
and I'd promised Andrew's folks he'd get some sleep. But thanks to Jim we had an
amp and good antennas for 40 and 80 and thanks to Andrew we had a lot of Q's
(albeit mostly 0 pointers up to the second hour when I spotted the CT
summary box and embarked on a campaign to convince him that US Qs are
worthless except as mults).
So they took off and I took over to troll 40 and 80 and then gathered up
initial mults on 20m. I had a few minutes of delightful fun playing leapfrog
with W1IHN as we raced up 20m meters doing S&P when it opened across Europe.
Throughout the contest I found myself consulting the detailed bandplan that
K3ZO had taken the time to make for us. I had to make adjustments for our
slight difference in antennas <g> but found Fred's information great as a
general guide.
But as I operated on 20m I noticed a growing fraction of the time I went deaf
when the amp was unkeyed and I had to slap the footswitch to get the receive
signal back. I thought about the keying relay being dirty but it was
brand new and sealed and this didn't jibe with the fact that it never happened
on 80 meters. I never figured out the cause of this and it was a plague
that got worse during Saturday and stuck with us on 20 and 40 for the rest of
the contest. But after a day or two to think about it I suspect I caused
this disaster too. The amp had no standby switch and I decided this was a
vital feature to prevent damage from operator error. So Friday afternoon
I cobbled a 'standby/operate' switch together and mounted it next to the
amp. This extended the keying line by about 18 inches and I suspect the RF
induction that may have caused the "minor problem on 15 meters" at the shop
was turned into a major problem at our station. However a few turns through
four big ferrite had no effect on the sensitivity to the problem, so I'm
left with doubt.
Andrew came back loaded for bear Saturday morning and got good results on
20 and 15 while I snoozed on the roof for 3 hours. It think it took 11 seconds
to fall asleep after I moved away from the TH6 "bird squatting zone" (direct
hit to the chest right after I laid down!).
Saturday afternoon got the packet station going
and we saw our first ever DX spots in realtime. We made good use of the spots
for a while but soon a flurry of rude language showed up on the packet
terminal. (We didn't know how to filter out all but spots). In the midst
of this a message scrolled by that ended with "de ks4xg". I was mystified
by this as it appeared somebody was pretending to be me. After more spots
came through a big argument seemed to break out on the packet followed by
very harsh language appeared and then connection went away as if the network
"plug" had been yanked. We checked the packet from time to time but didn't get
it running again until Sunday and at that point a different program was used
that didn't buffer the text. So we had to watch it and write down spots fast
before they were gone forever. The Sunday spots provided a handful of nice
mults but because of our various problems I'd describe our effort overall
as unassisted about 90% of the time. (Sorry PVRC! We know you were really
shoveling those spots to the southern fringe).
While the packet was working Jim got his first real shift on the radio and as
the contest progressed he became more and more eager to operate. As I could see
very early that my rate stunk compared to Andrew's and I was doing all the
late night hours I began giving up more and more time to the two of them and
I think we all ended up happy with the time we got. Actually the truth is that
Andrew wanted all 48 hours and never stopped looking for a way to jump in
the chair. He did tell me up front he is very competitive but I didn't
realize this had an implication for fellow team members <g>.
