[SCCC] ARRL Sweepstakes CW - W6UE Multi-Op HP
Michael Tope
W4EF at dellroy.com
Thu Nov 6 21:54:49 EST 2003
ARRL Sweepstakes Contest, CW
Call: W6UE
Operator(s): KA6SAR, N6AN, W4EF
Station: W6UE
Class: Multi-Op HP
QTH: LAX
Operating Time (hrs): 23:30
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 0
80: 76
40: 239
20: 341
15: 377
10: 245
------------
Total: 1278 Sections = 80 Total Score = 203,680
Club: Southern California Contest Club
Comments:
After a two-year hiatus from any kind of serious CW SS effort, I decided at
the last minute that I would try putting a multi-operator effort together at
W6UE. Aside from a flaky monitor circuit in the club's TS-950SDX and a dead
packet TNC, everything at the station was working for a change and I had
just installed a third PC at the club which would provide us with a telnet
connection to the packet cluster in place of our broken over-the-air packet
setup. All in all it seemed like a good time to give it a go. On the Monday
before the contest, I put out a call to the usual suspects to see if anyone
was available. Mike, KA6SAR fresh from 20-meter duty at NQ4I in the CQ
Worldwide Phone contest replied that he was going to be in town and was
interested in doing something. David, N6AN/XE1NTT who was just back from
6D9X also expressed interest, but said he would only have limited
availability due to family commitments. With David and Mike's uncertain
schedules, it wasn't clear that we would have 2 operators present at all
times. I had spent quite a bit of time upgrading the station so it could be
rapidly reconfigured from a two operating position multi-single
configuration into an SO2R configuration, so I figured I could run SO2R to
pick up the slack during those times when we didn't have a second operator
around.
The weekend before during CQ Worldwide Phone, I had installed DXtelnet on
our spare PC and test driven the Trlog multiport network on our two
operating positions, so it looked like we had the logging hardware/software
handled. On the Thursday before the contest, I made a late afternoon run to
Radio Shack and cleaned them out of audio adapters and Y-cables which we
were running low on (its amazing how a contest station can suck up seemingly
hundred of dollars worth of audio cables and adapters). My plan was to get
everything setup that night, so that I could sleep in on Saturday morning
thereby avoiding the usual 11th hour pre-contest frenzied panic. "Best laid
plans of mice and men" - by 3 am on Friday I was still screwing around with
the computers (I had become obsessed with trying to get K6STI's "FONT" to
run on an uncooperative IBM Aptiva) and my head was starting to bob, so I
made the command decision to take Friday off of work, so I could get things
right. Friday morning I made the second of what was to ultimately be 4
pre-contest trips to Radio Shack so that I could pick-up even more audio
adapters and exchange a 3 speaker selector switch for a 3 audio source
selector (which is what I thought I had purchased the first time around). I
arrived at the station later that afternoon and started wiring.
The plan was to setup an audio switcher so that the multiplier station op
could, with the push of a button, listen either to his radio, the run
station radio, or both radios simultaneously. It was my hope that this
scheme would help improve coordination between the S&P operator and the run
operator. It worked really well and with the club's Heil headsets, there
didn't appear to be any change in run operator's RX audio level as I had
feared there would be when the mult station operator switched his headphones
to listen in on the run radio.
