[3830] IARU NU1AW/9 Headquarters HP
webform at b41h.net
webform at b41h.net
Sat Jul 21 12:33:21 PDT 2012
IARU HF World Championship
Call: NU1AW/9
Operator(s): W0AIH,K0TG,K9NW,K0TI,NE9U,W0UC,KB9S,W0GJ,K0MD,KG2A,K9MU,AC0W,WD9HFT,NM7X,K9OW,N9ISN,KB9OWD,KA9FOX,N9ISN,N0IJ,N0IM,AF9T,AA0AW
Station: NU1AW/9
Class: Headquarters HP
QTH: WI
Operating Time (hrs): 24
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Zones HQ Mults
-------------------------------------
160: 147 19 10 5
80: 377 280 21 21
40: 758 647 29 32
20: 1126 996 39 49
15: 1007 1303 43 55
10: 556 323 21 19
-------------------------------------
Total: 3971 3568 163 181 Total Score = 7,912,000
Club: Minnesota Wireless Association
Comments:
Another great event at The Farm!
This was W0AIH's 2nd time as an HQ Station. In 1999 we were W1AW/9. It is an
honor to be able to have done both. One of the few stations that have hosted
both HQ stations.
As big as W0AIH is, it is not possible to operate all bands and modes from
there. So the 4 other station in western Wisconsin were tapped to take some of
the bands. The bulk of the operation was at W0AIH, with K9OW KA9FOX N0IJ and
WD9HFT taking a band. Here is the breakdown of stations:
Station Band/modes
W0AIH 10CW 15CW 20PH 40CW 80PH 160CW/160PH
K9OW 40PH
KA9FOX 15PH
N0IJ 20CW 80CW
WD9HFT 10PH
Operators at W0AIH:
W0AIH, K0TG, K9NW, K0TI, NE9U, W0UC, KB9S, W0GJ, K0MD, KG2A, K9MU, AC0W,
NM7X
Operators at KA9FOX:
KA9FOX, K9NW, N9ISN, KB9OWD
Operators at N0IJ:
N0IJ, N0IM, AF9T, AA0AW
Operators at K9OW:
K9NW, KB9OWD, N9ISN
Operators at WD9HFT:
WD9HFT, NM7X, NE9U
You may notice that some of the ops are noted at different stations as they
moved form one to another during the event.
Lots of great talent at all stations facing challenging solar conditions.
Everyone was watching the forecasts for the arrival of the predicted CME event.
It did not wipe things out at least, but sure made it challenging.
Some of our talent included the VP5H team of Glenn W0GJ and Scott K0MD. Those
two guys were on 20 SSB all weekend just pounding on the band. I think Glenn
really liked the Rhombic antennas. :) Are you putting some up at the new QTH
now?? 20 meters is up the hill from the main building (Main building is AKA
the chalet) and is a small are for two ops. Maybe intimate it the word. :)
They were the lucky ones there. They had Air Conditioning where we did not at
the chalet. Our window unit was out of service. It probably would not stand
much of a a chance of keeping up with all the amps blazing. We had a lot of air
moving in the chalet. If there was a fan, it was in use there.
Of course the operation does not come without some technical headaches. Before
the contest on Friday, Paul was working on one of the 15 meter beam rotors at
the top of the tower. Until he was chased down by weather that evening. But he
was back at it in the morning to finish the job. Then when it was time to get
rolling on 160 we discovered amplifier troubles. So Paul was able to press
another Alpha into service. They had antenna troubles over at WD9HFT as they
discovered that evening, so the 160 SSB operations were moved to The Farm. So
our 160 operations were probably a bit lighter than planned.
N0IJ, KA9FOX and N9ISN on behalf of K9OW did their own writeups. They are
below.
A great time had by all!!!
73, John K0TG
*****************
*** NU1AW/9 @ N0IJ/9 ***
A big thanks to full timers, N0IM and AF9T for help in making this take
place. Also, Doug, AA0AW, put in a good shift during the day which gave
us all a chance to recharge for the night work.
>From my competitive sailing days in the past I am reminded of the comment
about owning a sailboat in Duluth. "You can have just as much fun standing
in a cold shower tearing up $50 bills". Somehow that related well to many
times in this contest on the two bands we worked--20 cw and 80 cw.
The beginning was fantastic--at least on 20! Thanks to a group of
TCDXA/MWA folks who did look us up on 80. 13 whole QSO's in the morning
on 80. We did have about 270 after two hours overall--a few EU, a few JA's,
and a whole bunch of NA. I set things up as a M/2 so our results on both
rigs and bands were consolidated.