Saturday night Jim got the remote antenna switch working which meant I
wouldn't have to kill myself sprinting to the roof and back every time I
wanted to switch antennas for 40 and 80 meters. He also put a dummy load
in place so it was much more convenient to do tuning. Saturday night
we worked out a schedule that went to Sunday noon but then this went
out the window as Andrew made the case for an early morning Pacific
run on 20m (and of course wanted to do the run). So we went with this and
Jim used my sleeping bag as I helped Andrew. There followed the most
amazing 40 minutes of operating this newbie Ham has witnessed to date
as Andrew jumped onto the back of a Tiger. Here is his log verbatim:
27-Oct-96 0553 481 14.195 VK3DXI 59 30 3
27-Oct-96 0555 482 14.195 VK5GN 59 30 3
27-Oct-96 0556 483 14.195 A35RK 59 32 A3 3
27-Oct-96 0558 484 14.195 T30DW 59 31 T30 3
27-Oct-96 0559 485 14.195 YB9HML 59 28 28 YB 3
27-Oct-96 0559 486 14.195 VK6VE 59 29 29 3
27-Oct-96 0600 487 14.195 JR1BLX 59 25 3
27-Oct-96 0600 488 14.195 DU2HAZ 59 27 27 DU 3
27-Oct-96 0601 489 14.195 3W5FM 59 26 26 3W 3
27-Oct-96 0601 490 14.195 9M8TC 59 28 9M6 3
27-Oct-96 0602 491 14.195 ZL2VS 59 32 3
27-Oct-96 0602 492 14.195 ZL1AMO 59 32 3
27-Oct-96 0603 493 14.195 VK4QT 59 30 3
27-Oct-96 0603 494 14.195 VK7RX 59 30 3
27-Oct-96 0604 495 14.195 ZL1BOS 59 32 3
27-Oct-96 0604 496 14.195 VK0WH 59 30 VK0M 3
27-Oct-96 0605 497 14.195 KH0AA 59 27 KH0 3
27-Oct-96 0606 498 14.195 VR6DX 59 32 VR6 3
27-Oct-96 0606 499 14.195 FO5IW 59 32 FO 3
27-Oct-96 0607 500 14.195 ZL9GD 59 32 ZL9 3
27-Oct-96 0607 501 14.195 WP4U 59 08 KP4 2
27-Oct-96 0608 502 14.195 BV2VT 59 24 24 BV 3
27-Oct-96 0608 503 14.195 T33B 59 31 T33 3
27-Oct-96 0609 504 14.195 VK9XZ 59 29 VK9X 3
27-Oct-96 0609 505 14.195 NH2G 59 27 KH2 3
27-Oct-96 0610 506 14.195 KH3AF 59 31 KH3 3
27-Oct-96 0611 507 14.195 C21DJ 59 31 C2 3
27-Oct-96 0613 508 14.243 KH6FKG 59 31 3
27-Oct-96 0614 509 14.181 VU2JPS 59 22 22 VU 3
27-Oct-96 0615 510 14.203 9V1LR 59 28 9V 3
27-Oct-96 0616 511 14.185 UT0D 59 16 -DUPLICATE- 0
27-Oct-96 0617 512 14.180 VK9CR 59 29 VK9C 3
27-Oct-96 0618 513 14.203 JA1KSO 59 25 3
27-Oct-96 0618 514 14.220 BY1DD 59 24 BY 3
27-Oct-96 0619 515 14.221 HS0ZAK 59 26 HS 3
27-Oct-96 0620 516 14.225 AP2JZB 59 21 21 AP 3
27-Oct-96 0620 517 14.228 RA0LWZ 59 19 19 UA9 3
27-Oct-96 0621 518 14.237 JA9LJS 59 25 3
27-Oct-96 0621 519 14.237 P29P 59 28 P2 3
27-Oct-96 0622 520 14.231 FR5DX 59 39 39 FR 3
27-Oct-96 0623 521 14.236 V63T 59 27 V6 3
27-Oct-96 0623 522 14.236 XZ1N 59 26 XZ 3
27-Oct-96 0623 523 14.236 VS6BR 59 24 VS6 3
27-Oct-96 0624 524 14.236 T20U 59 31 T2 3
27-Oct-96 0626 525 14.267 VK8AAT 59 29 3
27-Oct-96 0626 526 14.253 JT1T 59 23 23 JT 3
27-Oct-96 0627 527 14.185 XE1NLD 59 06 2
27-Oct-96 0628 528 14.181 HC8N 59 10 HC8 3
27-Oct-96 0628 529 14.186 TI9JJP 59 07 TI9 2
27-Oct-96 0629 530 14.188 HK0/KH8AM 59 07 HK0/a 2
27-Oct-96 0630 531 14.181 5W1AU 59 32 5W 3
27-Oct-96 0630 532 14.181 V85LX 59 28 V8 3
27-Oct-96 0631 533 14.181 JL1UJG 59 25 3
After this Andrew slept in a student study lounge while I worked 40
and 80 and finished the mult station, which still hadn't been put online.
