Here is the more complete story from NK7U as promised in the
original score posting on 3830. As reference we operated M/S
as we did in 1996. Our operators were: NK7U/Joe, K7ZO/Scott
and the author of this, K7MK/Jim, N7BZ/Elwood, and W7ZRC/Rod.
It is fun to be able to reply after seeing the postings and
stories from the others and get a relative sense of the
contest. Though that is a story in itself in that for some
reason my reflector e-mail from CQ-Contest and 3830 virtually
disappeared from the 23rd of October on. Kind of like
propagation for us on Saturday, but that is the story about
to unfold. Luckily I could view the missing messages on the
archives at the www.contesting.com site.
This year I am going to organize the story a little
different. Rather than a running chronology like the
fantastic K3ZO stories I am going to cover it in chapters
devoted to Preparation, 6 Band by Band accounts, and then
some final thoughts on the results. So here goes.
Preparation
===========
Like most serious contesters, NK7U/Joe, views CQWW as the big
event of the year. When I happened to chat with the 10M
operator at W3LPL on Sunday (hey I had to get Zone 5 somehow)
he relayed a message from Frank as to: "Shouldn't Joe be
getting ready for the World Series?" I think to Joe, CQWW is
the World Series of contesting.
This year's work at the NK7U station was a combination of
maintenance and new construction. Probably more maintenance
than we would have liked, but just as important.
Over the summer we finally hauled down the 3 element 80M to
figure out why it didn't work. Besides the obvious crossed
loading wire on the director we found that the leads from the
loading coils on both the director and reflector had broken.
The wire crossed in a high wind last New Year's Eve and the
loading coils we think broke due to vibration induced stress
cracks. These were repaired and the beam went back. I have
pictures of the whole operation which I will try to get onto
a web site somewhere. It is a pretty impressive sight.
Also over the summer we fixed some other damage from the big
New Year's eve story. The front director on the top of Joe's
4 stack of 5 element 20M beams aimed at Europe was literally
blown off. This was replaced. A later spring storm bent the
boom of the bottom antenna at a 90 degree angle right at the
boom to mast plate. Of course the boom then broke when we
tried to bend it back and Joe mended it with two large hose
clamps and a liberal amount of duct tape. And this is the way
that it is today.
The 4/4 40M stack also was damaged over the summer. We are
not absolutely sure how, but suspicions run high that one of
the local Ospreys landed too far out on an element and the
bending moment snapped the mounting bracket at the boom. So,
into CQWW we went with a 3.5/4 stack.
So much for the maintenance. In the new construction category
big improvements were made in the 15M and 10M antenna
capabilities. On 15m a second 6 element beam went up with a
stack match to give us a rotating 6/6. This setup played
extremely well into Asia on Sunday afternoon. On 10M we put
up the first beam on that band we have had in two years. And
since Joe thinks single beams get lonely we put up another to
give us a rotating 7/7 stack. The bottom one went up and was
wired in late on Thursday. During the subsequent checkout it
did not seem to load right and had a very high SWR. In a last
minute repair job that we completed at 23:45 on Friday we
found a broken solder joint in the balun matching block.
Every year we seem to have a crisis of some sort driving us
crazy right up to when the contest starts. And this year,
this was the one. We still have much to do on the 10 and 15M
capabilities at NK7U as the sunspots come back. Still to go
are another 10 and 15 to the existing stacks to give us 6/6/6
on 15M and 7/7/7 on 10M. We also have all the parts to put up
a 4/4/4/4 on both 10M and 15M for JA and 6/6/6/6 on both 10M
and 15M for EU. Also in the plans is another 6 element 20M
beam to give us 6/6/6 all on their own TIC rings.
Finally, also going up this year was a Force 12 160M rotating
dipole. For those of you that have not seen one they are an
amazing sight. Something like 104' long. Even at 190' it
still looks giant and makes the 5 element 20M beams look
puny. We only wish the 80/160M bands had been in better shape
this year so Joe could have put it though its paces. We
finally got it tuned up about 23:00 Saturday and had to
sacrifice an hour or so where we had no operators available
for the contest to do so.