Everything on both bands came in bunches--either it was pretty good, or
really washed out. Several times ops took a quick peek at 15 and wanted
to go, but 20 was our band! Mid morning sounded more like mid afternoon.
After 80 was abandoned, the 2nd rig switched to S/P on 20 with good
results--little noisy for the run station at times, but better than
nothing. When the antennas were thoughtfully aligned, the interference was
minimal outside of 10 Khz or so. Good ol' K3's. We had hoped for steady
running into EU and that just didn't happen--mostly watery sigs even from the
big guys.
We obviously weren't alone, as we had little trouble working anything we
could hear--just not much there. Surely, no 2nd and 3rd tier stations! Some
JA's in the pm, but nothing like we hoped. How sad was it to see all the
California spots for juicy Asian mults that required the polar path that
just wasn't there for us?
I jumped to 80 just before 8 pm local and picked up east coast types until
about sunset when EU started calling in. I had tried to S/P a few of
these guys with no luck--static crashes were pretty loud. Suddenly, I
had a bunch of them calling me. It was fun but challenging picking them out
of the static. I could copy most better on the 4 Square than I could with
Beverages. We seemed to be spotted quite a bit (thanks to a few MWAers
for some of that), and it made a huge difference--especially with these EU on
80. An hour or so after sunset, most of the EU disappeared, sadly, save the
occasional. During the entire evening, the 20 meter station was almost
exclusively working NA stations.
John took over 80 and I banged away on the F1 key on 20, using the 2nd VFO
to keep the band map clean. There was little concern about keeping the
run fq, as the well known call certainly had some effect. Thank goodness a
bunch of VK/ZL guys were on 20 (probably around 25) or it really would
have been lonely. It got harder and harder as the night moved on, until
about
3:30 we had a stretch of 20 minutes with zero q's and Dick and I tossed in
the
towel for a couple hours, hoping that the finishing two hours would be
productive. Hah! With the A at 25 and K at 8?, not much chance of that.
The only band we could hear anything on was 40, and then, not much!
We were back at it around 5 local, and made a total of 7 qso's until 6:15
when we called it! Nice part was that Dick worked two VK's in Zone 55 and
59 on 80 both for mults! Tried to get W0ERP a couple of times but he
couldn't hear us! We were shooting for 1500 q's total, and actually made
1503.
We literally sweated this one out! My station is planted in the
mechanical room of the cabin--no windows. I had two good sized fans
going, but it actually got to 91 degrees in there around 2 a.m.! We even
backed the power down some to try and reduce (and save) amp heat. Finally got
some outside cooler air in there, but it was still about 85 when we quit.
Thanks to Paul, who's fantastic reputation for putting things like this
together, made this all possible. Conditions pretty much stunk, but was
it worth it?--you betcha.
Final tally:
80: 377 Q's, 17 HQ, 19 zones--total mults 36
20: 1126 Q's, 39 HQ, 32 zones--total mults 71
NU1AW/9
N0IJ, N0IM, AF9T, AA0AW
*************
*** NU1AW/9 @ KA9FOX ***
Long story... if you want the quick results, scroll to the bottom. :-)
The not-so-mighty KA9FOX station was selected to take 15 SSB for IARU as
part of NU1AW/9. With a single tri-bander @ 95 feet, and a low 40 meter
dipole being the only two somewhat resonant antennas in the arsenal, I was
more than concerned that the results would be embarrassing, especially
working DX. Trying to find a better station that was in Wisconsin, in Zone
7, proved to be challenging (most of the state is in Zone 8 and the rules
require all stations to be in the same zone). And since we were all told
that the CME was going to hit us about an hour into the contest and ruin
it, I figured I had nothing to lose anyway... so off we went...
I did not have much time to get the station ready for the contest, and for
guest operators. First order of business was trying to find a working
voice keyer. Yes, the not-so-mighty KA9FOX station did not have a voice
keyer. I mainly do Sprint contests, which don't require a lot of CQing,
otherwise I have just been getting on for a few hours here and there in
most contests, or guest operating elsewhere. I had bought a Microham SO2R
box (the MK2R+) several months ago, which has a built-in DVK, but had never
implemented it. Good reason to get that done now! Thanks to great
implementation guides for N1MM on Microham's site, I got that working late
last week and it performed perfectly. N1MM is able to control it for
recording messages on the fly, and of course playing them automatically as
needed. Thanks to K9CT for some advice on fixing a record-on-the-fly
problem.
