[VHFcontesting] K3SK's Post VHF Contest Ramblings, Complaints and Noise

[k3sk at buckwalter.co]

I just completed my first January VHF contest in many, many years.  It was
also my first real serious VHF contest effort in almost as long.   Although
I did operate this past September contest, at the time I had just gotten the
antennas built and installed on the tower and still had lots of improvements
needed.   This time I was ready . . . . so I thought.

First, I must say I was mostly pleased.  I worked a lot of contacts.  Far
less SSB & CW than I had anticipated. In fact, I worked no one on CW!   I
went where the contacts and multipliers were and that was mostly on FT8.
I even managed a few 2 meter EME contacts for a multipliers I otherwise
would not have gotten. I only wish I could have found someone for a try at
222MHz.   

For the most part my equipment performed ok.  Early on in the contest I
realized that I had a couple of issues.  The first was that I could not hear
anyone on 432.   A quick check and I discovered my mast mounted preamp was
not "preamping".   It worked well last week when I worked Germany on 432
EME.  And, before you think it, I do have switching protection and over
100db isolation on transmit.  For the rest of the contest I put the preamp
in bypass and continued without it.  Even though I worked some pretty good
distances, I worked far fewer contacts than I should have on this band.
Checking it is now on my to-do list.   
1296 was a total bust.   I worked no one, not even stations I have worked
before.  I have no clue what is wrong. I know I need better coax.  LMR400 is
lossy at 1296 but it's what I had.  I can't use hardline on a crankup tower.
I'd like to get some LMR600.  Amp was putting out 70 watts and SWR was good
to the 4 31-element Loop Yagis.  This is also on my to-do list.

The solid state amplifiers worked well, even running power at the high
duty-cycle rates needed by FT8, with one exception.  Down to about 2 hours
of contesting left, my HF/6 1200-watt amp made a "popping" noise and tripped
off, followed by that familiar smell of magic smoke escaping from some most
likely expensive part.  

Note:  Taking a quick look after the contest and it appears to be a low-cost
bypass capacitor self-destructed, not the $200 LDMOS final. 

Now, software!  Here are my real complaints.   I like many multi-band
VHF/UHF contesters use "several" rigs.  I use no less than 3 rigs and if I
had thought it thorough I would have used 4 for this contest.   My contest
logging software of choice has been Writelog for a very long time.  I like
Writelog because as far as I know, it's the only contesting software that
will interface with up to 4 radios at the same time.   For any give contact
all I need to do is enter a callsign in the entry window for that particular
radio (there are 4 entry windows) and the program does a dupe check for that
band and logs the date, time, callsign, frequency, mode and exchange
information.   I really loved this software until this past weekend.  For
voice & CW it works well but for digital modes worked with WSJT-X it SUCKS. 

Writelog does not directly interface with WSJT-X.  Writelog uses a 3rd party
module called 'Digirite' that does only FT4 & FT8.  The module was developed
for the ARRL Roundup, but it works using Grid Squares for VHF contesting.
You can even open a separate Digirite window for each interfaced radio
allowing FT8 on 4 bands at once. This is a big plus.  There are several
downsides to Digirite though.  It's a PIA to set up the waterfall displays
with some adjustments and settings not even described or explained in any
documentation.  They are just there, and they can screw up the waterfall
display very easily.  While operating I also discovered Digirite does not
decode FT8 signals worth a crap.   Several times early in the contest I had
a waterfall image full of signals and could barely get any of them to
decode.  This forced me to rethink how I was going to operate the contest.

Then, right there in the middle of the contest, I decided I was going to use
WSJT-X.   This would give me the ability to use other digital modes beside
FT4 & FT8.  I could now use MSK144 for meteor scatter and JT65 for EME, both
of which I used. 

Getting it all to play together was another issue completely.  First, I
needed to install another 3rd party app, Writelog UDP listener, so contacts
worked with WSJT-X could be sent to Writelog for logging.  Then, I needed to
decouple the radios from comm ports connected to Writelog because they had
to "talk" to WSJT-X.  I set up multiple instances of Writelog, one for each
radio.   I had to reset each of the Writelog contact entry window for each
radio to "manual" since the comm port connection was gone.  This meant I had
to manually enter frequency and mode for each SSB contact I worked, but I
still had good per-band dupe checking.  Digital contacts made with WSJT-X
were sent to Writelog via the UDP connection with mode and frequency
information included.   But they bypassed Writelog dupe checking so I ended
up with more than several dupes in the log.  It wasn't pretty, but it worked
. . . . . .mostly.

Then there's the new version of WSJT-X.  I installed v2.6.0 when it came out
about a week before the contest, and it seemed to be ok except for a Q65
mode issue.  I played with it some on HF and was comfortable with it. Then,
v2.6.1 was dropped literally a day before the contest.  The release notes
said it fixed the Q65 issue and a few other things. At that point I hadn't
planned on using WSJT-X for the contest since I was going to use Digirite, I
updated to v2.6.1.  It all worked . . . so I thought.   After giving up on
Digirite and making the switch to WSJT-X, several times during the contest I
noticed that either the WSJT-X waterfall had stopped scrolling or, I could
hear signals, but nothing was showing on the waterfall.  I had to close and
restart WSJT-X to get it working again.   This may be a bug. 

The bottom line is we need new contesting software or fixes to the ones
currently available.   VHF contesting software needs to be able to interface
with multiple radios simultaneously.  Not everyone has a single rig
connected to transverters.  VHF contesting software also needs to fully
interface with WSJT-X.  

I haven't gone through my logs yet, but preliminary numbers show I managed
to score just over 25k points from out here in the middle of nowhere
Virginia.

de K3SK
FM07