Wow what a contest!
Over the past couple of years, the K9ZF /R station has gone through some
pretty major changes. New truck, new rigs, new amps, same old op...
I spent a few weeks before the contest getting the amps and FT897D
mounted in the truck and trying to work out bugs.
It was a lot of work, but everything was coming together nicely by
contest time.
The bricks for 2m and 432 were mounted behind the front seats. Within
reach, but in an out of the way spot.
The rotor control box was left in the back seat. I can reach behind me
and turn the antennas. I would prefer it up front, but the cable is too
short and not enough time left to fix it. This will have to go on the
to do list for the next contest.
The sound card interface and rig control cable was finished, and
attached. However, I couldn't seem to get it configured with RoverLog
in time for the contest. Another item for the next to do list and back
to calling CQ manually.... USB only laptops are a pain.
I put together a set of "racks" on the back of the truck using good ol'
2x4's. Doesn't look as good as a set of commercial ladder racks, but
will work fine for this contest.
The AR40 rotator is mounted in the bed of the truck and working fine.
The push up mast is still in good shape, and mounted back in the rotor,
and braced at about the 4' level by the new racks.
So on Saturday morning, everything is looking good. All I have left to
do is mount the antennas, run the feed lines, and initial testing. I'm
hoping Paul, N1BUG, is keeping Murphy busy for this contest as
everything has gone so well:-) The first up on the mast is my trusty
old Cushcraft 10 element 2 meter yagi. It's a veteran of many years of
Roving and is beat and battered, but keeps on ticking. I got it mounted
and cabled, and it checked out fine. Next up was the antenna I was most
concerned about. This one is a "new" M2, 432 yagi. It has lots of
elements on about a 12' boom. I traded for it last winter, but as yet
had not tested it. I got it mounted and ran the feed line, about 25' of
LMR400. Anyway, as I had hoped, I put it up and it worked great. The
previous owner told me this antenna had seen little use, but I don't
think it had ever seen RF before. At least it looked new:-) Lastly,
was my trusty old Par Moxon for 6 meters. The Moxon goes up, the cable
is run, and then Murphy strikes! The SWR test at around 7:1!!! Holy
cow! What happened? It worked fine last September.
So, I have two hours left before the contest and a major problem to work
out. I go back over all the connections, and every inch of the
antenna. No help. I drag out my trusty little homebrew dummy load to
test the feed line hoping it may be the coax. But the coax tests
fine... Hmmmm, still trying to solve the mystery I try removing the
little black box at the feed point. All of the moxons I have homebrewed
have been fed directly with 50 ohm line so I'm hoping that if this
"balun" is bad, I can feed it direct and use a coax choke. But that
didn't help either. By now I'm getting pretty frustrated. Nothing is
visibly wrong with the antenna and removing the balun didn't help.
Suspecting a bad connection between the square stock and the round
tubing joints, I put a couple of sheet metal screws through the joints
to secure them, but still no help.... By this time, it's an hour into
the contest, and I still don't have a 6 meter antenna. To make matters
worse, during all the testing I can hear booming e-skip from everywhere,
arrrggg!
So, giving up on the moxon I check the junk pile. Oddly enough my junk
pile is made up of more 6 meter antennas then anything else, it's a real
6 meter grave yard at my place. I toss a couple of homebrew antennas
out as being to far gone to easily repair. I test an old homebrew
halo, but the gamma match is battered, and to far gone to easily fix.
Then I come across another homebrew monster of mine. It's a 5 element
yagi I made with spare parts from other antennas. This antenna works
great, but it always seemed to fragile to me, so I never put it up.
But now it seems like my last hope. It's way too big to use on the
Rover, but if I separate the boom in front of the driven element that
will leave me just a two element yagi that might just work if I mount it
90 degrees off from the rest of the stack. So I take the big homebrew
apart and mount the first two elements on the mast, hook up the
feedline, and FINALLY, I have a working 6 meter antenna. The SWR is
nearly flat, and it seems to be pretty directional. Time to roll.
It's now nearly 4 hours into the contest and I regret planning my route
to start in the most distant grid. So I have a choice to make. Either
I can ditch my whole plan and start out close to home, or I can scratch
my first planned grid and start in my "second" planned grid. I chose
to skip the first grid, and just do 3 hilltop grids instead of the
planned 4. Right or wrong, this is what I done and it seemed to go well.
So my first grid was EM79 near Columbus, Indiana. I didn't get here
until late evening and, of course, 6 meters had cooled considerably by
now. I stayed a few hours, until almost dark, worked a few dozen QSO's,
and decided to head for home for the evening. Tomorrow, I hoped, would
bring better times. As fate would have it, on the way home a tree limb
killed the reflector on my 6 meter make-shift antenna. It was fragile,
remember? So now I'm left with just a dipole, but still on the air....
Sunday made up for a contest gone bad. I ended up making very few
contacts on 2 and 432, but 6 meters is jumping all day long. My QSO
numbers were way down from previous years, but all of the mults picked
up on 6 boosted my score well past my previous efforts.
It was great to hear some old friends on the air after a long absence.
I look forward to big things from the guys at K9SG.
Thanks to all of the guys who pulled out my signal on 6. Thanks to some
amazing conditions, I was still able to have some great fun with just
100 watts and a dipole.
Field day was a blast too, but that's another story:-)
Looking forward to the CQ-VHF,
73
Dan
--
K9ZF /R no budget Rover ***QRP-l #1269
Check out the Rover Resource Page at: <http://www.qsl.net/n9rla>
List Administrator for: InHam+grid-loc+ham-books
Ask me how to join the Indiana Ham Mailing list!
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