[3830] CQWW CW K1LT SOAB HP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW

Call: K1LT
Operator(s): K1LT
Station: K1LT

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Ohio EM89ps
Operating Time (hrs): 39
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:   87    11       33
   80:  214    19       72
   40:  461    28       92
   20:  518    38      106
   15:  669    33      102
   10:  226    24       74
------------------------------
Total: 2175   153      479  Total Score = 3,883,008

Club: Mad River Radio Club

Comments:

For the last few years I have enjoyed using 2 tribanders during DX
contests: the usual large rotatable tribander at the top of my 60 foot
aluminum tower and a second small tribander mounted at 30 feet fixed
on the Caribbean.  I have always thought that it would be nice to
rotate the second tribander so it could be used for multipliers while
running on the main beam.  Also I would like to have a 40 meter bean.

When I bought the 60 foot aluminum tower 5 years ago, I also bought a
2 inch by 22 foot chrome-moly mast tube.  When I received the heavy
steel tube I decided that it was too much for an aluminum tower and
stashed it away in the barn.

A couple of years ago I bought a complete 80 foot Rohn 45 tower from a
ham who was downsizing and moving south.  The sale included 8 straight
sections, a tapered top section, and 2 sets of 1/4 inch EHS guys, Rohn
guy brackets, thimbles and turnbuckles.  Some of the sections had a
very light touch of rust in a few places but generally they are in
very good condition.

I've been waffling about where to put this tower for those 2 years and
this year I finally made up my mind a decided to do it the "hard"
but
"good" way.

My property is a rectangle about 1300 feet north-south and 500 feet
east-west.  The house, barn and 60 foot aluminum tower occupy the
northern third of the area while the 160 meter vertical and radial
field occupy about the southern third.  The middle third is full of
Beverages and short receiving verticals.

One choice of location for the new tower was adjacent to the barn so
that the feedline runs would be only about 100 feet.  However, the
guys would land in the side and back yards and create several new
mowing obstacles.  I already have plenty of mowing obstacles.  Also
the new tower would be only about 120 feet from the existing tower.
The other choice is atop a small knoll between the existing tower and
the 160 vertical way in the back.  Placement here would require
removal of a lot of trees and very long feedline runs and the use of a
concrete "power buggy" to move concrete from the delivery truck to
the
holes.

Over the summer I mowed and axed the "forest" that had grown over
the
small knoll between the house and the 160 vertical.  I am constantly
amazed at how fast some of the trees grow since my property was
formerly a corn field.  Since I had invested some effort in clearing
the land and laying out the positions of the base and guy anchors, I
had committed to the distant location.  I decided I would solve the
long feedline run problem when I got that far.

I also decided that I would split the project into 2 phases for
budgetary reasons.  Phase 1 would be 40 feet of tower with 1 set of
EHS guys.  This would allow me to relocated the second tribander to
have a somewhat new antenna for the winter.  Then Phase II would be in
the spring when I could afford to buy 2 more straight sections and 900
feet of Phillystrand for the top 2 sets of guys.

For the Labor Day weekend, I was able to rent a mini-excavator for one
day's rent and dig the 3x3x4 foot pier hole and the 3 4x6x4 foot guy
anchor holes.  Since 2 of the guy anchor holes are in sloping ground
down from the pier hole, I made sure that the back wall of each hole
was 4 feet deep for lack of a better specification.  Even though the
excavator moves a lot of dirt quickly, there was considerable need for
manual digging to get the walls straight and the corners square and
the bottoms level.  Fortunately, recently retired OSU Radio Club
alumnus Bill, WD8AMX was available to help.  It took all 3 days to dig
the holes.

Over the next 2 weekends I built 4 rebar cages and assembled them in
the holes.  The cut-off wheel for the radial saw made relatively quick
work of sawing #4, #6 and #7 rebars to length.  Bill suggested
pre-formed tie-wires and the corresponding tool rather than straight
iron wire and pliers which I had used for previous work.  The pier
hole also required a form around the top and "plumbing" for
electricity and coax.  Since the south guy anchor hole was too deep
for the GA3455 anchor to be properly centered in the rebar cage, I
made the cage an extra 6 inches thick, splitting the difference in
depth between the front and back walls.

When concrete day arrived, I recruited Bill to handle the concrete
vibrator chores and retired friend George, N8IPI to handle buggy
direction while I operated the power buggy.  It took 14 trips over an
hour and 45 minutes to move 5 yards of concrete 350 feet from the
truck to the holes.

