ARRL DX Contest, SSB
Call: N4TZ/9
Operator(s): N4TZ/9
Station: N4TZ/9
Class: SOAB LP
QTH: IN
Operating Time (hrs): 10
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 12 11
80: 49 35
40: 55 32
20: 133 55
15: 98 41
10: 28 11
-------------------
Total: 375 185 Total Score = 207,570
Club: Society of Midwest Contesters
Comments:
Because I broke a bone in my wrist 5 weeks ago helping N9RV start
his moving process, I missed the ARRL CW weekend entirely and
decided to use the ARRL Phone weekend to evaluate the progress
I had made in fixing some of the many problems I had encountered
in the CQWW CW weekend. I had constructed a third 10/15 yagi and
installed it on a TIC ring at 45' a week before the accident at
N9RV's. In addition, I had spent most of December on the outside
wiring issues with the six-pack and stack switches. However, the
inside wiring had been entiredly removed during troubleshooting,
and I found it extremely difficult to do the rewiring with only
one functional hand. Furthermore, the coaxes from the six-pack
had been "temporarily" dedicated to the 80m and 160m antennas
for to enable measurement of dump power from the shack. The
blizzard before the ARRL CW weekend left 3 feet deep drifts
of snow and ice on top of the neatly coiled prop-pitch rotor
cables outside the shack and the chief op and technician (me)
physically unable to dig them out and pull them into the shack.
Thus, the start of the contest Friday night found N4TZ with only
the 80 and 160 meter antennas connected through to the shack.
Also, it took me several hours, including the first hour of the
contest, to figure out how to rewire the microphone through the
W9XT card in the new Windows 95 computer to the Anti-Murphy box
from my NCJ article to the TopTen SO2R box to the TenTec RF
processor for the OMNI VI+. Thankfully, I have remote tuning
knobs for both TenTec radios so I could tune with a simple
horizontal rotation fingertip motion. I could not have tuned
a regular radio knob with the injured wrist. Typing is still
a challange, however.
Because of the casual nature of this weekend's operation, I was
able to more fully evaluate the station's antennas than in the
heat of the competition last fall. The 80m 4-square which I
erect each fall showed great directivity. However, the 160m
4-square I erected for the first time in November again was
disappointing. It is erected concentric with the 80m array,
but uses loaded elements. The loading was designed so that
the 160m elements would have minimal impact on the 80m array.
The 160m elements are 42' of 2" aluminum topped with a 10' PVC
conduit holding a loading coil and supporting 4- 15' sloping
top hat wires. Each of the elements were tuned within 5 kHz
of each other and had MFJ measured impedances of 17 or 18 ohms
(including ground losses) at resonance. However, the dump power
loss was at least 25% and as high as 50% across the band!
It was very difficult to see any directivity at all. Next year,
I'll go back to the full-sized wire vertical for 160m. Still,
I felt that my 100 watts into 600' of coax did pretty well,
with 10 countries in one hour on 160 and 30 countries on 75 in
two hours of S&P. The signals seemed unusually clear, with
relatively little QRM and QRN early both evenings on 160 and 80.
I was in bed by 11pm Friday night and spent most of Saturday
with normal household duties. However, I did find time to
reconnect one side of the six-pack's coaxes Saturday afternoon
so I had high band antennas for the rest of the contest.
After a good night's sleep, church, and watching "Throw Momma
from the Train" while cooking and eating Sunday lunch, I spent
about six sporadic hours on Sunday afternoon picking the low-
hanging fruit who called CQ. It was interesting how strong TI5N
and TI8II were on 10 and how they stayed in for several hours
while most of the other stations I heard on ten only lasted a
few minutes. I'm not sure whether the problem was spotlight
propagation, or the DX not going to 10 because the rate was
too low.
It's unreliable to extrapolate 10 hours of casual operating to
what might have been, especially when no operating was done
between 0350z and 1900z on Saturday nor between 0230z and
1545z Sunday, the normal high activity times. I'm looking
forward to a return to health and good weather in time for
the WPX tests.
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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