The OT8T story in the 160 Phone contest
For the first time in 11 years, I had not taken (seriously) part in the cW
contest, for reason of theQRM created by a chemical plant in the
neigborhood. As the noise problem from the chemical plants still was not
getting fixed, I looked for some alternative to solve it, in. At first I
considered asking a stealth bomber to do some chirurgi-cal intervention,
but thought that was a little too drastic.
I had heard on one of the internet reflectors of the various noise
cancelers. After asking around it seemed that the MFJ unit (model 1026)
would be worth trying out. Well, I must say it is a fantastic little unit.
I use the transmit antenna (the big vertical) as noise source, and use its
signal to cancel out the noise received on the Beverages, after turning it
to the proper phase (180 degrees out of phase) and after adjusting the
amplitude (both must be identical). Settings are rather critical, but the
rejection is certainly quite spectacular. I can just barely hear the noise
now, the improvement must be at least 35 dB. The only problem is that for
each Beverage direction you need a different setting of the phase and
amplitude controls. So you have to make a little list showing the various
settings. In a contest whwre you normally cranck the Beverage switch
continuously (I have 12 directions) this is still a major problem. The
compromise was that during the contest I had the MFJ unit set to null out
the noise on the US beverage, which is the direction which suffers most
from the noise USA).
This year a had promised Freddy, ON4AFZ, who put down a European winning
score in 1996, that he could have a go.
The contest started as usual, in total chaos, in the middle of a most
horrendous wall of Euro-pean QRM. Freddy stayed the whole night on 1846
working mostly Europeans in the first few hours. Not really a surprise,
VE1ZZ was his first 10-pointer at 23:48z. The second North American station
was W4WA at 01:35. Condi-tions remained very flat to North America, all
through the first night. Only 33 US + Canadian stations were worked, and
one Caribbean signal: V47KP who had an excellent signal. Just at sunrise
XE1RCS came in the log, and he was 100% copy on his first call.
If conditions were not going to be better, we were in for a last year
repeat performance, a bad one. But fortunately, the second night was quite
a bit better. Nothing spectacular, no real Mid-West (or West Coast for that
matter), but waves of reasonably good signals from the East coast. A major
problem seemed to be strong US stations nesting themselves within a few
hundred Hertz of "our" frequency (Freddy stayed put all night long on one
and the same frequency) apparently without hearing us. Like every year
there are a number of such stations which are all-mouth and no-ears. But in
between fights to keep his frequency reasonably clear and going, Freddy
worked another 86 American stations, including one Texas station (N5SV),
P40K and HK6ISX. Of the more easy states Freddy missed DC (was it on at
all?), WI, Al, KY, SC (!!) and TN, and from Canada NB, PEI and NFL (our
back door).
With 637 QSO?s in 58 countries and 24 states/provinces, Freddy scored
316,438 points.
Conditions were not as bad as last year, but were average at best. The
noise from the chemical plant is still a big bother, and if this issue does
not get resolved in the coming months, we may have to resort to the stealth
alternative...
It is simply amazing to see Freddy operating the contest. On Saturday he
arrived at the contest QTH at 16:00z. He sat down at the operating
position, and sat in the operator?s seat, without ever leaving the
operating position, until 07:15 the next morning. He did not leave his post
for even a p... That is simply amazing. The only thing I did was feeding
Freddy with coke. He must have drunk 2 liters! Professionally Freddy is a
bus driver. I guess there is where he got the training of remaining seated
for a long time. Amazing it is!
See you all on 40 and 80 m during the ARRL contest next weekend. Mark,
ON4MA will do the 40m, and I will do 80.
73
John, ON4UN
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* John Devoldere, ON4UN, AA4OI, OT8T *
* e-mail: john.devoldere@innet.be *
* address: Poelstraat 215 *
* B9820 Merelbele *
* Belgium *
* mailing addres: P.O.Box 41 *
* B9000 Gent, *
* Belgium *
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* *
* PLEASE CALL US IN THE CONTESTS (ON4UN OR OT8T). THANK YOU! *
* *
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