[3830] ARRL 160 AC6DD Single Op HP

Tue Dec 8 01:52:09 PST 2009

                    ARRL 160-Meter Contest

Call: AC6DD
Operator(s): AC6DD
Station: AC6DD

Class: Single Op HP
QTH: 
Operating Time (hrs): 

Summary:
Total:  QSOs = 736  Sections = 76  Countries = 21  Total Score = 152,969

Club: 

Comments:

Every year, the first weekend in December is usually pretty busy with activities
other than Radio. Children Christmas parties and Christmas parades are happening
on this weekend, so having two little kids the ARRL contest has been a low
priority for me the past couple of years.  I managed to participate in this
one. 

No Pacific Ocean Piers or Lighthouses this time, for this contest I was headed
for the hills. 

A few weeks before the contest my five year old Son and I set up a RX4 square,
and we also marked two locations for TX verticals and laid some ground radials

at the base of each future vertical. Most of the radials are only around 1/8 wl
long.  I was a bit skeptical about the RX antenna location I initially chose, 
as it ended too close to my TX location and other potential noise sources which
include a 400' tall tower and a 12kV power line nearby, but the surrounding
terrain is heavy with brush and I could not find a decent spot in a 1000'
radius (one cable spool length) and settled for a closer setup.  Sure enough,
after testing the RX antenna the noise level on it was not acceptable.  We came
back the next weekend with more cable and moved the antennas into an open field

some 1000' further to the North. This made a huge difference. 

I originally planned to set up the antennas over several weekends before the
contest, and than put in a serious contest effort, but the mandatory overtime
from a planned maintenance shutdown at work got extended, and free time was
scarce. After almost two months of 70+ hour work weeks on the night shift I was
burned out.  

I had a very late start on Friday, as the problems from the lack of preparation
time started showing up early.  I only arrived to the site, which is a 45 
minute drive from my house around 14:00 hours.  
By the time I unloaded equipment and got one vertical up it was already getting
dark.  The easy way would be to use my Harris RF601A coupler at the base of 
this antenna, but the control cable was not long enough to reach my equipment. 
 So I used a big coil and a 4:1 UNUN, and after adding a little bit of wire to
the antenna got a somewhat questionable match.  It was quite dark by now and I
decided to come back and fine tune it later, as I have not even set up any
radio equipment yet. 

When I finally got it all set up and fired up the K3 I get no output power. It
takes me a lot of frustration, and what seemed a very long time to figure out 
how reset the radio and reload the firmware.  I installed a DVR recently and
maybe messed up something, but I used the radio after that and did not notice
any problems. Also my second RX in the K3 now had a lot of hiss in 
it and was not very usable.  

Next I found the RX antenna was not working at all - it worked just fine after
I installed it. I check all of the local stuff and it looks fine.  There is no
way I can even try to find the problem out in the field.  I am destined to
listen on the vertical for the whole night.  The SWR on the Vertical is quite
high so I am limited to about 500W output, 700W at the best spot around 1850. 
I just have no desire to go out and mess with it.   The on the air conditions
seemed decent.  I was hearing Arizona stations work Europe, but these EU
signals were not making it to the real West Coast. Maybe they were just covered
by the noise on my vertical.  A surprise was being called a short while later by
OL5R during a CQ.  I end the night at 462 QSO.

The first priority on Saturday morning was to repair the receive antenna. After
a few long walks back and forth I find and fix the problem. it turns out some
big animal, probably a Deer got caught in one of my coax cables and managed to
break a connector and short the cable at one of the active antennas.  
About this time I also added a capacitor to the TX vertical's matching network
and got a great match at 1830. 

Having a real RX antenna made a huge difference on the second night.  Stations
which were not even present on the vertical are Q5 on the RX4S.   I turn on 
the laptop to get back into the contest and It won't start. The last night's
log is trapped inside.   I manage to get a different laptop going and start a
log from scratch. With a brand new log started I figure I was going to work a
lot of Dupes, so it was mostly CQ from now on. 

I didn't make it through the second night. Things got slow on CQ and I kept
hearing QSO B4 on S&P so I crashed at around 0200.  I woke up just before
sunrise to work a few JA's and JT1CO who replied on my CQ.  That was it for
this year.  The biggest surprise of the contest was actually working a VE4,
which I missed in the last several 160 contests. I had figured no one active on
160 lives in VE4 so I started looking on Google Earth for a saltwater Pier or
Lighthouse to set up on in VE4. Now I have to scrap my plan. 

I Called HI3TEJ many times with no response, this was the only station I heard
and not worked.

This was my first time operating from this site, and I am contemplating adding
more capabilities to it for future 160m contests. 

I would like to get some reception reports from the contest ( ac6dd at yahoo
dot com ) especially from any DX stations to help me evaluate the site and 
decide on setting up here or at the Lighthouse for CQ160.  For transmitting I
used a 90'tall vertical with some 40 radials.  On the first night I was 
transmitting with 500-700W, on the second night 1000-1500W.

On the receiving end this site is not as quiet as the Lighthouse site which I
used in the last two CQ160 contests, but there is more room for antennas, and 
they can be left in place.  There seems to be a pulsing noise present, maybe
once or twice per hour for several minutes.  This totally wiped me out every so

often. Possibly from a Radar? I need to investigate more.

I uploaded a short video of the site and TX antenna to you tube :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEsK71UiJn4  

Domestic Mults missed: Ni, NNj, Nwt, Pr

DX worked: 6Y, C6, CT, DL, F, FM, G, GW, HC, HC8, JA, JT, OH, OK, OM, ON, OZ,
PJ2, VP5, XE, ZF

73,

Niko - AC6DD

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