Topband: 160M WW contest report - VK2CCC

[Tomas Magyla]

VK2CCC contest report

Each year, well in advance before the 160M WW CW contest, I mark the contest
weekend days on the calendar with a highlighter pen - this is to avoid my
wife planning "a perfect weekend" without radio on agenda. However, this
year negotiations were a bit harder due to Australia day celebrations
coinciding with this long weekend.

Last year I have operated from a /P position in the bush (Bar Peak area),
however this year Saturday morning (due to the VK2 and GMT time difference
contest here starts Saturday morning local time) temperature peaked to +42 C
in Sydney and I have decided to dismiss any /P operation ideas and operate
from my house in the city. With all the advantages of a city QRN.

Hooked up a temporary Inverted L with 29 ground radials (vertical part about
20m high). All radials 1/8 wavelength long (due to a limited size of the
backyard) on extremely lossy earth:
http://www.qrz.lt/foto/main.php?g2_view=core:ShowItem&g2_itemId=533518

Interestingly, the feed point Z as measured with a non-professional spectrum
analyser, appeared to be in the 65 ohm area (pls follow the same link to
see a screen shot of the scan).

How far was that from an ideal Inverted L Z?

Just before the sunset in about an hours time the temperature dropped about
20C down to a comfortable +21C. This is usually followed by extremely strong
wind and lightning. If not the lightning, would be almost a perfect
condx for 160M kite antenna pilots (VK3ENG was one of them who worked in
this contest). Initially Saturday evening the band was buried in the static
noise, but later the noise has disappeared.

Well, it looks like this year was one of the best in terms of the
propagation in the last ten 160M WW contests. I did not hear through this
year my ex next door neighbour LY3M peaking to 599 at my sunrise time (we
are talking a 16 000km distance here). Congratulations to Tono and his
fellas at ES9C who made 2056 QSOs (if I recall correctly 500 of them NA), 57
State/Provs, 94 DXCC Countries with a total score of 2,086,820. And many
many others.

No, I did not make anywhere near my QRP result when operating as J41A in the
2006 WW on 160m band (3-rd place world in 1.8 QRP class - some photos from a
mountain top portable location here:
http://www.qrz.lt/foto/main.php?g2_view=core:ShowItem&g2_itemId=12203).

Let me reassure you that QRP TB operation from VK2 has other dimensions.

This year's result is approx 30% better than the last year - 8 QSOs, 34
points on the total! I still think that QRP and TB is a nice combination.

Cu on the air

73 de VK2CCC Tomas

http://www.qrz.lt/foto/main.php?g2_view=core:ShowItem&g2_itemId=3793&g2_page=1