I have had a problem in my station on HF with an intermittent "20db
attenuator" being thrown in line. Received signals seem to be downgraded
at times. I was very concerned this intermittent problem would haunt us
this weekend. So, on Friday night around 1030pm (good time to troubleshoot
for a Saturday morning contest, right??) I tuned 15 meters and it was
dead... so I plopped in the middle of the band, fired up the voice keyer on
repeat mode, fired up the amplifier, and started repeating some test
messages (with my callsign) over and over, to see if I could get the
problem to appear. While I was testing, I had some callers come out of
nowhere... including a QRP ZL mobile station, a VK, a KH6, and the surprise
of them all, a 5B4, shortpath! Anyway, the problem DID appear and I was
able to narrow down to a bad coax input on the Array Solutions Six-Pak.
Switched the main radio to "input B" and it was rock solid for the whole
contest.
Next step was to get N1MM upgraded... I was on version 10, and the latest
is 12. Painless upgrade, thanks to N1MM's great documentation. With the
station in good shape, it was time to get some sleep.. around Midnight I
guess. Got up at 5am, ate breakfast and fired up the station... I had the
first shift of 7am-1pm.
Contest started really slow... only 4 QSOs in the first 10 minutes or so,
but finished the first hour with 90. Things really picked up the next few
hours. Best hour of the contest was had during the 14z-15z hour, with 184
in the log. Where was this disastrous CME??? After the morning rush it
was slow but steady. Had some interesting callers during the 16z hour
(11am local), including some HS and YB and JA. I'm told this is fairly
common occurrence, but I don't get on enough I guess, as it caught me by
surprise. I worked the sub-VFO on my FT-1000MP really hard, working as many
of the bandmap spots as possible, then just tuning in between CQs when I
ran out of spots to work.
Later Mike K9NW, Al N9ISN and Ryan KB9OWD all arrived for their shifts,
then I took the night shift between Midnight and 7am. That was mostly a
bust, especially this morning, when only 2 stations were worked from 5am to
7am. Interestingly, about 2am, K5ZD/1 called in and he was 20 over 9. The
band was definitely open to the east coast, but nobody awake to work us, I
guess. Contest ended at 7am... I sent the logs to KB9S and went right to
bed soon after... woke up at Noon!
Unlike John N0IJ, we did not have an A/C problem. In fact, I had cooled
the room down too much, thinking the amp would overheat us, and had to
RAISE the room temperature. Sorry to rub it in. :-)
FINAL RESULTS: 15 SSB @ KA9FOX (NU1AW/9)
QSOs: 1303 (including dupes)
Zones: 37
HQs: 44
In the end, the station performed OK, although surely we left a lot of DX
on the table... there just had to be another layer of stations that we just
were not reaching with my small system. But we had a LOT of fun, and I was
forced to implement some much needed station improvements (and cleaning!)
in the process (bonus!)
I want to send a BIG thanks to Paul W0AIH for including me in this very
special event (what an honor!)... to KB9S for all his preparation work at
the farm, and now the task of combining all the logs from different logging
programs into a single log to score and submit... and to N9ISN for putting
together the operating schedule for both KA9FOX (15 SSB) and K9OW (40 SSB)
and his work in preparing K9OW for this operation (dvk, laptop, pre-contest
visit, etc.)... oh, and to my lovely XYL for the weekend pass. :-)
73 - Scott KA9FOX
**************
*** NU1AW/9 @ K9OW ***
The original plan for 40 SSB and 80 CW was to have both at Bill Pike's fine
K9OW station SE of La Crosse. Unfortunately Bill's station wasn't able to
be set up for two stations. In fact, there was going to be some work to get
it set up for contesting with one station. Bill is a Honor Roll DXer and
his station is set up for single op DXing. K3 and Alpha amp, 1/4 wave 4
Square on 40m.... all good stuff to build on. Working with John, N0IJ, we
reset the band/modes plans for the 'satellite' stations for NU1AW so that
John and Bill's stations could excel on their strengths. But with the
operator lists already set in stone, we had to find another world class
station in the La Crosse area to fill in 15 SSB so that the operator
schedules could be worked out between the two stations. Thanks for Scott,
KA9FOX, he accepted the challenge and became our 15 SSB. Working out a
schedule between the two stations 45 minutes apart was now possible with 4
operators. Thanks Scott!! His station was more than enough to handle the
task. In fact, his final score was the best of any of the band/mode
stations for NU1AW/9! And watching him handle SO2V was a sight to behold. A
master shredding the band with his FT1000MP! Nothing was left on the table.
Setting up Bill's station was going to be almost a field day operation.
Bill has no computer control of his station. So I had to get a laptop
computer configured and set up with a K3 (which I don't own) and N1MM all
sight unseen. I got N1MM working with a Rigblaster and laptop at home with
my Yaesu FT 5000 so it was hoping it was to be easy plug and play (with
microphone jumper changes in the Rigblaster) to the K3/computer. Even with
that, I left home at 3am for a 2 1/2 hour drive to make it to Bill's with
enough time to get the station set up and tested by 7am start time.
