[CQ-Contest] K4OJ 10 Meter CW Story ++VERY LONG

[K4OJ]

This was an enjoyable albeit frustrating weekend...."huh, you did good Jim -
why was it furstrating?"

WELL...

It started a few weeks ago after the first flood of 97...just before SS -
remember when I drove my car into the lake in the road....well those same
rains caused some other damage....

The rotor control cable for the low 50 foot tower, with the KT34A on it hasn't
turned since....turns out there are all kinds of shorts in the cable, probably
its being underwater had something to do with that, you think?

....and on that note....

The second fllood of 97 came the week of the Ten Meter contest....W1CW and the
visiting GM3POI put together a 3 element Ten Meter beam during the week before
the contest, I was going to pin to a leg of the back tower before the contest
so I would have another antenna option/height for the contest.  Without the
tribander NOT rotating it seemed wise to put together the ten meter beam, I
had got it for a steal, and it turned out to be brand spankin new...never put
together...some SOB (Shack On-a Belt) type musta been satisfied with the
repeaters and never got around to getting on HF.....his loss, my gain!

With the main rotary I would be okay, but I wanted to have a stateside antenna
to flip to quickly...I knew that at least one of the two antennas would
probably be Southeast a lot of the weekend, from here in FL Ten Meter Contest
Weekend - this means if you illuminate the SE quadrant you will get lotsa
QSOs....it works, so much so that WC4E who put up a stack of 4 yagis has the
bottom one fixed thataway.... anyhow - I wanted that additional yagi to
quickly check the "real" direct beaming path, etc....

The main Ten Meter antenna is a 4 element Cushcraft with W1CW dime mods at the
highest point in the place....at about 140 feet up.  Years back when I started
the e-mail thing W3LPL mentioned something about a death ray antenna up way up
high at his place...three years ago we aquired this yagi from WC4E and I
decided I would like to try it on top of the tallest mast.  Due to the large
number of birds that like to roost on the yagis at W1CW/W1YL the antennas have
to have pinned elements....some of them birds are huge....all it takes is two
of them on one side of the boom and suddenly you are lopsided.....so W1CW who
has perfected pinning of elements, did the first element pinning operation on
this one three years ago.....roughly....

Nope, the elements have not rotated about the boom on it...although I did have
to 
level the antenna once....seems the birds had all decided to sit on the south
side of the antenna one day and the u-bolts hold just wasn't 'nuff so we had
what looked like half of a cross polarized yagiu for a few weeks!

The antenna proved itself two seasons ago with a victory in the CW category -
and several weeks ago it seemed to be doing great into Europe in ourmulti-
single entry into the CQWW CW - Suinday rates into EU were over 90/hour....

The peak at the potential propagation for the upcoming Ten Meter contest wet
my apetite for what was to come, also word of a new club in FL going after the
Florida Contest Group's previously unchallenged standing as owner of the club
competition category added flame to the fires within me - after all, I am club
President - you mess with our gavel (which we never have ever received from
ARRL, despite two victories) you mess with my family, heah I ain't a godfather
for nothin you know!   

So, I was anxious to do well in the contst, and had grandious plans which
never seemed to gel.

I had hoped to take down and move the tribander to a fixed SE antenna....put
the new monobander on the short perch (rotary) where the tribander was....but
first the broken rotor....then there was the second flood, oh yeah it happened
again, ask my folks neighbor, Noah....

Sure enough it rained, and rained and rained for days before and during the
contest....I had stations stopping by my freq asking about the wx - gather CNN
must have run a piece about our rainfall. So, needless to say the new ten
meter beam never even got off the ground, I may be gung ho but I will NOT
climb a wet tower....and that non rotating tribander was left pointed
Southeast....where else!  

The rains finally stopped about noon on Sunday, during the entire contest I
watched numerous species of cranes, white ones - gray ones, lil brown birds
and ibuses ( or is that ibises) - long legged birds with long pointy beaks all
wade through the back yard which was now a shallow pond...bobbing for
W0RM.....they worked W0RM a lot over the weekend....condx allowed them to make
it over the pond it seemed....

Well the rain bought to light a much bigger problem than the lack of ability
to do antenna maintennance...there was an s9+ powerline noise source coming
from, you guessed it - the Northeast.....with all the screwy propagation we
see luckily this did not kill the EU QSOs although I know I would have had
more had I been able to beam thataway at the openings height.  The noise made
it impossible to point the yagi between NW and NNE....and as a consequence it
probably ate into my W3/W2/W1 QSOs as well....this is a must solve before it
becomes a recurring nightmare.  It was frustrating to diddle the rotor and to
hear the signal start to come up out of the mud (so to speak) only to see it
disappear and the line noise take its place.....the only thing worse was there
is an appliance either in the house or one of the nieghbors houses that
TOTALLY wiped out the entire band when it was on - fortunately it seemed like
it was only on for 30 seconds to a minute and a half at a clip - and i only
had to deal with it maybe six times over the weekend....it was like someone
started a chainsaw in my headphones!

Speaking of headphones, I ran two radios on the same subband during the
weekend...the left ear as always being my cq/run rig the Omni VI and the right
ear being the S&P TS430....well, lets just say that the front end of the 430
is a real trooper, I sure as hell am loud in the right ear when I am
transmitting on the same frequency!  Almost as loud as  the DU station that
called on Sunday, gawd was that a path - he was almost as loud as I was!  One
of the many LP DX QSOs of the weekend.

