CQ 160-Meter Contest, CW
Call: W4EF
Operator(s): W4EF
Station: W4EF
Class: Single Op HP
QTH: CA
Operating Time (hrs): 29.5
Summary:
Total: QSOs = 928 State/Prov = 59 Countries = 21 Total Score = 240,480
Club: Southern California Contest Club
Comments:
Rig: Ten-Tec Omni 6+ w/Inrad Roofing Filter
Amp: Drake L-7 (~1100 Watts Output)
Antenna: 46' Top-Loaded Vertical w/28 100' long radials
Software: TRlog 6.78
Power Source: 2 Honda EU2000i Generators Connected in Parallel
I setup field day style on the north shore of Koehn
dry lake bed north of Mojave, California. Thanks to
Earl Cunningham, K6SE for helping me get permission
to use this site. Earl has used this site in the past
to make some very good scores in the various 160 meter
contests, so I was very happy when said I could operate
there.
I got to the site on Thursday morning so that I could
get setup early and be rested up for the contest. I
made the mistake of ignoring the wind direction when I
parked my truck (my TX antenna installs on a hitch
mounted hinge fixture). Before the contest I had
lengthened the antenna from 45' to 58' to improve the
radiation resistance. Initial attempts to raise the
antenna failed, so I shortened it from 58' to 50' thinking
that the additional weight of the longer antenna was the
problem. Still couldn't get it up at 50', so I went back
to the original configuration at ~46' that I had used in
previous efforts and I failed again. Then it finally
dawned on me that the problem wasn't the additional weight
of the longer vertical, but rather the windload from the
steady breeze blowing against the antenna (duh!!). When
I turned the truck around so that the antenna would
hinge with the wind in my favor, it went right up and
not a moment too soon as the sun was getting very close
the horizon (Murphy bullet #1 dodged successfully). I
spent the next 3 hours untangling top hat wires in the
dark using my Maglite flashlight taped to the roof rack
of my truck as a spotlight. Finally got the wires
untangled and was able to fire up around 10:00 PM only
to discover that thunderstorm static crashes were S9
+20dB. My heart sank as I hadn't brought any directional
RX antennas to the site. If this summer like
thunderstorm static persisted through the contest, I
would be toast. After goofing around for a few hours
I flipped the switch and went to bed.
Got back up around 4:30 AM and the band sound much
better (Murphy bullet #2 dodged - maybe). I was able
to work VK6ABL who had a great signal coming through.
This made me feel pretty good as I only had two radials
down at the time. Later I ran into WA6CDR/M7 who was
working 160 CW while motoring to NA5NM in New Mexico (he
was passing through Tucson at the time). Didn't hear
much else so I went back to bed for a while. Got up
Friday morning and set to work getting all the radials
down. Laid down a total of twenty-eight 100' radials.
Probably overkill considering that I was sitting on
top of almost pure salt, but I didn't want any
compromises (the radiation resistance of my top loaded
vertical is only about 7 ohms) and the radials are
pretty easy to lay down. I got some more rest in the
early afternoon and had a few Spam sandwiches before
the contest (gourmet in comparison to the Fritos I had
been munching on).
With 12 minutes to go before the start of the contest
I was congratulating myself on being ready ahead of
time for a change and the fact that everything was
working okay. At this point I decided to touch up the
tuning on the Drake L-7 just to make sure it was good
when the unthinkable happened. The amp started arcing
and the output dropped to zero and stayed there -
"Oh s&#t!!". Prior to leaving, I had agonized about
whether or not to bring a spare rig and amplifier. I
was trying to keep things simple this year, but I figured
I'd hate myself if I'd gone through all the work of
the setup only to have my rig or amplifier fail, so
thankfully at the last minute I pulled my other L-7 and
power supply out of my home station setup and put it in
the truck. What could have been a disaster (I consider
running low power on 160 a disaster - hi) turned into a
5 minute swap job (whew!!). Murphy bullet #3 dodged
successfully.
Once I got going, the first night of the contest went
off without a hitch. The Omni 6+ with the new Inrad
roofing filter proved to be bulletproof and with the
cascaded 250 Hz IF filters I was able to pull out weak
signals pretty effectively between all the S9+ CQ
machines. My hamshack for the weekend was a small Coleman
tent which got pretty cold during the night despite
multiple layers of clothing (on the second night I
put my legs inside a sleeping bag which did a much
better job of keeping my feet warm than my hiking
boots). At 0411 UTC I logged KG4SB for my country #100
on Topband (yeah, finally!!). At 0715 UTC I heard some
California big guns calling someone on 1813.5 KHz.
The station was very weak, but I was able to pull out
a "5nn ON", so I figured it must be John ON4UN. This
was a bit frustrating, but not terribly surprising.
One of the few downsides of the Koehn site are the
fairly steep mountains towards Europe (~ +6 degrees
visual horizon). One of the stations calling John
was Lee W6BH who operates a remote base on a mountaintop
near Anza, California. Lee has one of the best DXing
QTH's in California, so I didn't feel too bad that
I couldn't hear what he was hearing (Lee runs a 4
square on 160 meters). By morning I had all states
worked sans North Dakota and I had equaled my previous
years score in just one day. The biggest DX thrill of
the contest came at sunrise on Saturday morning when
RX4HZ answered my CQ for my 101st country and my first
zone 16. It was time to get some sleep.
