[3830] NAQP RTTY VE7FO M/2 LP

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                    North American QSO Party, RTTY - February

Call: VE7FO
Operator(s): VE7FO
Station: VE7FO

Class: M/2 LP
QTH: Vancouver
Operating Time (hrs): 9

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
   80:   36    14
   40:  104    38
   20:   72    33
   15:   67    30
   10:   10     7
-------------------
Total:  289   122  Total Score = 36,992

Club: Orca DX and Contest Club

Team: 

Comments:

It's been a long time since you've seen a soapbox entry from VE7FO.
I'm horrified to see that the last major contesting I've done from
home was four years ago.

I've been very involved helping to grow VE7UF into a M/M station for
the last few years and, more recently, with the VE7IO M/2 station
where IO and I do our contest newbie training (seven contest sessions
since Oct).  Because of other things in my life, that has taken up
pretty well all of the time available for ham fun.  However, things
are opening up a little.

I find that I haven't been able to keep up with all the new stuff in
N1MM.  Trying out new things during a M/O can easily result in being
the honoured guest at a lynching party.

It's become obvious that the only way to do it is to try stuff while
contesting from home.  So, here I am.

Well, it was just as exciting as the early days when I got back into
ham radio twelve years ago and was setting up a competitive SOAB LP
station, including despairing that I'll ever be ready when a contest
starts.

For a start, the antennas haven't changed in the last few years.
Dipoles for 40 & 80 with apex (apices?) at about 40 ft and ends at 30
ft.  50 yr old TH3 tri-bander at 45 ft and R5 vertical mounted a
couple of feet above it.

Well, there's one change.  The tri-bander rotator has a problem.  It's
pointing the beam NW and won't turn.  The brake release works but
pressing the controller lever to left or right doesn't do anything.

This leaves me with only the R5 vertical and 200W from the Mk V to
work expeditions like HK0NA.

I have found, though, that if there's a good wind buffeting the
antenna so that it's trying to turn it one way and then the other, by
operating the controller I can get the beam pointing where I want.
Kind of like the use of a bias signal on magnetic tape to overcome the
stiction of the magnetic domains.

What I haven't found is a way of ordering up the desired wind when I
need it.  So I'm resigned to the fact that for the high bands I'll
only have the use of the R5.  Oh well, I wasn't expecting to be
competitive anyway and it doesn't get in the way of the main objective
which is to get the home station on the air and play with N1MM stuff.

Still...


I had two main N1MM objectives.

N1MM RTTY MACROS
I've spent a lot of time sorting out RTTY macro issues.  They all deal
with keeping your call etc. from moving up the screen just as someone
is about to click on it and keeping garbage characters from attaching
themselves to the items he needs to click on to get the info into the
Entry Window.

For just one example, suppose you're in a contest where the last
element of the exchange is your name.  Now suppose that he didn't put
a space after his name in the Exch macro and that some noise burst
added an e to turn Dan into Dane and that's what you log.  Are you OK
with that?  Well of course, before you log it you'll compare it with
the second transmission of his name to make sure it's the same.  So,
now you have Dan and Dane, what do you log?  Neither, you ask for a
time consuming fill which wouldn't have been necessary if he'd only
put a space after his name to block out garbage characters.

So, I've developed a set of macros to try out.


TU AND NOW...
I've always liked the idea of, when running, being able to finish with
one caller and send the exchange to the next one without having to go
through the TU QRZ VE7FO routine.  I used to do this manually when
AA5AU showed us how to do it.  You sure had to be on your toes,
though.

I've never learned how to use LogThen Grab/Pop to do this.  It was my
second objective to try this out.


It's a couple of days before the contest.  I'm asked if I would like
to join an Orca DXCC team.  I demur a little because of the antenna
situation but agree on the condition that I be last on the list of
possible team members.  Turns out that last on the list still earns
last place on the team.

Oooohh - looky looky - weather forecast is calling for big winds on
Fri night before the contest.  30 knots from 300 deg gusting to 40.
Hah - maybe I can get the beam pointing east.

But first, set up N1MM.

I do the usual stuff.  Create a new database, select the appropriate
contest, set up as single op, import the SCP and macro files, set up
the VE7CC spot filters for NA, make sure the Configurer settings are
correct and enter a few dummy calls to make sure all is OK.

Why a new database?  While I'm quite familiar with data base concepts
and have taken a couple of full semester MS Access programming
courses, I'm coming to the conclusion that it's just way easier to
store everything to do with a particular contest in the same folder,
including the .mdb file.

OK, that's done.  It's 10 pm Local.  Contest starts at 10 am,  Airport
(YVR) weather web site is predicting that big wind from 300 deg will
start sometime between 10 and midnight.  Great, I'll have the beam
pointing east and I'll be in bed before midnight.  8 hours' sleep, a
leisurely breakfast and still an hour to do propagation study to
decide time off strategy.

My wind gauge on the tower is showing the wind from 90 deg and uh...
calm.  YVR shows wind from 90 deg at 4 knots.  I'm not that far from
YVR.  Just drive south 12 blocks up a hill and I can see the control
tower.  YVR updates every minute.  30 updates - no significant change.

Midnight - pretty much dead calm.  Well, the wind is but I'm not.  I
figure out the op plan now while I'm waiting for wind.

0100
No change.  Test starts in 9 hours.  I guess I can have breakfast
while I S&P.  I really want that beam pointing east.

