[3830] CQWW SSB NJ4M(@K4LOG) M/S LP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, SSB

Call: NJ4M
Operator(s): K4LOG, K4SXY, WD4AHZ
Station: K4LOG

Class: M/S LP
QTH: FL
Operating Time (hrs): 35

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:                    
   80:   18     8       14
   40:   73    16       50
   20:  156    24       68
   15:  214    23       67
   10:  239    20       70
------------------------------
Total:  700    91      269  Total Score = 675,720

Club: Florida Contest Group

Comments:

Richard, K4LOG, and I decided almost at the last minute, to team up 
and try a M/S effort from his QTH.  This required some work moving 
antennas around, so on Tuesday afternoon, Dan, K1TO, generously 
assisted us by showing up with his Gin pole and climbing to help 
take down an old Cushcraft A4 from one 40' tower and replace it 
with a C3.  Thursday Richard and I took down a 2 element 10 Meter 
quad on a second 40' tower, and put the A4 in it's place.

While checking the SWR on the A4, we found there was a problem.  
We concluded it was somewhere up in the coil arrangement, so 
Richard climbed up, and swapped the coil for a balun.  Success!  
The SWR was down to where it should be.  Next, while checking 
the rotation of the beam, we discovered something was binding, 
and we couldn't get 360 degree rotation.  Again, Richard goes 
up the tower to solve that problem ... and we finally have the 
second beam up and running!

While admiring our handy work on the two towers, I came up with 
the crazy idea of stringing up a wire "V beam" between the two 
towers. While not optimum (around 35' high and aimed at 60 
degrees), maybe it'll give us a little advantage over just 
an inverted V alone.  So, to work we went, cutting wires 
and stringing the "boom" between the two towers.  We ran 
out of daylight to do much else, so final preparations for 
CQWW would have to wait for Friday.  

Friday afternoon, we finished stringing up the V beam and 75M 
inverted V.  The antenna work was done, so know we could 
concentrate on putting the shack together.  Richard had pretty 
much gutted his operating position for the effort, so we 
started planning on where we'd put things and how we'd hook 
everything up.  Station One ended up being Richard's old Ten 
Tec into the C3.  This would primarily be the "run" station 
for 10, 15, and 20. Since the M/S rules allow for an 
additional "mult" station, we used my MP and A4 for Station 
Two, the "mult" station.  Station Two would also be used on 
40 and 75.  We set up two networked computers for logging, 
and had a third computer watching the DX spots.  We didn't 
have enough COM ports to go around, so the spots weren't 
being fed into the logging computers.  When things got slow, 
we'd have to jot down some juicy mults on paper, and then go 
try and work 'em!

Upon testing our "network", we found out our logging 
computers wouldn't talk to each other.  We tested all kinds 
of combinations, but it still wouldn't work.  I then decided 
to check each computer separately, and see if it would control 
my MP.  One computer did ... the other didn't. We assumed there 
was a COM port problem.  Luckily, Richard had another old 
computer around, so he swapped out the hard drives ... we 
hooked it up to the MP, the CAT light started blinking and 
we now had a working COM port.  We reconfigured everything, and 
now we had two computers talking to each other!  With several 
hours to be before the start of the Contest, our "station" 
looked good and was ready to go.

We fired up the rigs, and ran some tests.  We knew with 
certain band combinations, we'd have some problems with 
station interference, but we'd live with it.  Richard fooled 
around trying to get a voice keyer to work properly, but 
wasn't having any success, so we decided we'd have to scrap 
plans for the voice keyer.  About 30 minutes before the 
start, my headset starting giving me trouble and wouldn't 
key my rig (after just telling the guys at N4TO that things 
were going well!).  So we tore open my little "homebrew" 
adapter, and started resoldering connections.  This fixed 
the problem, so now we were in business!  0000Z rolled 
around, and we were off and running (OK, maybe limping 
is the better term).

Sometime Friday night/Saturday morning, the A4 again developed 
a high SWR problem ... and it had to be eliminated for the 
duration of the contest.  That left Station Two using the 
40 M V beam/75M inverted V combo through a tuner, as our 
multiplier station on 10-20!  Not at all a good thing, but 
we worked what we could.  While Richard was taking a nap, I 
grabbed the beam, and became the "run" station ... picking 
off everything I heard and we didn't yet work.

Saturday night/Sunday morning proved to be very slow for us.  
40 had nothing on it that we hadn't already worked, and 
the high bands were pretty useless.  I decided to lay down 
and try to get my first rest, while Richard worked what he
 could.  While coming out of my "fog", I heard what sounded 
like success with the voice keyer.  Richard had gone back 
to work on the keyer to see if he could get it working, 
which he did.  We were now feeling good!  Up to this point, 
we'd had minimal success calling CQ.  When we did try to run, 
seemed the only ones who would answer us were US stations 
anyway.  Now with the keyer working, we would be able to 
hit "F1" all day Sunday!  Well, after getting it hooked 
back up, and recording messages, the audio didn't sound 
too good (background "hum") so once again dejected, we had 
to scrap the voice keyer, and keep pressing on.

Worked a couple nice mults on 40 around sunrise on Sunday, 
while Richard was waiting for the higher bands to open up.  
We saw a ton of spots from other US and VE stations ... and 
we didn't hear a thing!  This wasn't good for our moral, 
since we had already discussed (several times) throwing 
in the towel!  Finally the bands started opening, but not 
as well as Saturday.  Richard jumped between the bands 
trying to work what he could, as I combed the other bands for 
mults ... writing down stuff coming over the cluster.  
With just the wires, some were nearly impossible to work. 
We'd hoped they would still be around when Richard would 
get to that band to work it with the beam.  This was 
pretty much our strategy for Sunday, since we still had 
no success running stations.

The bands seemed to be up and down - just like our enthusiasm.
We took more and more breaks, and they seemed to be getting 
longer and longer!  Richard's wife, Michelle, K4SXY, had said 
she wanted to do some operating Sunday, so we decided to 
keep operating until then.  She finally got into the chair, 
and after a brief logging tutorial, she started to S&P and 
added QSO's to the log, while I sat nearby to "assist" if 
needed.  We then took another break, and we decided we'd had 
enough, but wanted to make 700 QSO's.  I got on and attempted 
to get a run going to get us our final QSO's ... but again, 
wasn't having much success, with mostly US stations calling 
in.  Tuned around for the last 3 or 4 QSO's ... and once we 
hit 700 ... we called it quits for good.

While we were a little disappointed with our efforts, it 
was a useful learning experience for us to attempt a M/S 
operation ... and to get it all up and running in less 
than a week.  IF we ever want to attempt it again, at 
least we'll know what improvements we need to make and 
what we need to do differently to improve.  In the end, 
we did have fun and probably operated more together, than 
we would have separately.

A couple final thoughts.  Why did so many stations
have a problem with our call ... turning us into NJ2M 
... and how do you work US stations for easy mults on 
40 ... when everyone is working split?

73,

Ron  WD4AHZ
Richard, K4LOG
Michelle, K4SXY


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