CQWW WPX Contest, SSB - 2023
Call: AT3K
Operator(s): VU2XE VU2YYF VU3DMP VU2SBJ VU2AE VU2DED VU2MUD VU3SPD VU2BQN VU2JIX
Station: AT3K
Class: M/M HP
QTH: Mangalore
Operating Time (hrs): 48
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160:
80: 2
40: 73
20: 530
15: 555
10: 806
------------
Total: 1966 Prefixes = 827 Total Score = 4,639,470
Club: VU Contest Group
Comments:
Great gathering at newly constructed communications Hub at NITK (Premier
Engineering institute in Southern part of India) made this event a very
memorable one. I was actively involved in the NITK's project from ham radio
perspective. We needed to give a boost to the project by testing the
infrastructure under construction. Shack was very neatly designed by their
Center for Systems Designs who are into autonomous vehicles, drones and other
cutting edge engineering.
Project is hoping to conduct many research in communications area using the
shack in collaboration with hams and with donor support.
The contest idea initiated by CSD to make the shack design optimally performing.
I was invited to operate in group for the contest and as CQWPX date as goal,
students and staff rushed to complete the setup. Some of the hams pooled their
station rigs, coaxes and antennas for this event and soon a 11 member team was
assembled. one of the team member - VU2IBI had to drop in the final week due to
family priorities.
Team erected phased array for 40, vertical L for 80, spiderbeam, hexbeams for
higher bands and couple of Rx beverages. Most setup was ready by Thursday.
Erection of phased array required Coax to be elevated above a small public road
next to beach and it was kept for Friday morning. Any Coax lengths we calculated
and took fell short in reality. this required us to use barrel connectors and
one of our barrel went down for 40m antenna, we traced it only late on second
night.
Shack setup was amazing with room for 4 stations, laptops, second monitors and
large TV for realtime score display etc. We did all rig setup by Friday
evening.
We had TS590, Anan SDR, IC756 pro3, TS480 as radios. two Furono marine
amplifiers and one W6PQL amplifier.
Local contester friend VU2RCT visited us on Friday evening and shared his
contest time insights.
Just after 5PM on Friday, we had traditional coconut breaking and prayers.
We spent rest of the evening to complete the network setup and test power. We
had very stable power and UPS backup. So no issues to worry on power side.
Contest day started slow for us and team hoped for better day ahead. Bands
opened much later during both days. We also used Raspberry Pi Contest Dashboard
to educate visiting students with live scoring etc. Both days we found 15m
opening late afternoons, 20m late evenings and 10m opening most of the time.
We could not sort out issue of 40m vertical array not being heard at DX. We even
used single vertical to test. Faulty barrel connector was found on second night
which was late for any fix.
We thought we had good roster for operator shifts, but lot to improve on
duration and operator selection if scores to be at top notch.
We forgot to carry Rx bpf for beverages which hampered use of beverages which
ran nearer to one of towers.
Many learnings we had on setup and operating. Each member put his best efforts
and hope in coming years better team will emerge from this part of the world!
Thank you all who gave us prefix multipliers. Hope to see you in next one!
VU2XE lead AT3K CQWPX 2023
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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