CQWW WPX Contest, CW - 2021
Call: VU2XE
Operator(s): VU2XE
Station: VU2XE
Class: SOSB20 LP
Class Overlay: Unassisted
QTH:
Operating Time (hrs): 11
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160:
80:
40:
20: 101
15: 1
10:
------------
Total: 102 Prefixes = 96 Total Score = 24,192
Club: VU Contest Group
Comments:
Due to lockdown, i was at my in-laws place (another coastal city of Udupi - 50
Km north of Mangalore). Just a week ago, VU2CDP messaged if I am participating
in WPX. Co-incidentally a near by friend- Sri VU2SBJ offered to drop power
supply and my rig (which I had left after last year's CQWW). All this inspired
me to think why not do a casual effort for WPX. My thought was more towards
making few contacts and do listening on bands.
"Where there is will, there is a way" - All certain done, just after I
recovered from recent covid19 and coming out of quarantine room, I went to
terrace to see metal roof. But surrounding, there were few buildings which were
higher than the terrace floor to west and north west. There was only one way to
metal roof via a small window in lift room. Fortunately, I had left my spider
pole and 60 ft coax roll last year as well. So all this showed some promise of
RF signals!.
Made call to Sri VU2SBJ and he arranged 20m dipole, straight key and power
supply couple of days to go for contest. I removed 6 sections (18-20 ft) from
spider pole to be able to push out of the window and made V formation antenna.
One arm spread on metal roof and second at angle of ~60deg (max I could do
because of obstacles). I did not had any antenna analyzer and had to rely on
TS590's SWR meter to check. SWR was higher than 1:5 and could not tune. It was
challenge to get the pole retracted back to room due to other machinery area in
the room. But somehow had to manage. SBJ suggested to replace BU50 choke he had
on dipole with ugly choke (coil of Coax) to see if it does any difference.
Next day, I did change of choke using coax coil and also pushed feed point away
from building. This time, instead of sloping wire, I hung one end of wire from
end of spider pole to form 90deg vertical. However, other arm was still spread
over the metal roof without any contacts. I could get the SWR to 1:3 level and
thought that was ok.
Now antenna was having some radiation which might be higher angle as per later
observation. Another challenge was that I had not used straight key or manual
keying for QSOs before(yes, except for initial couple of years in hamming). All
my sending was using computer keyer. Though I could easily copy contest QSO at
30WPM, my sending ability was at slow speed. Body ache was still persistent from
recent recovery, which prevented flexing of muscles a bit as well. My
participation was limited to S&P this time, but I wanted to store my call in
TS590 memory which required a paddle keyer. I made a quick check with a old
stereo headphone cable and formed ugly touch paddle with kitchen aluminum foil.
touching Left and right channels of the connection simulated dit and dah, which
was more than sufficient to get the message stored!. Though I could not use this
during the actual Transmission due to RFI messing capacitive touch, it served
its purpose.
During the contest, I went unassisted and very slow using S&P. I only tried
to respond stations which were not busy or having strong signals here.
Fortunately, noise levels were very low at this new location. Each QSO I made
was like bonus to me. I heard lot of stations to my north and east than to west,
which confirmed pattern distortion due to nearby buildings and terrain. The
farthest QSOs were from KV2, WW1 and KH6 stations. Few stations wondered why I
was at 12WPM while giving numbers asking me to QRQ!. But were very patient to
log me in.
Thank you all contesters for the support. You made this impromptu effort very
worthwhile.
Stay safe, See you next time.
DE VU2XE
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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