A week later when the concrete has hard enough to check the placement
of the pier pin and the tower base plate I found that the "plumbing"
for power had drifted a little during the pour so that it would
overlap the base plate.  Fortunately, I didn't glue the vertical
section of PVC conduit so I could pull it out and enlarge the hole in
the not yet completely hard concrete.  Then I fabricated an "offset"
PVC tubed and glued that in place and refilled the hole with patching
cement.

Two weeks later it was time to raise 2 sections of tower and the 22
foot long chrome-moly mast.  The plan was to use 4 temporary guys made
from the old 1/4 inch EHS left over from the original tower
installation.  These guys would be anchored with screw-in anchors
about 20 feet from the base except for the east direction which
aligned with a permanent anchor.

One complication was the need to elevate the base while tilting 20
feet of tower so that the hole in the base could slip over the pier
pin without binding.  We handled this problem by assembling a couple
of layers of 2x4s to provide a platform to support the base.  A couple
of thick rebars with adjustable strapping ribbons kept the base from
"kicking out".  My 16 foot 2x12 (with a 2x4 runner for additional
rigidity) provided the "derrick" for the falling derrick method.

About 1/3 the way up one of the temporary guys became taught and
yanked out the screw in anchor.  Fortunately nothing moved and we set
the tower back down and readjusted the side guys for less tension.
The next time the 2 sections went all the way up without an issue.
The 4th guy was attached to the permanent guy anchor to the east.

The next day I decided that the 4-way temporary guys were just too
insecure for further erection, so I cobbled together 2 more long guys
made of old EHS to attach to the permanent anchors.  I had to splice
one piece with thimbles and a bolt from a piece of EHS cut off the
short temporary guys.  So the final temporary guys were 1/4 inch EHS
attached 20 feet up the tower 3 ways to the permanent anchors.

A week later I borrowed a gin pole from Mike KI8R who lives about 3
miles away.  He just got done with his own 50 foot Rohn 25 project.
He helped me add 2 more sections.  The 4th section hosts the first
permanent guy bracket as I am using the 100 mph TIA-222 revision F
Rohn specs for a 100 foot tower.  By myself I added the 3 permanent
3/16 EHS guys at the 31 foot level.  They aren't yet tensioned to 400
pounds since I don't yet have a tension gauge.

Finally, I took the Cushcraft A3S off the aluminum tower and
reinstalled it on top of the steel tower.  I used the steel rotor
plate, an old Ham M rotor as a plate-to-mast adapter and a 2 foot 2
inch aluminum tube.  I did run a rotor cable that reaches the ground
in case I device some sort of remote rotor control before Phase II
commences.

I also found on eBay a nearby ham selling 400 foot pieces of 1.25 inch
Heliax for a reasonable price.  So Bill and I had a 1 day adventure
driving the rickety old Grand Voyager to Orrville, Ohio to pick up the
Heliax.  We had to disassemble the 6 foot diameter wooden spool and and
extricate the Heliax.  When tied up securely and tipped a few degrees,
the loose Heliax fit in the back of the van.  A few days later bill
helped me unspool the Heliax which now reaches from the new tower to
the old tower which allows the relocated A3S to be connected to the
antenna switching system as it was previously.  For now, the A3s is
pointed southeast but it is a little higher and much further from the
X7.

When phase II comes, I'll splice on the other 240 feet of Heliax and
run the feedline, power, and Ethernet all the way back to the house.

The other fall antenna project has a modest upgrade of the 80 meter
vertical.  This vertical consists of a HyTower with 52 feet of
aluminum stinger for an overall height of 75 feet.  The ground system
was 42 69 foot radials.  That configuration had excellent bandwidth
and seemed to work OK during the 2014 CQ WW SSB test.  However,
shortly after putting it up last year, 10 feet disappeared and I had
to add a loading coil to restore resonance.

Between new tower workdays, I got Mike to help me tilt the 80 meter
vertical to horizontal.  I disassembled the base and painted the rusty
parts.  I added 3 pieces of tubing (should have been 5 so I had to add
a shim) to replace the funky HyGain 2 inch to 1.25 inch splice and
removed the 1/4 inch by 10 foot top piece.  Also, the disappeared 10
feet was telescoping where I apparently failed to add self tapping
screws to splice the tubes together.  Mike then helped me raise the
vertical a few days later, just in time for SS SSB.  I also added 21
more 90 foot radials.  The revamped vertical now had less than 2:1 SWR
across 80 and 75 and seems to work as well as ever.

