[Fourlanders] EME contest first weekend report

[Bob Lear]

Well, not a good contest for me.  I spent a lot of time working on 
getting everything going for the three bands for most of two weeks but 
it didn't work out.  The 222 station was all set up and working and I 
was doing the 2m and 432 pretty much the same with Flex 1500's instead 
of the HF rigs I had for IF's in June and September for the contests.  I 
put up 4 yagis for 432, 2H and 2V using the FO-25's on FG uprights for 
dual polarity.  I think it will work well but haven't gotten to try them 
yet.  I also rebuilt the 432 relay/preamp box to allow H/V switching.  
For 2m I had finally rebuilt the 2m relay/preamp box and had to replace 
the FET in the preamp and do better waterproofing to the box with 
gaskets for all the N-connectors and get it back up to the antennas.

Anyway,  on the Friday before the contest, everything worked except for 
having TX audio out from JT to/thru the radio on 2 and 432 both.  All 
the relays and such were working, RX fine and I was tracking OK with all 
three stations.  Just couldn't find what the problem was.  I didn't 
bother to try to get on at my MR at 12:30 Saturday morning as only 222 
was working and I figured there wouldn't be pile ups there anyway.   I 
was pretty tired by Friday night anyway and didn't get to a nap.   When 
I came out Saturday morning, I made one Q right away with Marshall on 
222 and tried with K7ULS but we couldn't complete with his single yagi 
this time.  I then kept troubleshooting 2m and 432 without finding the 
problem and also worked on it some more on Sunday with no progress.  I 
kept trying every possible combination of audio lines.  The 1500's were 
set up identical since 222 was working so well and I'm now up to 13 Q's, 
12 grids, 10 states and one province, 3 rare states from KB7Q portable 
with one yagi.

Bill wanted to come up and use some of my test equipment to work on some 
of his radios and came Tuesday after the contest.  After he got all his 
stuff done, he helped me look for my problem of no TX audio.  We both 
spent considerable more time.  He finally found the problem Wednesday 
morning.  It was a check box in Power SDR set up that was cryptic to me 
and I had set the same way as 222.  It had to do with 'allow PTT to 
override/bypass VAC for Phone'.  It turned out that I was doing PTT on 
222 by keying the radio and letting the radio key the sequencer and 
using it's delay function.  Like we had done with the FT-2000 and 
IC-7300 on 6m for so long.  I had finally figured out how to PTT the 
sequencer directly from the computer for 2m and 432 so that was the 
difference.  The box should not be checked for that case.  Probably a 
good idea that I hadn't tried to change the 222 station over yet but I 
had certainly planned to.  I just decided that since it was working so 
well, I wasn't going to do anything to it until after the contest 
weekends.   I made another rare state on 222 that Tuesday morning with 
KB7Q in Nevada.

Only thing good now is that I won't have to worry about dupes for the 
second weekend on 2 or 432 and can just work anyone I see.  And I hope I 
do get to see them.  The second weekend isn't until 11/28-9 so I'm 
planning to get on and test the stations before then.  Maybe I'll 
actually have some good news in the summary.

Probably best to not be asking me how to set up stations anymore. I'm 
pretty dangerous.

73, Bob