I had two computers running NA10 networked, the second rig and keyboard were
used to listen - in between CQs for new LU stations - remember the antenna was
pointed kinda thata ways.....not only did I work my LUs that way but picked up
my Manitoba multiplier when I tuned past him working someone else and got his
attention and slid him up a kc (ooops, KHz)....a nice find in the second
ear....

The most interesting phenomenon I found was when I listened to the same
frequency with both xcvrs....one in each ear....with the second rig on the
tribander fixed SE and the main rig beaming who knows where the signals were
coming from I enjoyed a very interesting phenomenon...GM3POI has used this
this past year on 160 with a Yaesu 1000 Dual RX rig....he couples the seocnd
rcvr to his beverage farm and the main rx listens on the txing
antenna....anyway, it produced for me an easier to copy weak signal - the
"spatial" quality of hearing the signal come in two different manners made it
easier to pick out the call - kinda like when having a stack prevents the
losses due to rapid fading I suspect....anyway it was interesting enough that
I am gonna build a lil relay box which will lift/gorund the antenna on the
second rig while the first is transmiting (probably will scab off the txing
rig amp relay line) before the next major contest....oh my aching right
ear.....some of you guys wrote me e-mail after the contest telling me I was
loud there - well I was REALLY loud HERE in the right ear....which of course
is where the work telphone goes, Monday was a bit odd at work :-)

High point rate wise was 90 hour on Saturday, total QSOs 1300...mults 105,
states 49 :-(  - missed NMex - yo, Bananna/K7UP what happend??? - you guys get
some bad Tex-Mex?

There were some interesting mults especially the long haul guys...a special
thanks to all the great DX that called me  including JA1YXP who got my
attention and gave me a call for the JA mult.... neato.....domestic
mults...who were all thes Minnesota guys? - When the band went west at about
1700 zulu yielding a hoard of Washington and OR stations on both both
days....a neat 4 QSO run at around 1730zulu Saturday produced the following

1732 K0VX N Dak   MULT
1732 WD0T S Dak  MULT
1733 N7DM Wa
1733 WB0RTK Nebr  MULT

...three mults in two minutes....so much for the 0 column in the Alt-W
window.....by the way......on the subject of puters.....in addition to having
the log being "backed up on a second drive by networking two puters,

In addition to using the second keyboard to check for dupes, I kept additional
screens up and running all weekend long - like the mult, and time off screen
on the seond puter, while the main puter had the check mult, etc running....It
was nice....the highlight of this though was when W1YL came in the shack on
Sunday and it was a lil slow, I unplugged the headphones and punched up Ctrl
F9 as I was telling Mom that the rate was starting to pick back up - she had
not seen the rate graph before....she had to get the camera to take a pix of
it....hi!

Congratulations to all of the memebers of the Florida Contest Group for their
fine efforts, including speciual mention to new home/station owner WC4E who
seems to have done rather well in mixed mode....Jeff appears to be back in the
saddle again as the mixed mode throne man, welcome back Jeff!  Other club
memebrs hosted newcomers to expose them to contesting, and others broke their
own records for previous performance in the contest....all this and we still
are just starting to see the DX return - EU was a mere 7% of my QSOs....less
than a hundred...I suspect in a year that will be an easy hours worth :-) -
this contest really is a blast allowing everyone to work everyone....you
always have someone to run....well almost almost always, hi!

Another mention - the new Florida club did an excellent job of getting their
members on the air - I know I worked a lot of those guys - and I gather from
the 3830 reflector so did everyone else....congratulations to the new club for
mobilizing their members so well....

So if you are getting up there in age like myself and thinking about mebbe
making the move to Florida, radio can be fun from down here - especially Ten
Meters! Gimme a call, I understand WC4E now has a vacant lot next door to him!

As always the joy of operating from my parent's place is great, I have enjoyed
operating my folks gear since before the first 10 meter contest....I remember
that one, I was stumbling for phonetics when Mom came into the shack and
waived a piece of paper which said W A 1 Nice New Contest, it was - and is -
one of my favorites....little did I know what FL was going to be like :-) 

Thanks guys (n gals) - especially those who took the time to catch me on the
upswings of a burst of propagation!  SIGN YOUR CALL QUICK - SO WE CAN QSO B4
YOU FADE..............which is usually about the time you send your
state.....oh well....missed it....here he comes again - got it! 

Seasons Greetings - May your Christmas wishes all come true! (I told Santa the
no tune Alpha would be nice, but i would settle on another Omni VI)

73,

Jim, K4OJ

Left rig/Left Ear:

Omni VI - Titan/1500W - 486 clone - 4L yagi @ 140 ft

Right rig/Right EAR (the deaf one....huh?)

TS430S with abused front end - Alpha 374/1000W - 386 Samsung - KT34A @ 50 Ft
fixed Southeast

...and from the NA software, the following continental stats:


station: K4OJ        
contest: ARRL Ten Meter Contest        
 
                 10
                 CW    total
-----------------------------------
N America:     1127     1127 (86%)
             (100%)
 
S America:       36       36 (2%)
             (100%)
 
   Europe:       98       98 (7%)
             (100%)
 
   Africa:        4        4 (0%)
             (100%)
 
     Asia:        2        2 (0%)
             (100%)
 
  Oceania:       32       32 (2%)
             (100%)




....time to hang my stocking with care.......................MX2U N2LAGN


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