The next challenge was coming up with a lockout switch so that we wouldn't
be transmitting on two bands simultaneously. In years past we had used a big
DPDT toggle switch in a small p-box that was velcro'd to the operating
console right between the run station and the mult station. This box went in
series with the CW key lines from each of the two stations, and would only
allow one radio's key line be activated at any given instant. Unfortunately,
I couldn't find it. I was, however, able to find N6VI's phone SS lockout
box, but it wasn't clear to me that I could make it work for CW as it used
big clunky relays and was setup to latch PTT closures from a pair of foot
switches rather than opening and closing key lines. Then it occurred to me
that I could use the PTT outputs from our TRlog interfaces to drive the foot
switch inputs on Marty's box. This would actually be a step up from the big
toggle switch, as it wouldn't require us to be constantly flipping the
switch when "stealing" PTT control from the other operating position. I got
it wired into the station in a matter of minutes. At first it looked like a
slam-dunk until I tried sending CW on our TS-870. The PTT would close, but
no CW. When I disconnected the lockout input from the W1WEF TRLog interface
and tried using VOX, I got perfect CW. "Rats!" - the big relays in the
lockout box were sinking too much current to the PTT output of the Trlog
parallel port interface. I looked around the shack and found some circa 30
year old PNP transistors that we got from the KD6W estate. The little bin
they were in was labelled "beta = 25", which seemed a bit on the low side to
me. It was getting late and coming up on closing time for the local Radio
Shacks, so rather than mess with these old transistors which might not have
enough gain to do the job effectively (I wasn't even sure my driver circuit
would work with high-gain transistors), I decided I would run to Radio Shack
and buy some 2N2907's or 2N3906's. Since we don't have the greatest tools at
W6UE, I also decided to take the lockout box home where I would have a
decent workshop to complete the modifications. I would stop by Radio Shack
on my way home, fix the box, and then return to the shack to test it out. I
stopped by the Radio Shack in Pasadena, cleaned them out of PNP switching
transistors and then headed home. About half-way home, I started worrying
again that my driver circuit wouldn't work, and that I would be stuck
hunting for parts and/or troubleshooting on the Saturday morning before the
contest, so I stopped at a second Radio Shack close to my house and picked
up their last pair of reed relays as a back-up. When I got home, I finished
tracing out the Marty's circuit just to be sure it really did work the way I
thought it did. At this point, it was coming up on 8:00 PM local, so I
decided I would take a break from the technical chores and make some QSOs in
the Friday night NCCC practice SS. It was too late to setup any logging
software, so I grabbed a piece of notebook paper and started writing down
sequential serial numbers. Within minutes the action had started. My home
station pretty much sucks, so I decided to start on 80 meters which is the
only band where I actually have a decent antenna (full size inverted-vee at
40 ft). Thirty minutes later (and after a trip to 40 meters) I had bagged 27
QSOs, which by the way were recorded on one of the messiest paper logs in
contesting history. "Okay that was fun - I am still a lid, and I still can't
send by hand worth a damn." I finished up the lockout modifications and then
checked out the relay action - "okay good only about 0.4mA of sink current
to close the 70mA relay." "That implies a beta of around 170 - cool - that
should make the parallel port interface happy". It was now time to head back
to Pasadena to see if it would actually key the radios.
When I arrived back at W6UE, Mike KA6SAR was there, so I set him to work
checking out TRlog to make sure our logcfg.dat files were set up with the
proper exchange, CQ memories, etc. I quickly re-installed the lockout box
and sent a string of dits with the TS-870. "Cool, it's keying the radio, but
wait a minute, the PTT is hanging, it won't release. Aaargh!" "Okay, I
probably have too much gain in the driver circuit (I should have used one of
those old "beta = 25" transistors after all). Perhaps a series resistor?" I
grabbed some RCA "Y" adapter cables and an 8.2 Kohm resistor from KD6W's
junkbox, and quickly rigged up a series resistor between the PTT output of
the W1WEF interface and the base of the PNP driver transistor. "Alas it
works, time to solder." Once we had the CW interfaces working, Mike and I
decided we should give the station a test drive to make sure that there
weren't any unwanted inter-station interactions. "Okay 20, 15, and 10 aren't
getting into each other. Uh oh, 40 meters is killing 20 with S9+10dB QRM.
What's going on here?" "This has never been a problem before, the antennas
are on separate towers 200' apart, and we've got stubs and bandpass
filters." After wiggling connectors and all manner of in-shack
troubleshooting, we determined that the problem had to be outside. It had
been raining all night, a welcomed event in fire-ravaged Southern
California, so we decided it must be some kind of moisture related problem
and opt to leave it for Saturday morning in hopes that it will fix itself. I
head home.
On Saturday morning I arrive at the shack with my box of snacks in hand.
Mike is already there getting ready. We settled in and get ready for zero
hour. The sun is shining and there is now no trace of the interstation QRM
we were seeing the night before - our instincts had been right (thank God).
Mike runs a few dummy QSOs through the computer network which appears to be
working fine. We flush the dummy log and started tuning around the bands so
that we can get a feel for where to start. Fifteen sounds good with loud
signals coming in from the Gulf coast and the Midwest. Ten was also
producing good signals, so we make the decision that Mike would start there.
When zero hour comes, we immediately started having problems. Mike is having
trouble with Trlog right off the bat. Seems that the program was copying the
contents of the exchange window into the callsign window, and writing over
the callsign. "Not good!' After a few tense moments that seem like an
eternity, I convince Mike that the run-together exchange looks like a
callsign and that he needs to put spaces in it. It works, but as soon as we
cure that hiccup, the keyboard Mike is using starts going nuts. When Mike wo
uld try to enter a call, a string of random characters would appear in the
callsign window that bore absolutely no resemblance to the callsign he had
just typed. I thought, "oh crap, we've got RF in the keyboard, but wait a
minute, its doing it even when he is not transmitting". "This is weird. Okay
maybe RF is putting the keyboard into some kind of weird alternate character
state." I got down on the floor and tried wiggling the keyboard connector.
