Doing it right....

ARRL DX CW Contest 20-21 feb 2010

Last weekend I participated at our club station PI4TUE.

This is the University of Technology Eindhoven's contest call.

Call: PI4TUE

Class: M/S HP

Operators: ON9CC, PC5A, PE2HD, PA5MW

Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 83 29
80: 261 42
40: 866 55
20: 999 59
15: 933 58
10:
-------------------
Total: 3142 243 Total Score = 2,290,518


Club affiliation: Bavarian Contest Club

Antennas: 160m sloper@220ft (RX: 5ft vertical@200ft), 80m full size horizontal
loop@220ft, 40m 1/4 GP @200ft, 20-10m 3el SteppIR
Rig: Ten-Tec ORION
Power: 400w from Acom 1000

Wow! This was big fun. Some of us love this contest even more than CQWW.
Finally we made some substantial progress compared to our past entries; at 1000 QSO's extra this year we have moved from the back end to the middle(ish). Watch out for us next year !

What went very well?

Preparation

This time I'm well prepared by taking a few days off before and after the contest. Being well rested and refraining from doing the *last minute job* I am fully motivated.

Looking fresh during the final hours...... :)))

Antennas
The new 3el SteppIR is a big improvement over the 15yrs old 3el compromise trapped(read: noisy) yagi. Next the 80m dipole at 220ft was replaced by a full size 80m horizontal loop at 200ft along the roof perimeter of the building (thanks to PA3DSC, PA0IB, PE2HD and PA3FGA).
But there is room for improvement for the RX antennas on 40-160m.

The HF2V mainly used for 40m

80m horizontal loop along the top perimeter. SteppIR 3el yagi. 160m sloper at the right end-corner

Rig
The ORION's user ergonomics offered its merits to all operators. Especially the setup for audio (main=both ears, sub RX =right only) and the volume knobs (toggle for audio on/off) was much appreciated for operating RUN/S&P between main and sub receiver with help of N1MM contesting software; Single Band SO2R in one box so to speak.

The station has no true SO2R capabilities. Another challenge for the future.

Second operator position....... not really.

Being focused
All operators were sharp from start till end. We strained for the best (band) strategy and our senior contest op successfully taught us additional tricks on the fly.

Operator Aurelio, PC5A looking sharp during sunday afternoon

Food, coffee, sleep, etc.
There was plenty of it all and the couches in the 'lounge' were comfortable for a quick nap.


What went not so well?

Pin 1 issues
We use some 5 pc's, various audio routing, external equipment and zillion connections for different set-ups in the shack. During the contest our headphones showed all kinds of strange varying noises, rattles and hum. The room houses another 30-40 pcs, several HF/VHF/UHF transceivers and other equipment. Definitely a challenge for the future.

Lockup/crashes
Very likely related to the above; WinKey locked up the N1MM program.

The ORION needed 4 power cycles (3 for no RX and 1 for no TX).

But
All in all a very memorable contest.
Thanks to Martin PA3DSC and Steef PA0IB for maintaining a great club station.

See you in the phone contest.
73 Mark, PA5MW

CQWW CW 2008

Preparations at PI4TUE
To tell you the truth: not many of us were prepared for this contest. Domestic issues, heavy workload @QRL and stuff, prevented us from a decent preparation. However, Aurelio/PC5A did a great job in getting the clubstation PI4TUE ready on time. He had to climb the roof tower on friday afternoon before the contest, to fix the SteppIR, which again had a major tilt and azimuth offset. It just will not clamp.

We set up our only RX antenna, a home made portable K9AY, just 4 hours before the start of the contest in darkness. Initially it showed no directivity whatsoever. We could not find any error but noted that disconnecting the ground had no effect. The ground connection consists of a 1m copper pipe and 4 additional radials. Usually the ground stake is sufficient enough. Adding the radials makes this antenna even work fb at a rocky 2030mtr ASL mountain top. Upon examening the switchbox, a decoupling cap to ground proved open circuit.


Switchbox+common mode filter(blurry pic). Mark-IV version of K9AY switchbox undergoing repair. The shack of PI4TUE, being the student clubstation of the Eindhoven Technical University (ESRAC), certainly had lots of spare parts available. At T-30 or so, the K9AY showed a F/B performance of several s-units on some european stations. That's good , right?

Available antennas

• 40m+80m dipole at 65mtr AGL
• SteppIR yagi at 75mtr AGL
  
• HF2V vertical for 40m/80m at 60mtr AGL
• 2x 0.25 wave 160m sloper at 65mtr AGL, direction USA and JA
• K9AY at ground level
  

Contesting


Mark/PA5MW and Rens/PA3FGA during the night shift. Yes that's a 'capo', and a real one!