On Saturday afternoon before I got back to the contest,
I decided I would try to get the rig control interface
between the Omni 6+ and Trlog working so that I would
be able to use the bandmap more effectively to S&P on
Saturday night/Sunday morning. My laptop runs Windows
XP, so to run TRlog I was booting from a DOS formatted
CD rom and running Trlog on a USB thumbdrive (thanks
to KD4D for figuring all this out). To get the serial
interface working I needed read the TRlog manual which
is in PDF format, so I needed to pull out the CDROM and
reboot into Windows XP. I pulled out the CDROM and laid
it carefully on top of the amplifier. I had intended to
burn a back-up of this CDROM, but I ran out of time, so
I was very careful not to scratch this one as it was my
only copy. When I left the tent for a few minutes to
get something from the truck, the wind kicked up all
of sudden. When I returned to the tent I found the
CDROM on the ground. I thought - oh no!! - if this CDROM
is scratched I'll be logging night # 2 on paper. I
carefully cleanup up the CD with a clean handkerchief
and shoved it back into the laptop. Much to my relief
the laptop booted okay (Murphy bullet #4 successfully
dodged).
Night # 2 started out much as the same as the first.
Winds had been pretty calm during most of the day
Saturday, but they kept picking up as the night wore on.
By about 10 PM, the winds were really starting to roar
and the windward side of my tent was starting to blow
over into and against the operating table. As the winds
picked up, it got so bad that I had to move the laptop
on to my lap and I had to scrunch up in the downwind
corner of the tent as the windward side of the tent
was darn near horizontal with the only thing keeping
it vertical was the my stack of equipment which was
getting bounced around like an airplane tray table
during spat of mid-air turbulence. This went on for
several hours (it felt like forever). The flapping of
the tent cover made it hard to hear anything (I had the
volume on the Omni 6+ fully clockwise at that point)
and I kept staring at the SWR meter just waiting for
the reading to go to infinity when the wind took my
transmit antenna out. Finally around midnight the winds
died down. When I took a break to fuel the generators,
I discovered that the wind had broken one of the fiberglass
ridge poles on my tent (I spliced it with a spare guy stake
and some electrical tape). The antenna had survived,
however, and appeared no worse for the wear. Back to
business.
I was hoping to break the 1000 QSO barrier, but ultimately
the DXer in me won out and I ended up spending probably
more time than I should have on Sunday morning trying to
work BA4RF (country #102 and my 30th CQ zone on 160).
After several frustrating attempts, I came back to his
frequency around sunrise and got him when his signals
peaked up quite a bit. I finished the contest around
1600 UTC very satisfied with 928 QSOs in the log 80 mults
and 240,480 points - a respectable score for a west coast
station using a 46' tall antenna.
At this point I immediately started to tear everything
down. I tried to keep a leisurely pace as I was already
pretty exhausted, but it still felt like hard work.
The last guy stake came out of the ground reluctantly
with much coaxing from my sledge hammer just as the
sun dipped below the western horizon. I felt pretty
alert for the first 30 miles or so, but about the time
a hit Rosamond, Ca the adrenaline from the sledge
hammer swinging had worn off and my head started to
bob. I tried rolling down the window and letting the
cold desert air hit my arm. This immediately raised
my alertness level, but I figured I would have
hypothermia by the time I reached Los Angeles, so I did
the smart thing and got off the road (thanks to Denny's
in Palmdale for letting me sleep in their parking lot
for 2 hours).
Thanks to everyone for the QSOs and congratulations
to W2VJN, K7TJR, AC6DD, K6NR et al for their FB west
coast SOHP scores. I'd be curious how my signal
sounded both strength wise and quality wise. I've seen
mixed reviews on the Omni 6+ in terms of key clicks.
When I tested mine at home it didn't click noticeably
but it did sound a little "thumpy" on the low-side of
the carrier, so I am curious if this showed up on the
air at all. Also if you called me and I didn't hear you
please let me know. Perhaps I could have benefited from
some directional receive antennas despite the low-noise
floor at the operating site.
73, Mike W4EF..................................
DX Mults Worked (21):
BY
C6
CM
CU2
EA8
HI9
JA
KG4
KH6
KL7
KP2
KP4
PJ2
UA (RX4HZ)
UA0
V26
V31
VP9
XE
ZF
ZL
Multipliers heard but not worked:
CT3FN
ON4UN (I think)
160
---
USA calls = 727
VE calls = 59
N.A. calls = 19
S.A. calls = 1
Euro calls = 2
Afrc calls = 1
Asia calls = 8
JA calls = 101
Ocen calls = 10
Total calls = 928
1. Ca 133
2. JA 101
3. Wa 49
4. Oh 30
5. Tx 29
6. Va 28
7. Az 27
8. Ny 25
9. Mn 25
10. Fl 22
11. Co 22
12. Pa 20
13. Mi 20
14. Or 19
15. Il 19
16. On 19
17. Tn 17
18. Md 16
19. Bc 15
20. Ga 15
21. Ut 13
22. Mo 13
23. Nc 12
24. Nv 11
25. Ct 11
26. Ab 11
27. Nm 10
28. Al 10
29. In 10
30. Nj 10
31. Nh 9
32. Wi 8
33. KH6 8
34. Ok 7
35. Sc 7
36. Wv 7
37. Ia 7
38. UA9 7
39. Ar 6
40. La 6
41. Mt 6
42. Id 5
43. Ks 5
44. Ms 5
45. Ky 5
46. Ma 5
47. XE 5
48. Qc 4
49. Me 4
50. Wy 4
51. Sk 3
52. Sd 3
53. Ne 3
54. Nf 3
55. KL 3
56. Nd 3
57. KP2 2
58. De 2
59. Ri 2
60. CU 2
61. ZL 2
62. VP9 1
63. V3 1
64. KP4 1
65. PJ2 1
66. C6 1
67. Dc 1
68. EA8 1
69. CM 1
70. Pe 1
71. KG4 1
72. HI 1
73. Vt 1
74. UA 1
75. V2 1
76. ZF 1
77. Mb 1
78. Lb 1
79. Ns 1
80. BY 1
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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