The problem seemed to come and go. Meanwhile, Mike had a small pileup
calling him. "Hey wait a minute we are in DOS mode, we don't need this
mouse." I disconnected the mouse. "Darn its still doing it." "Maybe it's the
keyboard." I grab the $8 Fry's keyboard from the Telnet computer, set it
down in front of Mike and feed the cable down towards the CPU. While Trlog
was sending a CQ, I make the swap. "Hmmm, that seems to have fixed the
problem - knock on wood". "Okay mental note, throw the offending IBM
keyboard off the roof of Spalding Lab next time I am up there." After that,
things seemed to settle down. Ten dries up pretty quickly, so at 54 minutes
in, I start up on 15 CW. What a rate fest! Prior to this I think my best
rate in SS CW was something like 70/hr. The rate meter is up over 120/hr at
times. We finish hour two with 111 more QSOs in the log including a bunch of
juicy mults that Mike picks off on the second rig while I am running. Things
start to look up. The next few hours are more of the same. Rates are good
and the mults keep coming. At 0338Z Mike puts VY1JA in the log for #79.
Eighteen minutes later, N0KR in North Dakota answers my CQ on 40 CW. It's
06:56 into the contest and we have our sweep - cool! Things start to slow
down now. Mike hits 80CW while I continue to mine 40 meters for QSOs.
Around 07:15Z, David N6AN shows up to relieve us, but he looks like a
zombie. Seems that he has spent the whole day trying to keep up with his
son, Alan who apparently has more energy than all three of us contesters put
together. Mike has a long drive back to Orange County ahead of him and
needed to get going, so I decide to hang around and help David. David takes
over for Mike on 80 CW and I continued to slog it out on 40. Around 08:30Z
it becomes very clear that our Saturday night run is about out of gas. David
and I shut down the station at 8:43Z and head home with 817 QSOs in the log
and a sweep. We have a decent QSO number, but we are still 80 to 100 QSO
behind a handful of leading scorers. As local radio personality, Mr. KABC
says, "Better than most, not as good as some".
I had planned to arrive back at W6UE on Sunday morning around 13:30Z, so I
could take advantage of the Sunday morning pre-Church rate spurt.
Unfortunately, I overslept. Apparently in a semi-conscious state, I managed
to turn off my alarm. When my feet finally hit the floor at my home in
Tujunga at 14:40Z, we only have 3 minutes of off-time left. It was hopeless
at this point, W6UE is 16 miles from my home in Tujunga (plus the 200 yards
or so of walking distance from the parking lot to the shack), so any form of
transportation short of a Star Trek transporter, meant we weren't going
realize a full 24 hours of operating time. I decide to suck it up and make
the best of it. The cold start I gave my truck probably shortened the life
of the engine by 10,000 miles, but at 15:12Z, I was sitting in the operating
chair at W6UE calling CQ. Since Mike, KA6SAR wouldn't be back until around
10:00 AM local, I decided to run in SO2R mode until he arrived. Everything
seemed to be going fine until around 17:15 UTC when I was poised to work
W8RC on 10 meters. As I called him, he kept sending question marks and his
signal faded to nothing. As I tuned around 10 meters, I got a sinking
feeling that was quickly confirmed by the cynical messages reading "time to
watch football" that came streaming across the DX cluster shortly after all
the signals went away. "Rats" - I had already used all of our off time plus
the 30 minutes of prime operating time that I had squandered on the 210
Freeway earlier that morning. After a quick stretch I got back in the chair
and started hitting the F1 key again. The next 30 minutes netted 3 QSOs, but
then things quickly recovered. We ended up with a 32 hour, which wasn't bad
at all considering that the band was only open for about 30 of those 60
minutes. Mike showed up a little bit later and we reconfigured the station
for multi-operator operation and hunkered down for the Sunday slog. Rates
were surprisingly good, and we had fun in between CQs knocking off the
"fresh meat' clusters spots as they showed up on the Trlog bandmap from
time-to-time. About 3 PM we discovered another minor computer problem had
developed when Mike noticed that the logging computer attached to the TS-870
was no longer identifying dupes. Seems that every packet spot on the bandmap
was showing up as "fresh meat". After mumbling something about using CT
instead of Trlog, he resigned himself to finishing out the contest using the
alt-L function in Trlog to manually search for dupes. "Another item for the
punch list". We finished up the contest alternating CQ's between 40 and 20
CW.
