[3830] CQWW CW K1IR M/2 HP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW - 2020

Call: K1IR
Operator(s): K1IR K1OA KE1J NI1L W1UE
Station: K1IR

Class: M/2 HP
QTH: MA
Operating Time (hrs): 48
Remote Operation

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:  101    15       49
   80:  689    22       81
   40: 1608    33      109
   20: 1908    32      106
   15: 1203    26      100
   10:   79    19       33
------------------------------
Total: 5588   147      478  Total Score = 10,081,250

Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club

Comments:

A milestone for us - our first time posting a raw score over 10 million points.

We are quite pleased with this surprising result, given that the station was
entirely torn apart for a complete rebuild during the previous six days. On
Wednesday, I was preparing to tell the operating team to go with their backup
plans, as we hadn't even put RF through any of the new switching at that point.
Our attitude going into the contest was simply to make it a shakedown cruise for
all the new tech we'd added, particularly over the past week.

As always, it is the team that made this happen. Many people contributed in one
way or another. Regardless of size and type, every one of their contributions
was important to this success. This group helped out with station design and
construction, tower/antenna projects, interference reduction, troubleshooting,
digging parts out of their junkbox, financing, operating, and some serious
cheerleading.

AA1ON K1EP K1HT K1OA* K1UR K1XM KE1J* KQ1F K5ZD K9YC NI1L* NN1C SUE W1FV W1UE*
W1VE WO1N K1IR*

* Member of operating team

THE CONTEST

We had five ops for this one. Taking a fairly conservative position on social
distancing, we settled on three remote ops and two local ops. The two local ops
were on staggered shifts and separated by 8 feet when in the shack together.

All-consuming station work left me with no time to coordinate the team in
planning and testing. But, with the rest of the crew pitching in, we produced an
operating schedule and we managed to get a lot of the necessary setup for remote
operation out of the way. A lot, but not all of it. Unfortunately, at 0000z we
did run into a few unexpected snags, but the team rallied and got everything set
up correctly within the first hour. Midway through the contest, we encountered
one additional and very peculiar issue with remote. A specific combination of K3
Mini, remote and local RRC boxes exhibited strange behavior. It turned out that
swapping a full K3 for the K3 Mini stabilized the situation.

Those of you who know me are aware that remote/virtual collaboration is what I
do professionally. We wanted to create a remote environment that was as close to
'being there' as possible. We did that by standing up an SMS group, a Slack
channel and a full-time Zoom video conference for the duration of the contest.
These worked pretty well. The biggest issue we encountered was when one op tried
to talk to another over the video link, it was sometimes difficult to get him
out of his head-down focus on the radio - no matter how much we waved our arms
into the camera.

The contest went smoothly. We achieved reasonable rates on open bands, as
expected. When comparing with competitive stations, we felt loud on 40m and 15m.
Ok on 80m and 20m. Below average on 160m and 10m. We were able to work
multipliers with a good level of success. There were celebrations as we put the
more challenging and unexpected mults in the log.

With about 5 hours remaining, a quick calculation revealed that we might be able
to hit the 10M mark. It would take a strong press in the remaining hours to do
it. Lars, Scott and Dennis had completed their stints, so NI1L and I were tasked
to make it happen . . . With just 40 minutes remaining, we needed about 25k
points to go over the top. That's when Lars texted me to say, "Push push
don't stop until the end".

We got along very well as a team. When we needed to adapt, we did. 

We love the online scoreboard. We still wish every station would post. It makes
for a lot more interactive and competitive contest.

THE STATION

Since last year, we made progress in four areas:

  - Reduce interstation interference
  - Increase overall reliability
  - Improve antenna flexibility for highest-impact bands
  - Enable remote operation

Specifically . . .

  - Insulated elements of the primary 20m yagi to eliminate a troublesome
interaction with the 40m yagi
  - Installed stubs to eliminated amp tripping on 15m when transmitting on 10m
  - Added a 40m 4-square as a secondary antenna
  - Added a 20m vertical as a secondary antenna (will soon become a 4-square)
  - Replaced a very old multiplier tribander with a more modern, higher
performing antenna
  - Designed and built a more reliable and flexible antenna switching matrix
based on YCCC MOAS
  - Implemented remote control of two K3-based stations using the RRC
technology

The antenna switching project was the most challenging and time-consuming, by
far. NN1C conceived of the design, which combined the very powerful YCCC Mother
of All Switches with OK2ZAW 2x6 switches and stackmatches. From his previous
experience building this type of system, Marty raised several issues that he
felt should be handled better in this project. We settled on DB-9 connectors and
cables to hook up all the control wiring. This worked out great. There was also
a need to break signals out into different groups. This was done with a set of
custom designed PC boards. LEDs were added to show the state of every MOAS
signal. This really improved troubleshooting as we were standing up the system.
The MOAS is a software configuration-driven device. Getting a MOAS to behave the
way you want it to involves writing configuration files using a fairly detailed
and cryptic language. When we powered the system up for the first time, there
were no major issues to resolve. This was due to the fact that Marty had
prepared and tested the configuration file very well in advance. Troubleshooting
of this aspect of the system was completed in just a couple of hours. Whew!

Building the 2x6 switches and stackmatches and getting them into their
enclosures presented unexpected challenges and took more time than we had
planned. Here's a shout out to K1EP and WO1N, who stepped in to rescue us in
getting those boxes built.

As a result of all this work done over the past year, interstation interference
problems were less of an issue in this contest. We still have work to do, but
previously unworkable combinations - like 40m and 20m trying to run and chase
mults at the same time - were now tolerable.

Reliability was substantially improved. We had almost no problems with the
antennas, rotors and switching. Only one minor problem - a TIC Ring position
sensor pot that was stuck on a dirty spot - required a little troubleshooting.

We started to play with the capability of having more than one antenna available
for a particular band using 40m, and that feature shows great promise for the
future.

THE GEAR

Operating Positions
Position 1: K3 + Acom 2000A
Position 2: K3 + Acom 2000A
Position 1: IC-7610 + Alpha 87A

Antennas
160: Inverted-L
80: Wire 4-square
40: Optibeam OB4-40 + 4-square
20: 4/4 + shared South tribander + single vertical
15: 4/5 + shared South tribander
10: 5/5 + shared South tribander

Interferences suppression
Dunestar 600s on each transceiver
High-power bandpass filters for 80m/40m/20m
Coax band-reject stubs in lots of places

Software
N1MM+
Anydesk
Acom Director
Alpha Remote
MOAS Server and Client
Hamachi VPN

SUMMARY

We are happy. It feels good to have generated 10 million points from a station
with just one 90 foot tower and a bunch of wires in the woods.

There is much room for improvement. We already have a list of projects to help
improve station and operator performance for next time.

And, it feels good to stay connected with all our friends from around the world
who enjoy this unique game. Thanks for everything!

73 Jim K1IR


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