Had I known that the stub filters for the run station's amp would prove
ineffective I'd have bagged hopes of transmit capability and set up the
820 for receive only much earlier (sigh). By the time I had made the stubs
it was time to wake Jim up and so we tested them as he worked the 20m
opening to Europe. No effect at all, even though the Autek showed an
impedance of 0-1 ohms at the harmonic frequencies. But we could still listen
between the S5 "fuzz" bursts from the run station and we ended up making
a little use of of the 820 to check band activity and find the occasional
new mult.
I woke Andrew up so that both he and Jim got 4.5 hours sleep (the
"90 minute multiples" strategy that W1IHN stressed at the PVRC meeting was
VERY GOOD ADVICE). Then I konked out for 90 minutes and when I came back
they were making good progress on 15 meters with Jim knocking off
contacts at a high rate doing S&P. When the packet spots resumed later
in the day we worked hard to use them but once again thrashed over a
protocol that was effective and didn't distract the operator. There
followed a string of South American contacts on 15 and 20, then back to
Europe on 20. Jim got almost all the 10 meter mults before they went
back to 20, made a short visit to 40 and then stayed on 20 for the
remainder of the contest with a KH4 bagged at 2359. We listened to
3827.5 and tried to get our score listed but couldn't break the pileup
before jamming broke up the party.
It was clear that Andrew had a special knack for getting through. This
was best demonstrated after Jim had spent 3-4 minutes trying to bag
JW5VK (Z40, Svalbard) for one of the last double mults available to us
on 20 meters. We decided to let Andrew try to crack the pileup and sure
enough, by raising his voice to perfectly mimic a YL he punched through
in seconds.
As the contest wound down Jim and I reflected on the homebrew amp.
The receive de-sense and incessant need to slap the footswitch to
get our ears back had been a constant torture, but there was no doubt
the power had made a huge difference on the bands where the silly thing
would work at all. On the spur of the moment Jim changed my suggestion
of "R.F. Ubar" to "R.F. ubar alles" and we had named the beast.
When lending me his 'L KI4HN invited me to go to N4ZC for the contest,
saying that even a very green novice like me could be free of
embarrassment and learn a lot. This created one of the big conflicts of
my hobby thus far, as all my instincts told me that the N4ZC environment
was just exactly what I needed to improve my skills, even if came
from sweeping the floor and watching the other guys operate. However
I couldn't let N3QYE and the PVRC down and decided that hopefully I
can get another invitation next year. But this led me to read the
writeup of the N4ZC station in a recent issue of "NCJ" and I was struck
by Roger's philosophy of "grace and speed" and his use of a "cookbook" to
help with the operating procedures at the station. By the time CQWW
was over I was wishing I had been able to read that book, as it was
clear that the principle source of tension between the three of us
came from clumsy interactions that upset each guy's expectations about
the next minute, hour, or day. Any newcomers out there considering
a seat of the pants multi/single like we just did should strongly
consider doing a small contest together first to establish a working
relationship and sort out the protocols because multi/single does not
mean multi-singleop. And by all means, find the guys that know and
ask them many questions!
Our plan now is to QSL all the DX contacts with DX routes via the buro
after looking for routes for a month or so. The hope is that Jim's
successors at the university club will get pleasant surprises from far
away places in coming years that may encourage them to look beyond
their repeaters.
In summary: Wow!
Many thanks to K4PQL, KE3Q, W1IHN, KI4HN, K3ZO, AA4NC and others who
we might have forgotten who helped us out directly or through frequent
encouraging words both local and DX.
Regards,
Pete KS4XG
(with input from Jim and Andrew)
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