[UK-CONTEST] VHF NFD 2008 Report - M0XXT/P

[Callum M0MCX]

VHF NFD clearly has little following on this reflector, however as an “HF
Team”, we thought we’d venture into VHF territory this year for some laughs.

Double X-Ray Team
VHF NFD Report
July 2008

Collectively, we have extremely limited experience with VHF. It came as
quite a shock to the system to score so few QSOs relative to HF contests
that we enter; we are used to scoring 1,500 contacts in a weekend. I must
say that the turn-out felt positively low. Is this really the state of VHF
contesting in the UK..?

Our location couldn’t get better for a Midland club; 1,000 feet high with
easy access on private land (IO91bx). The weather was a different story with
both the consistent rain and very high winds contributing to some scary
moments. Why all three antennas were still standing on Sunday morning, I
can’t understand however the guys, stakes or poles didn’t move an inch.
Perhaps a testimony to all my recent knot learnings at the Scout Hut!

With limited resources on VHF, most of the gear had to be procured recently
to enter this event including a 17 element Tonna and a three element
Moonraker beam for 6m. A couple of months ago, we bought a strange X-Quad
affair for 70cms which after completely stripping down and rebuilding last
week, appeared to work well but we have no way of comparing it to anything
else. At 2m long with zillions of elements, I trust it’s as least as good as
the Tonna is on 2m. Time will tell. Again, we had to get equipped with
rotators so we bought a TV style rotator for 6m and acquired a Hirschman
rotator when we bought the 70cms antenna. The Yaesu G450 is permanently
attached to the hydraulic tower for the 2m station (normally running an
A3S). Coax was also a stumbling block, particularly for 70cms where we only
had 50 watts available to us and potentially lots of loss on our standard
cut of Westflex, perhaps too lossy for 70cms? A 30m length of Ecoflex 15 was
despatched from Diode with matching connectors last week to compensate.

The line-up ended up with FT-2000 on 6m at 100w with a 50m run of Westflex
to a 3 element beam at 10m. For 2m, we ran TS-2000 on 100w via 30m of
Westflex to the 17 element Tonna at 10m and a pre-amp at the rig end. For
70cms, we ran a further TS-2000 which is factory throttled to 50w through
30m of Ecoflex 15 to our weird X-Quad type antenna at only 9m. Perhaps a
small linear for 70cms next year and a pre-amp? A bigger 6m beam will be
discussed for next year too.

Logging was exclusively N1MM on Dell Optiplex machines and 15 inch
flat-screen monitors without networking enabled due to running separate
serial numbers for each band. One Optiplex blew up on Sunday morning after
refusing to boot due to condensation we think. We had shut the station at
2:00am for 4 hours to get some sleep and upon waking up and restarting the
generator, James discovered an issue of the PSU. Hilarious at the time
because when it was plugged in, it sounded like a crunchy plastic pop
bottled being scrunched up and I’m shouting at Tim to take the plug out. But
like the boy who always cried “wolf”, Tim’s got wise to my practical jokes
and really thought I was scrunching up a plastic pop bottle and refused to
cooperate. A final “bang” from the PSU convinced him that perhaps this time,
I really was telling the truth! Very funny.

Before the off, Tim’s testing proved useful on 6m scoring a number of
interesting DX entities, including 7X2RF from Algeria - which enlightened
some passers-by who were amazed at what we were doing. I nearly sold two
more Foundation tickets!

At 15:00hrs local time we started in anger with myself on 70cms, Terry on 2m
and Tim on 6m. Having James and Aidan as rotation operators meant that 70cms
didn’t become too onerous (50 QSOs in 24 hours..? Ugh!). Massive thanks to
Aidan from the team here; he attracted at least 50% of our score on that
band, refusing to give up and logging each contact in a determined and
professional manner. This was Aidan’s first time on a contest and he’s just
12 years old. May I take this opportunity to thank those stations that
recognised Aidan’s youthful voice and his achievement on this band, you
stuck with him to ensure a 100% completion for each QSO. Aidan is currently
under guidance as part of his foundation license and to be schooled in
contesting so early, we think was marvellous. Thanks to all who helped him.
Let’s be clear that he had guidance for each QSO and not left to his own
devices.

As a “restricted” entry, we couldn’t use brute force to open any doors and
it therefore is a slight embarrassment to only have logged 156 QSOs on 2m,
48 QSOs on 70cms and circa 95 QSOs on 6m.  
The “magic” band did prove to house some interesting DX from North Africa
through to the deep Mediterranean but 2m and 70cms held back offering us no
more than 600 km contacts and then very infrequently. Most QSOs were inside
the UK although 21 large squares were worked in the end from Ireland through
to Germany.

The weather attempted to dampen our spirits but with such strong characters
in the tent, we made our own fun and had a ball all the same. At dinner
time, we turned the volume down on all three sets and sat down together for
our evening meal. I had cooked a top-line Spag-Boll and Terry had us wash it
down with a few bottles of bubbly. Fabulous atmosphere.

We were amazed at some of bad signal quality issues being produced on mostly
2m and 70cms; warbley modulation and severe splatter in the main. In one
case, we had a couple of polite conversations over a period of a few hours
regarding a particular club’s 60Khz splatter until they finally believed us
and turned down the wick. I realise that Open class stations might adopt the
AKR attitude, “All Knobs to the Right” but for the rest of us, even stations
60 miles away can still be 30db over S9 and this can spoil the fun when the
signal isn’t as clean as it should be. Please check your equipment before
the contest.

No real issues materialised bar some water in the 70cms feedpoint which was
fixed by a wild guess. Dropping the mast and pouring it out and resealing it
for another day had us back to full power. The PSU which blew up the 70cms
Optiplex didn’t hurt too bad but dropped the 2m station for 10 minutes while
James and I recovered the data by swapping out hard drives - just as Terry
finally scored a small run into Northern France! The new tent, “Battalion
HQ”, held up well to the weather, only developing a couple of extremely
minor leaks after continual battering rain for 24 hours. With its huge
side-pods, it really became a massive area to work in allowing a full
kitchen in one area and an operations room in the other with a dining room
for 6 people. We’ll roll this out again for SSB Field Day. Trust you’ll be
there?

Results:
       6m          95 QSOs               45,847 points     Best DX UT3UA -
2251 Km
       2m          156 QSOs             27,819 points     Best DX  F4CQY/P -
640 Km
       70cms   48 QSOs               5,066 points        Best DX  PA6NL -
411 Km

Operators:
	M0MCX (Callum, Supreme Commander 4th Quadrant)
	G4MKP (Terry)
	M0URX (Tim)
	M3YOM (James)
	Aidan (Foundation student)

There is some mild debate in the team if we’ll do this one again. I’m told
that VHF can be fun with some lifts into the continent but maybe
Silverstone, Wimbledon and perhaps the rain damped that down – as did lift
conditions I think. 

I’m amazed that with all those FT847s and TS2000s sold, few operators
perhaps even knew to turn on their radios for an hour and work a few of us
/P stations on 6m, 2m and 70cms. However, we did work a few vertically
polarised stations quite easily who were giving away single digit points and
I thank those stations for coming on since we worked hard for every QSO.
It’s really quite easy to score a few QSOs from home with a V2000 style
tri-bander vertical. Someone, somewhere should fly the flag for this since
hundreds of private stations could have helped make this a bigger event.

Preliminary photos here:
http://www.m0mcx.co.uk/gallery/index.php?/category/74 

Cheers-n-beers,

Callum (M0MCX)