[3830] ARRL160 W2GD M/S HP

[w2gd at hotmail.com]

                     ARRL 160-Meter Contest
                    
Call: W2GD
Operator(s): K2TW, KU2C, N2OO,  W2CG, W2GD, W2NO
Station: W2GD

Class: M/S HP
QTH: SNJ (West Creek, NJ)
Operating Time (hrs): 26
 

Summary:
          QSOs  Sections  Countries
Total:    1121     75       31      =  259,594

Club/Team: Frankford Radio Club

Comments:

This was the inaugural operation for the Sandy Hook Team from a new coastline 
QTH near Tuckerton, NJ.  Security concerns following the horrific events of 
September 11th have rendered the Sandy Hook Coast Guard Station unavailable for 
the foreseeable future.  

Our new QTH is immediately adjacent to Barnaget Bay, about 60 miles south of 
Sandy Hook, 25 miles north of Atlantic City, and 5 miles West of Long Beach 
Island.  It was formerly the home of a Public Coast Marine Station.  Assets 
include a 300 foot Rohn 55G tower surrounded by salt marsh, 24 acres for 
erecting beverages, and a station building with plenty of AC power, heat, and 
running water.  

Over the preceeding two months, inbetween CQWW and SS weekends, Team members 
K2TW, NO2R, W1GD, W2CG, W2GD, and W2NO staged three work parties to install a 
baseline group of antennas specifically for the ARRL 160 event.  We wanted to 
put something reasonable on the air to evaluate the site's strengths and 
weaknesses.

Antennas at the outset of the contest were as follows:

Transmitting:  Delta Loop fed vertically with apex at 155 feet, Sloping 1/2 
wave dipole, top end at 190 feet.

Receiving:  1000 foot terminated NE beverage, 580 foot terminated West 
beverage, and ~700 foot unterminated South beverage.  

During the contest period we added an unterminated 580 foot NW beverage and a 
second 1000 foot NE element which will be phased in the future.  We also plan 
to add additional beverages to the East and Southwest.

Station Hardware - Position One:  IC781, IC765, ICOM 2000A  1.5 KW  
                   Position Two:  IC765, Alpha 87A  1 KW
          
This operation unfortunately had two major weaknesses, inadequate operator 
staffing and a non-functioning computer network.  We ended up operating 
part-time, just 26 hours total, opting to do antenna work during the available 
daylight hours on Saturday.  During station setup Friday we discovererd our 
computer network configuration was not working and we could not reliably 
connect to any 2M packet node.  To minimally fill the void we set up a web 
telnet session to get DX spots but it was a totally manual work around...no 
interface to our CT logging software.  

the contest seemed to get off to a reasonable start:  

HOUR    160   HR TOT   CUM TOT 

22    99/36    99/36    99/36 
23    93/14    93/14   192/50 
 0    75/8     75/8    267/58 
 1    81/9     81/9    348/67 
 2    67/1     67/1    415/68 
 3    65/4     65/4    480/72 

It felt pretty good to have EU  and SA calling in the during the first few 
hours...as well as working some west coast stations well before their 
sunset....good indicators that the station was getting out....since band 
conditions in general were not very good.  Conditions seemed notably better to 
the west coast the second evening, but Europe never sounded great, although a 
few stations were loud both nights.  We unfortunately discovered we have line 
noise on our European beverage, but hope to remedy the problem before the CQ160 
CW weekend in January.  Working KL7Y and VK6HD were highlights the second 
night.  We did not hear any JA stations.

Here's our continental breakdown:

North America   CW 1077    94.5 
South America   CW    7     0.5 
Europe          CW   53     4.6 
Asia            CW    0     0.0 
Africa          CW    3     0.3 
Oceania         CW    1     0.1 

Congrats to the K2TOP and WB9Z teams for their FB M/S efforts and to VY1ZMM and 
W4AN for unbelievable S/O scores.

We hope to be QRV for the Stew Perry and definitely for the CQ160 CW in the 
months ahead.

73, 
John W2GD


Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/


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