One the inside of the shack, or the Honey House as it is
known since is was a former beekeepers shed we also did a
fair amount of work. All the new rotators and stack matches
were wired in and arranged for easy access. We moved the 20M
station into a separate side room where it could be all to
itself and away from the other two stations. The computer
network was checked out and the PacketCluster node rebuilt
after both the PC and the TNC died over the summer.
So, how did things go during the 1997 Big Show? On a band by
band basis:
10M
===
For us it was just great to have some 10M antennas back up in
the air. The band really helped out our multipliers as the 63
total QSOs we had added 47 multipliers. However, it was
definitely not a run band as it was never open to any
population center and we did not make a single JA QSO. We are
just too far north for this path. It was frustrating to think
that 5's were making 10M JA Q's and we didn't. We are used
to getting waxed by the 6 and 7 land stations in the
southwest, but 5's. Geez!. The closest we got to Europe was
EA8BH on Sunday and I think we were just the second Zone 3 in
his log. Of course we are too far west for this as the path
goes right through the aroural zone. We did not even work any
VK/ZL's and the farthest out into the Pacific we reached was
FK8GM. On Saturday, 10M was pretty poor just about everywhere
which mirrored the general pattern we had on 10-15-20.
Overall the contest started pretty hot until about 18:00 or
so Saturday and then everything seemed to go to sleep until
about 18:00 Sunday. Weird but that is when the A index soared
into the troposphere.
15M
===
Yes, there is light at the end of the no sunspot tunnel. 15M
was open to JA at the start of the contest and we jumped all
over it. K7MK cranked off 50Q's in the first 30 minutes. The
band closed at a pretty reasonable 1:30 UTC. However, a sense
of gloom and despair started settling in as we watched the
WWV reports on Friday night. We were hoping for an even
better time on Saturday but not a single Q was made on 15M
into Europe or JA on that day courtesy of Mr. Sol. It behaved
much more like 10M of late than what we had expected.
Openings to the Caribbean and South America is all we could
do. As Sunday rolled around and the WWV reports seemed little
changed we expected more of the same. By this time we were
beginning to feel like the family that plans and looks
forward all year to a big vacation in the Caribbean only to
get there and have a monster hurricane wipe everything out.
And it started that way. Then about 18:15 tantalizing hints
of change started to appear. With NK7U at the Mult station he
worked 6V1C. Quickly followed by DF9ZP, CT1DIZ, EA8KK, and
S97A. At 20:45 he worked HB9H. This is the afternoon opening
that is common on the west coast which we have not seen for a
while. It also happens on 20M and often we work nordic
stations in the middle of the JA runs. So the band seemed to
be bouncing back, slowly but surely. Then at 21:00 straight
up it was like someone turned on the light switch and it
opened big time to JA, SE Asia, and VK/ZL. Joe worked the
band as hard as I have ever seen him in the 5 years I have
been contesting at NK7U. When the bell rang 3 hours later at
0:00 Joe had put just short of 300 Q's into the log and was
quoted as saying: "That was the most fun I have had in
years". When I had packed left for the drive home to Boise
and hour later he was still wired over the experience. If
this is the sign of things to come I think I will stick with
contesting for a while. Wow.
20M
===
Probably our biggest disappointment was on 20M. The Friday
night JA run was predictable. We moved to 20M after 15M
closed and worked about 150Q's in an hour and forty-five
minutes. The band closed about 5:00. On Saturday the band
took a long time to really open to EU. About 15:30 we were
able to work the big guns. At 15:45 we made 20M the run
station but just S&P'd for the next hour making 30 or so Q's.
At 16:45 I found a small hole at 14,154.5 and started to run.
However, the real problem was noise toward EU. And, we are
not talking about S3 noise that covers up the 2nd and 3rd
tier stations, we are talking about S9 noise that covers up
just about everything and turns operators brains into mashed
potatoes. Though we had to stick it out. Well, not me. I
turned the mic over to W7ZRC our master EU run wizard and he
pulled 120 or so Q's out of the noise over the next 2 hours.