The only technical glitch was the DVK in N1MM, which worked fine at home
with my FT 5000, was not working with the K3. The record on the fly feature
of N1MM would produce horrible distorted recordings for the DVK, rendering
it useless. We had to go 'raw' (as Ryan KB9OWD put it). The K3 wasn't very
fast updating VFO information to N1MM either. I think it was the
USB<>serial interface but at least that *was* working. A pleasant surprise
was that I found out that Bill had fiber internet!! I was expecting nothing
out in Amish country. Schwing!!
At 7am start we just had a severe thunderstorm roll though with heavy
lightning. Static! Ugh! Started out slow but steady with a run of VK's but
the rate was at a snails pace. By 8am, I knew it was going to be a slow day
when it seemed everyone who called was 'I am not in the contest but I heard
you calling, what do you need?' and explaining the whole 'IARU' multiplier
thing to those who *were* in the contest.
Ryan, KB9OWD and myself were swapping 3 hour shifts but neither of us were
having any rate. After 9 hours in the contest and my 2nd shift, we were
sitting at 180's and only 8 mults. All of the Q's were zone 6, 7's and 8's
(and the early VK's) with lots of locals and W8's. Long stretches of time
when no Q's were logged was common. In fact, the whole band was shut down
for stretches of time. Curses the CME's!
I went to KA9FOX's for my shift there to find he was having the time of his
life. What was this? DX? Rates in the 100's?? So this was how the other
half lives, huh?
Mike, K9NW, joined our crew in the late afternoon to join in the slow slog
on 40 SSB after having huge run rates at KA9FOX's. The rate improved on 40
SSB slightly as it got dark but we never had the EU or AF runs. The polar
paths shut us down. We could hear them loudly but they never came back to
us. I got back to 40 SSB at 10pm and by 11pm I got a nice clear run
frequency about 7240 and had decent rates of our own for a few hours,
getting our 500th Q about 12:30am.
We got the DVK working after Mike got on at 1am by copying the /wav CQ
files from KA9FOX's N1MM. Worked great for the rest of the contest. But the
rates dropped dramatically the rest of the contest. No JA at all.
Final tally NU1AW/9 40 SSB @ K9OW 30mi SE of La Crosse, WI
QSO's (no dupes) 647, ITU zones 22, HQ's 19
IARU - 2012-07-14 1200Z to 2012-07-15 1200Z - 668 QSOs
NU1AW/9 Runs >10 QSOs:
2012-07-14 1255 - 1335Z, 7187 kHz, 28 Qs, 42.3/hr N9ISN
2012-07-14 1353 - 2333Z, 7186 kHz, 218 Qs, 22.5/hr
2012-07-14 2339 - 2351Z, 7186 kHz, 16 Qs, 78.4/hr KB9OWD
2012-07-15 0000 - 0033Z, 7186 kHz, 36 Qs, 64.6/hr KB9OWD
2012-07-15 0102 - 0245Z, 7202 kHz, 70 Qs, 40.9/hr K9NW
2012-07-15 0258 - 0313Z, 7203 kHz, 17 Qs, 68.2/hr K9NW
2012-07-15 0335 - 0355Z, 7167 kHz, 18 Qs, 53.1/hr N9ISN
2012-07-15 0503 - 0545Z, 7243 kHz, 53 Qs, 76.0/hr N9ISN
2012-07-15 0547 - 0620Z, 7243 kHz, 21 Qs, 37.7/hr K9NW
2012-07-15 0642 - 0717Z, 7200 kHz, 24 Qs, 41.0/hr K9NW
2012-07-15 1034 - 1113Z, 7169 kHz, 25 Qs, 38.5/hr KB9OWD
2012-07-15 1116 - 1154Z, 7169 kHz, 27 Qs, 42.5/hr KB9OWD
IARU - 2012-07-14 1200Z to 2012-07-15 1200Z - 668 QSOs
NU1AW/9 Max Rates:
2012-07-14 2339Z - 4.0 per minute (1 minute(s)), 240 per hour by KB9OWD
2012-07-15 0513Z - 1.7 per minute (10 minute(s)), 102 per hour by N9ISN
2012-07-15 0602Z - 1.2 per minute (60 minute(s)), 70 per hour by N9ISN
Operators: Mike, K9NW / Ryan KB9OWD / Al N9ISN
A huge THANK YOU to Bill Pike, K9OW, for the use of his fine station. He
was a awesome host and really rolled out the red carpet for us to take over
his station for the contest.
73 Al N9ISN
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