The new SteppIR performed very well; especially the bi-directional option was appreciated much.
Rens' Elecraft K3 #371(?) performed as expected; great RX on both main and sub-receiver. However, it showed some minor quircks: VFO A/B dropping out of sync, occasional strange offsets and during the first night a total backup reset via RS232 was neccessary to get it going again. Oh well... the firmware is still maturing and I have seen great devellopements during the last 12 months.
Operation-wise it's not my cup of tea. The Orion is a better (contest) rig; it offers far better manual control and view of all current settings. Next the Orion's antenna and VFO distribution and controls are clear and versatile. For me it sucks on the K3. We have been discussing several days on how to setup the K3 for true diversity and being able to switch back to "normal L+R" reception of RX or TX antenna's, without having to use more than a single button and certainly not having to enter (audio)menu's. On thursday I found a schematic on how to switch in/out from true diversity RX on both L+R ears, using an outboard antenna splitter on the K3 main and aux antenna inputs. This was cleverly designed by Bill W4ZV, who used to have an.......Orion :).



Ground connection on back of Elecraft K3 + common mode filters.
Next; one operator in desperate need for another espresso!

The David Clark headphones sure help in the noisy environment; since the PI4TUE shack also accomodates many local 2m/70cm/23cm/13cm FM repeaters, packet nodes, packet &psk31 links and zillions of network computers.

160m RX antenna performance at PI4TUE, or ..... the lack of
We have to do some more experiments since none of the tried 160m rx antennas has offered better signal/noise than our TX quarter-wave slopers so far, including this one. Despite the shown local F/B it did not offer any dx at all.
Over the years we have tried:

- KAZ on the north rooftop @60mtr ASL
- Magnetic loop on rooftop @60mtr ASL
- K9AY on the north rooftop @60mtr ASL
- K9AY at ground level, 110m north of the large shack building, 30m from a low building
- 160m short vertical at ground level, 80m north of the building
- K9AY at ground level, 180m west of the large shack building, 20m from a low building

K9AY & 160m short vertical used copper ground stake 1m + buried copper radials

The PI4TUE shack building is about 60-70m high, has a full metal frame on the outside. It accomodates a full size TX/RX 0.25 sloper on the west (dir. USA) and NE(dir. JA) side.
The above mentioned K9AY and 160m short vertical have been used at several other locations in which they performed very well with the exact same coax lengths and hardware. Difference is that at PI4TUE the coax travels from ground level along the building, some 50mtrs upwards to the shack room, 40mtrs away from the west-TX sloper. This long vertical travel will certainly not help making any antenna quiet.
This contest weekend , again we suffered from a RF noise level on the K9AY that no dx was heard at all. Is it local man made noise from the university buildings? The city environment? We will do a comparison measurement soon on a very short vertical, both at the university area as well as in one of our domestic field locations using a spectrum analyzer.
Both the TX slopers offer some reasonable F/B, thanks to the metal framework of the building. As such it was the best rx-antenna currently available.

Food, beverages, couch for crushing...


The next-door 'living room' with eat & sleep accomodations.
And Rens making true espresso or capuchino using Diemme ..something? I will do a seperate blog on his barrista qualities soon !

Operators
In no particular order: Aurelio/PC5A, Sjoerd/PA0SHY, Harry/PE2HD, Frank/ON9CC, Rens/PA3FGA, Mark/PA5MW.
And those who helped on friday afternoon/evening: Claudia, Steef/PA0IB, PA4A



From L to R: Aurelio, Sjoerd, Harry, Sam.

Was it fun?
Yes, it was fun as ever, being with hamradio friends together and contesting. 40 mtrs was just a-m-a-z-i-n-g. We need to pick up this momentum and go for the next contests in Q1 2009: CQWW160mCW, PACC, ARRL DX CW and ARRL DX SSB.

Summary:
Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
 160:  299    14       56
  80:  496    20       80
  40:  655    33      117
  20:  919    34      115
  15:  241    24       66
  10:    0     0        0
------------------------------
Total: 2610   125      434  Total Score = 2,855,931

Despite only having a single "3-bander"yagi , some dipoles, slopers and verticals, being at +60m AGL does help. It is a privilege to use the schack and living room. Thanks to Sjoerd/PA0SHY, Steef/PA0IB and Martin/PA3DSC for their efforts they put in building/maintaining the PI4TUE/PI5HEV university clubstation.


untill the next one...