Although we didn't set the world on fire with our score, Mike and I did have
a good time running rate on Saturday afternoon and choreographing the
two-station S&P dance on Sunday. And aside from a few computer hiccups,
which were probably due to my inability to master MS-DOS, the station
hardware held up admirably well. Thanks and congratulations to K0RF, N6VR,
K6AM, and K5TA for showing us how it is done (especially K5TA who managed to
do such a fantastic job with such meager hardware). And thanks to a very
tired N6AN for dragging himself to the shack on Saturday evening to help
with the graveyard shift.
Cu all next time.
73 de Mike, W4EF.............
Rig(s):
Station#1 - TS950SDX/Alpha 78
Station#2 (SO2R radio) - TS940S/SB-221
Station#3 (mult station) - TS870/Henry 2K-D
Trlog 6.78/DX Telnet
Antenna(s):
80 meters: Inverted-Vee at 90'
160 meter dipole at 90' (for receive)
40 meters: KLM 4 element Yagi at 102'
20 meters: 5 element monoband Yagi at 70'
15 meters: 5 element monoband Yagi at 80'
10 meters: 5 element monoband Yagi at 90'
10/15/20 meters: KT34XA at 114'
2003 SS CW Rate Report - W6UE
HOUR 80CW 40CW 20CW 15CW 10CW TOTAL ACCUM
---- ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ----- -----
21 0 0 0 11 75 86 86
22 0 0 4 102 5 111 197
23 0 0 4 89 3 96 293
0 0 0 73 20 0 93 386
1 0 0 72 6 0 78 464
2 0 2 66 1 0 69 533
3 0 38 23 0 0 61 594
4 26 39 0 0 0 65 659
5 14 45 0 0 0 59 718
6 14 32 0 0 0 46 764
7 14 21 0 0 0 35 799
8 8 10 0 0 0 18 817
9 0 0 0 0 0 0 817
10 0 0 0 0 0 0 817
11 0 0 0 0 0 0 817
12 0 0 0 0 0 0 817
13 0 0 0 0 0 0 817
14 0 0 0 0 0 0 817
15 0 2 31 3 0 36 853
16 0 0 13 38 0 51 904
17 0 0 1 16 15 32 936
18 0 0 0 4 31 35 971
19 0 0 3 14 22 39 1010
20 0 0 2 7 41 50 1060
21 0 0 4 6 30 40 1100
22 0 0 3 19 18 40 1140
23 0 0 7 22 5 34 1174
0 0 6 11 19 0 36 1210
1 0 25 10 0 0 35 1245
2 0 19 14 0 0 33 1278
TOTAL 76 239 341 377 245
2003 CW SS QSO DISTRIBUTION REPORT - W6UE
1. Il 81
2. Scv 52
3. Mn 46
4. Mi 45
5. Oh 42
6. Ep 40
7. Va 39
8. Wi 38
9. STx 36
10. Mdc 35
11. Co 33
12. NTx 31
13. Em 30
14. WWa 29
15. Nc 25
16. In 25
17. Tn 24
18. Sv 22
19. Ct 21
20. Ga 20
21. Or 20
22. NNj 20
23. ENy 20
24. Eb 20
25. Mo 19
26. Ks 19
27. WNy 18
28. Nh 18
29. On 18
30. WPa 16
31. Ky 15
32. Ia 15
33. Ar 14
34. Al 14
35. Sf 14
36. NLi 13
37. Lax 13
38. Nm 13
39. WcF 12
40. Org 12
41. NFl 11
42. Ok 11
43. La 11
44. SFl 10
45. Sjv 10
46. Id 9
47. Bc 9
48. SNj 9
49. Ms 8
50. Nv 8
51. Az 8
52. Vt 8
53. Wv 7
54. Ab 7
55. Sb 7
56. Sdg 7
57. Sk 6
58. NNy 6
59. Sc 6
60. Wy 6
61. Ri 6
62. WMa 6
63. Ut 6
64. Ew 6
65. Me 5
66. Sd 5
67. Nd 5
68. Ne 4
69. Qc 4
70. De 4
71. Ak 4
72. Vi 3
73. Mt 3
74. Mar 3
75. WTx 3
76. Mb 3
77. Nl 3
78. Pr 2
79. Pac 1
80. Nt 1
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