0130
Gotta get to bed.... but wait.... YVR now showing wind from SE at 4
knots.  It's coming around - only 165 deg to go

0200
YVR wind is now from S and up to 6 knots.  8 hours until test but it's
only 10 hours long so I don't need to be fully rested.

0230
YVR wind is now from SW and up to 8 knots.  I should go to bed but
there's no guarantee that the wind will still be there when I get up.

0245
YVR wind is now from W and up to 11 knots.  Can't leave now.

0300
YVR wind from 300 deg at 25 knots with gusts.  My local wind is 20
knots.  Time to move that beam!

Press the rotator controller lever to move the beam CW.  Indicator
wiggles a bit, showing the effect of the wind on the beam and that's
all it does.  Rapidly press and release lever a few times and am
rewarded with about 5 deg of rotation but no more.  Wait a bit and try
again.  Hah!  Another 10 deg.  Now pointing 330 deg.  Wait some more
to give the rotator a chance to cool off and get to 345 deg.  Try just
holding the lever for a while - very slow movement but get to 355 deg.
WHAT THE HELL, THE DAMN THING IS ROTATING THE OPPOSITE WAY AND NOW
BACK TO 345.  I can think of only one reason for this.  I've burned
out the motor and, when I release the brake, the beam just free wheels
in the wind.  Try turning it anyway.  Halleluja!  It turns the right
way, though very slowly.

So the wind and I get into this little game where I press the lever as
long as it's turning the right way and release it at the first sign of
the wind pushing it back.  After a long series of painfully tiny
increments it's pointing due N.  No matter what I do, I can't get it
past that.

0400
I do go to bed.

1000
Contest has started.

1030
I'm just struggling out of bed.

1100
I'm in the shack trying to turn the beam some more.  Wind is still
blowing hard.  20 knots on my local anemometer.  Spend half an hour
and still can't get it past N.

1130
Bright Idea

Get out the Variac, set the taps so 120V in gives gives me 140V out
and plug the controller into that.

HAH!  It's working, sort of.  Still, in only half an hour I've got it
pointing E.

1200
Feeling pretty good.  Now just start N1MM and make some Qs.

WHAT THE???  The new database I created for the contest last night has
disappeared!  Must have saved it in some obscure place.

Hunt for it for a little while and then go through the process of
setting it up again.

1246
Made my first Q.


Nothing much to report about the actual contest.

Had the ten minute rate meter up to 145 for a little while which was
gratifying.

Had an hour long run on 15.

I found the low bands to be extremely quiet which was really nice.
I'm used to the situation where 20 closes, I'm on 40 and no one hears
me for several hours.  Not this time.  I probably completed well over
80% of the Qs I attempted when S&P and had a few nice runs.  Way more
Qs on 40 than on 20.  This has never happened before.

Well, there was one item that caused me some consternation.  In my
haste to get everything working I overlooked something in the rules -
Single ops don't get to use spots.  I'm so used to using spots at
VE7UF & VE7IO M/M operations I just went ahead and used them.  I
hadn't been in the contest very long before I thought to check the
rules on this.  Uh-oh.  Too late.  Guess I'm a M/2.

So, I'm obviously disallowed from being a team member.  Fortunately,
there wasn't anyone else available to fill the last slot so at least
my boo-boo has the same result for the team as if I'd never agreed to
be a member.  Good thing.  I'd have felt badly otherwise.

Having come to terms with the fact that I'm in the M/S category, I
happily S&P'd up and down the bands, spotting everyone I worked and
some I didn't.  Part way through the contest I got a very excited
phone call from a team member wondering why I was spotting people,
given that team members have to be SO and so can't use spots.  He
seemed somewhat mollified when I explained how I screwed up and so
can't be a team member.

The last time I forgot the #1 rule for contesters - Read The Rules -
was a number of years ago, also in NAQP.  I assumed that it was
sponsored by ARRL so entered as LP and ran 150W.  It was only after it
was over that I realized my error, 100W max.  Log went in as a check
log.  Would have won for VE7.


So, apart from the pitiful score, how did I do on my objectives?


Pointing The Beam East.

Well, it is pointing E now.  Was it worth it?  Absolutely.  I did
quite a bit of switching back and forth to compare S meter readings.
Sometimes the R5 beat the TH3 but only in directions (W6) way off the
main lobe.  Sometimes the R5 and Yagi were the same.  Mostly the yagi
beat the R5 by 1 to 2 S Units.


Macros

I've done a lot of work on N1MM macros in general as well as RTTY
specific ones.

Ideally, the purpose of each function key should be the same for every
contest and every mode.  This is very helpful to both the M/O ops and
for training the contest newbies.

I now have a macro template which, for the most part, meets this
ideal.  It will handle giving and getting fills for exchanges with up
to three elements.  It also deals with the situation where you hit
Enter with an invalid exchange in the Exchange field.  It doesn't send
anything to the op at the other end so no more time wasting exchanges
of info again just because of an easily corrected typo.  It does
explicitly tell you, complete with Beep, that you need to enter a
valid exchange before N1MM will accept it.

The RTTY macros all met the requirements FB.


With everything else going on I never did try LogThenGrab/Pop.  In
retrospect I realize that it would actually be better to learn how to
use this before trying it in a contest.


Overall, in spite of the glitches, it felt good to be contesting from
home again.

73, Jim VE7FO


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