Surprisingly, the band opened to JA at 19:15 which seemed
really early to us as it was still almost 2 hours before dawn
in Japan. Other than the early opening though nothing out of
the ordinary happened Saturday night and it closed up about
5:45. As Sunday dawned I convinced Joe to take a seat at the
20M station and run for a while. He managed to sit there for
about 15 minutes before the noise drove him out. I heard him
have a few choice words and left with handi-talkie and noise
antenna in hand determined to find out what was going on. He
came back a half hour later with no clear culprit identified
and I then left with him. As I drove his pickup he sat in the
back aiming the antenna at power poles, houses, etc. I am
sure the locals thought he was nuts. We are still not sure
what the source is but we found a noisy power pole and a
house with a spaghetti of haphazard wiring strung around it.
This noise problem has been building for the last year or
though Joe had not experienced it himself. I think he will
track it down. Because of the noise and the time we spent
hunting it down we made only about 40 EU Q's on Sunday.
Overall are 20M Q and Mult totals were down this year
compared to last. Partly this is form spending more time on
15M but it is due in large part to the noise. Some of the
mults we missed on 20M included: CT EA9, GD, GI, GM, IS, OK,
OY, LY, LX,...
40M
===
Other than we were playing with 3.5/4 instead of 4/4 things
were not much changed on 40M compared to the last CQWW and
ARRL. We had no Europe propagation until the last 30 minutes
of the contest when N7BZ worked SN2B, EA5PY, RW6AWT, HA9RE,
and IG9GSF. Total Q's were up about 30% over last year's CQWW
as propagation to JA was little better and we learn more
about running split into JA on 40M. It is definitely more of
a challenge than running on simplex. We had a total of 158Q's
on 40M with JA. We look back on our 1996 ARRL total of 325Q
JA 40M Q's and wonder how we did it.
80/160M
=======
For those of you who really want to catch Joe on the air, as
opposed to one of us, the best place to find him is on
80/160. They are his favorites and with the 80M beam fixed
and the 160M dipole up he had big hopes. However, the bands
turned out to be really punky. High noise and poor
propagation made things hard and may have even scared
operators away. By Sunday morning Joe was really disappointed
in 80/160M saying they were the worst he had ever seen them.
We had only 9 JA's on 80M and no Europeans. So we echo the
comments from KC7V, OK1RI, DL0UM, OT7T/ON4UN, and others that
there was just something wrong with these bands this year.
Our QSO and Mult totals show it and they were down 30-50%
from last year with about the same amount of time put into
them.
1996 to 1997 Score Comparison
=============================
During both 1996 and 1997 we ran M/S from NK7U's so we have a
relative comparison, not withstanding the 4 or so hours of
unplanned down time this year due to construction and noise.
Anyway here it is, the QSO counts are for non-zero pointers
only.
1996 1997
Q's Zones Countries Q's Zones Countries
160M 31 11 15 17 9 12
80M 115 19 45 67 16 33
40M 179 26 59 234 25 56
20M 780 34 119 642 32 103
15M 88 18 47 394 28 65
10M 0 0 0 59 14 33
Totals
QSO Points 3393 4025
Zones 108 124
Countries 285 302
Score 1.3M 1.7M
Of the 1997 Mults: 60 Zones and 153 Countries were from our
Run station and 64 Zones and 149 Countries were from our Mult
station. I don't the numbers in front of me, but I think the
mix was higher for the Mult station last year.
Bottom line our score was up about 30% from last year, which
does not seem bad. However, we had kind of hoped on breaking
2M which is why the 20M noise problem, unplanned downtime,
and poor propagation left us feeling unsatisfied. In fact at
20:00 it was beginning to look like we would not even beat
last year's score. It took the fantastic 15M run of Joe's to
push us over the edge. During the last 4 hours we added over
500K points to our score though the combination of QSO points
and Mults. This goes to show the importance of the last few
hours of the contest. I have some more detailed thoughts on
this that I will send out later.
That's all for now. I would be glad to answer any questions
anyone has about the story. Otherwise, look for NK7U on the
air in upcoming contests. If we worked you in CQWW thanks for
the QSO and we'll see you down the log.
Scott/K7ZO k7zo@micron.net
--
FAQ on WWW: http://www.contesting.com/3830faq.html
Submissions: 3830@contesting.com
Administrative requests: 3830-REQUEST@contesting.com
Problems: owner-3830@contesting.com
|