The next project on the list to run concurrently with the antenna
project was to build a few W3NQN filters to improve SO2R operation.  I
ordered the set of toroid's for 6 bands from kitsandparts.com and
scrounged around Mouser looking for high voltage capacitors since the
Tuscionix capacitors that W3NQN recommends are hard to find.  I
figured that 1 kV capacitors are likely to survive instead of 3 or 4
kV capacitors by scaling the power limit from 200 to 60 watts.

I found an old chassis from an obsolete project and built 40 and 20
meter filters.  I had already a conventional 3-pole elliptical filter
for 80 meters which might also be useful.

The final addition was another 3 by 1 audio switch like the one I
built last year.  By cascading 2 3x1 switches I can achieve 4 way
switching and also separate the SO2R switching from 160 audio routing.

And lastly I operated the CQ WW CW contest.  My score was way down
form last year for several reasons: limited 10 meter openings; a lack
of motivation after exhausting myself building stuff; and a lack of
planning for when to run versus when to hunt.  I spent too much time
hunting and insufficient time CQing so the multiplier count was up a
few multipliers while the QSO count was down by several hundred.

Since I didn't plan my operating, I alternated between CQing and
hunting based on random events and how I felt.

The surprise S&P session was the combination of 40 and 80 the first
night.  80 meters looked like 20 on the P3 and 40 had the usual array
of super loud European stalwarts.  So I alternated between bands and
tuned in each new station while working the previous station.  This
resulted in 110 QSOs in 100 minutes.

The rest of the first night I spent hunting.  Early Saturday morning I
CQed on 20 meters with modest success.  However, I wanted to run on 10
meters if possible because that has worked well in the past.  I went
to 10 meters, possibly a bit early, and hunted and CQed until I got a
run started.  The rate was never quite as good as before and the run
fizzled after about an hour.  So I finished the morning rate session
on 15.

All Saturday afternoon I hunted.  When JAs started to appear on 15, I
started CQing.  That run was fairly long and had a better rate than in
the past.

Attempts to run on 20, 40 and 80 Saturday evening were not very
productive.  However, I was able to run on 160 meters just before
European sunrise on Sunday.  I think that run of 20 DX stations in 20
minutes is better than any since 2009 CQ 160 contest.  Furthermore,
there weren't any ESP contacts and I was using my Beverages.

Another surprise run was on 40 meters after European sunrise.  The
rate wasn't terrific but certainly vastly better than hunting.  I
think I discovered this phenomenon during the ARRL DX CW but I had
forgotten.

Sunday morning 10 meters was very limited so I mostly ran on 15 and
checked 10 from time to time for better conditions.

The surprise multiplier was 9M8K for zone and country followed by KL7
for another pair of multipliers while CQing Saturday night trying to
run JAs while hunting for contacts on 40.  JW7QIA was a nice surprise
late Sunday afternoon on 20 and T2XX was another surprise Sunday
evening on 15.

Just a few stations were worked on 6 bands: NP2P, V47T, PJ2T, ED8X,
CR3L, VE2IM, and ED1R.

DX worked: 3B9, 3V, 4L, 4O, 4X, 5B, 5H, 5W, 6W, 9A, 9H, 9M6, 9Y, A4,
A7, BY, C6, C9, CE, CE0Y, CE9, CM, CN, CT, CT3, CU, CX, D4, DL, DU,
E7, EA, EA6, EA8, EA9, EI, ER, ES, EU, F, FG, FK, FM, FO, FY, G, GD,
GI, GJ, GM, *GM/s, GU, GW, HA, HB, HC, HI, HK, HL, HP, HR, HS, HZ, I,
*IG9, *IT9, J3, J6, JA, JW, K, KH0, KH2, KH6, KL, KP2, KP4, LA, LU,
LX, LY, LZ, OA, OE, OH, OH0, OK, OM, ON, OX, OZ, P4, PA, PJ2, PJ4,
PJ5, PY, PZ, S5, SM, SP, SU, SV, SV9, T2, TA, TF, TI, TK, UA, UA2,
UA9, UN, UR, V2, V3, V4, VE, VK, VP2E, VP2V, VP5, VP9, XE, YB, YL, YN,
YO, YU, YV, Z3, *Z6 ZA, ZB, ZD8, ZF, ZL, ZP, and ZS for a total of 139
entities.

Equipment: K3/100, P3, Alpha 8410; K3/10, Hardrock 50, ETO 91B
(thanks, Jeff!); homebrew SO2R pieces parts; 65 foot 160 meter "T";
75
foot 80 meter vertical; 32 foot 40 meter vertical; Cushcraft X7 up 60
feet; Cushcraft A3S up 40 feet; homebrew automated antenna switching.


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