[Fourlanders] EME contest

[Bob Lear]

We have done the first weekend of the ARRL EME contest for 6m through 
1296.  This was October 27th and 28th.  For the first time, we've had 
three stations on the air:  2m, 222 and 432.  Johnny's station was up on 
2m and using his call K4SQC, made 33 QSO's. Brian's 222 station was on 
and he made his first 222 EME QSO during the contest.  Unfortunately, he 
and the other station were the only two stations active on 222 for the 
weekend.  My W4ZST 432 station was on and I made 21 QSO's.  In all 
cases, we did better for the weekend on all the bands than any other 
contest weekend that we have been on.   The other highlight is that we 
didn't have any major equipment problems.  That's got to be a first for 
a contest here. We even had good tracking with computer control which 
was very helpful since it was completely overcast on Friday night, but 
since we could hear signals, we knew we were on target.  It's the first 
time I had set antennas up without Johnny's help and I also set up the 
222 and 432 stations.  I built a new relay box for 432 because I had 
relegated the first one I built to Brian's station back in June for the 
VHF contest.  Johnny did suffer from some digital interference from the 
HDMI TV/monitor on 2m but we think we have identified and solved that.  
He did have high SWR on vertical polarization Friday night and Saturday 
afternoon we checked the feed lines and found water in both ends of the 
2m vertical drop.  Dried them out and solved that problem.  We had had 2 
inches of rain on Thursday and Friday before the contest started.  This 
is the first time we've had water in the coax connectors and will be 
more aware of that in the future if we see any changes in our SWR that 
causes the amplifier to automatically shut down.  Can't have that!

Ron WW8RR also was with us on Friday night for moral support.  We were 
operating single operator stations under the rules.  It helped to have 
someone else around to help keep us awake.  It was a long night and if 
you aren't busy enough on the radio, it's pretty easy to nod off!!  Our 
eyes were pretty bleary in the wee hours.  The moon was up for us from 8 
PM on Friday night until 10 on Saturday morning.  We slept the rest of 
the day, had supper and started over on Saturday night from moonrise at 
8:30 until almost 11 on Sunday. Not as many Q's on the second night.  We 
can only work any station one time for the four nights total of the 
contest.  We hope there will be some more new ones to work on the second 
weekend at the end of this month.

It took some time and extra sleep on Sunday and Monday for me to 
recover.  I'm sure the others did too.

Johnny's 2m station consists of a nice Windows 7 computer, a Flex 1500 
SDR radio (operating on 10m QRP), driving a DownEastMicrowave 2m 
transverter which drives an M-squared 2M-1K2 amp running about 800W out 
on WSJT.  He is also running an M2 preamp and relay/sequencer box.  The 
antennas are a pair of M2 two meter cross-polarized antennas on an Az-El 
rotator with 20 elements on each polarity.  These antennas play very 
well off the moon.  He runs Power SDR software to control the 1500, 
MoonSked to control the rotator and WSJT V10 to copy and send the 
digital signals.

Brian's 222 station uses one of the Fourlanders W7 computers, a Yaesu 
FT-1000MP (also QRP 10m out), driving a DEMI 222 transverter which 
drives his Lunar Link Amplifier putting out about 750 watts for the 
contest.  I built the relay/polarity control box which has a DEMI preamp 
in it.  His antennas are a pair of M2 30 element X-pol antennas.  
MoonSked and WSJT10 again.  These antennas were used for the regular VHF 
contest in June and will remain set up for the January VHF contest.  We 
are hoping that there will be a scheduled 222 EME activity weekend 
sometime later this year that may get some more folks on for that band.  
Many stations do also have 222 capability but not all can easily change 
their feedpoints during a contest.  Most share more of their station 
equipment than we do with our completely separate stations.  They tend 
to stay on the bands with the most activity.

My 432 station was previously identical to Brian's with the exception 
that all the transverter and amp were for 432.  I  had used that station 
for the past three years for the EME contests That's the only times I 
have done 432 EME.  I did however this time change over to a Flex 1500 
for the radio and was quite pleased with the SDR and it's panadaptor.  
Same software setup as Johnny's station and I built another relay box 
for this contest.  I ran my Lunar Link amp at only 500W out.  I was 
using a pair of K1FO 25 element yagis with Vertical Polarization only.  
I do plan to make them into X-pol antennas sometime.  That should help 
my RX since I would be able to hear someone with the other polarity 
better.  But I have so far done best with V-pol.  My set up of four 
antennas with left and right polarization last year did not work well.  
In principle it should have but it turns out the antennas were not well 
matched.  It shouldn't have mattered that they were in an "X" 
configuration rather than a "+" configuration, but it just didn't work 
well.  Real, single boom cross pole will be better, regardless of x or + 
set up.

We are also discussing changing back over to WSJT-x version.  We started 
to do this early this year and ran into some problems as it was quite 
new then.  The WSJT JT65B mode that we use for EME on the VHF bands is 
the same in both versions.  Go Figure!  The x-version has the new FT8 
and MSK144 modes that we use for terrestrial contacts and contesting but 
the EME modes are supposedly the same in both versions.  That's not what 
we and some others are experiencing.  Some folks are running both JT10 
and JT-x simultaneously to see which decodes better.  Johnny is going to 
try to get that set up for the second half of the contest this month. 
His computer is capable of running all those programs simultaneously.

I fixed breakfasts both days, pancakes and sausage on Saturday and 
scrambled eggs, sausage and English Muffins on Sunday.  We ate at 
Hickory Prime BBQ on Friday night and the new 19 North steak and seafood 
place on the square on Saturday night.  Snacks and Junk Food overnight 
and plenty of coffee.

Looking forward to the second weekend of the contest on November 24th 
and 25th.  If we have time and things go right, we are going to also try 
to have a 1296 EME station set up for the contest.  We've got the stuff, 
just need to make the time and get it all put together.  Good thing I 
don't have anything to do around here!

73, Bob