2010 ARRL January VHF Sweepstakes
01/25/2010 |
K2DRH
Hoo boy, do I have a lot of work to do before June! I should have known that things were just too easy when it seemed like all I had to do was climb the tower and reinstall the 3546 preamp to be ready. It worked fine on MLK day when I installed it in an ice fog, then was dead as a doornail (before ever even transmitting on 3456) when I went to listen to it again Saturday morning. Never even got a chance to test Tx since the antennas iced up Monday night in the rain (about a 1/4 inch of radial ice) and stayed that way until just before the contest started. Only thing I can think of is that RF from another band is getting into the control lines. The week at work was hectic with several problems to deal with that apparently only a Nuclear Engineer could solve, so I was at work late almost every night with no time to work on switching the station over to contest mode.
As it turned out, the preamp was just the beginning. Saturday morning my venerable AEA MoseMatic MM-3 decided to give up the ghost as I was putting in the Tx side attenuators on the transverters to reduce to SOLP power levels. I had to rig up the IF rigs internal keyer and find an old J-38 straight key for 902 and above since that rig has none. I bumped the tower a few degrees either way to be sure it was free of the ice, and my SWR was ALMOST down to normal on the antennas when the contest started. Id turned West to talk to a friend just before it started, and was horrified to find it would not turn back East. Of course I had to climb to find out why. It was obvious when I got there that the rebuilt gearbox motor shaft did not turn as freely as it did right after it was rebuilt and that the steady 40 MPH wind aloft (it was relatively calm on the ground) was providing enough extra drag on the antennas that it completely bogged down and stalled the 1/3 HP motor! I had to assist it in turning back east where most of the action is for me, and in so doing it shorted the power FET in the control box so it was constantly ON. Luckily N2KMA was there to shut it down before the rotor loops self destructed, and I had another control box handy so I didnt have to tear it apart.
The wind died out after an hour and the array would turn again, but it kept going slower and slower as the contest went on. Luckily the wind stayed down to a normal 10-15 MPH or so for the rest of the contest, and it held in there. With the cold and rainy weather there was no way I wanted to go back up to replace it! The fog came back and I settled in to a normal flat conditions January pace. It wasnt long before I realized that I could hear really well on 222 but everyone told me I was weak, and I was not hearing as well as I usually can on 902/3 but others noted that the Tx seemed to be normal strength. SWR was 2.5:1 on 222, no doubt folding back power from a wet spot somewhere in the coax since feedback said it would suddenly burst up in strength. Luckily I found out that leaving the power meter in the line was enough of a load to fool the brick into outputting about 50W to get me through, but not before I shorted out the sequencer/preamp bias tee. Again luckily I had another one to replace it! Nothing much I could do about 902/3 except listen really hard.
Conditions were flat, flat, flat with no enhanced propagation to speak of. No Es and nothing like the unusual tropo inversion to the east that wed had just a weekend before. It was the pretty typical for January. 432 was good but the higher bands were a struggle made worse by the problem with 902/3 and the dead 3456 preamp. Luckily some stations were strong enough to overcome those obstacles for me. My arm is still sore from all that straight key sending and I would just about wince whenever someone asked me to beacon to them so they could find me! I'd never sent that much CW for that long a time as a Novice!
About an hour into my WSJT skeds it started raining really hard and didnt let up much for 3 hours. 6M did OK since signals are much stronger there, but when we switched to 2M (the very top antennas) the +10 rain static made it all but impossible to decode much unless I got pings through a momentary lull. Unfortunately there were not a lot of those so we failed on 2M more often than not. The preamp is useful on 2M for the really short underdense pings that decode to partial messages which can be strung together to get all of the information quicker. But when the precip static is that bad I have to shut it down because the static levels have blown it before! I kept all my skeds hoping it would stop, but lost out on many mults. My apologies to the other stations but there was not much I could do about it. It doesnt usually rain like that in January and snow static is a lot less challenging!
Sunday started out slow and steady, once again with no enhancement that I could tell. QSB was killer and it took a lot longer to work the higher bands. Bright spots for the contest were sweeping 6 bands with W9FZ/R in all 6 grids, working NE8I/R and a new rover KO2R/R that went to a few needed grids. Sweeping 7 bands with W9SZ on the hilltop (he didnt bring 6M) was really good too! But for the most part it was a butt in the chair slugfest made way more difficult by the many equipment failures.
About three hours before the end of the contest I switched over to 1296 on a band run and heard nothing! The transverter had apparently just quit. I resurrected an old one from the basement that I hadnt used in years, but I soon realized that the keying polarity and drive levels were incompatible, and with the way my luck was going I was afraid to blow up something else if I tried to kludge it in. Besides, I was just too tired and disgusted by then to really care, so I took a break to regain my composure! At that time of day without any prop the rate is maybe 15-20 an hour anyway thanks to the football games, so hopefully I didnt miss much. Of course after that I had several requests for 1296, so I missed a few Qs and a couple of mults. The contest ended in the last minute with KF8QL in EN72 giving me a nice new mult on 2M, but insufficient time to QSY to add more band mults. All in all Im happy with the outcome, but it sure could have been a lot better.
73 de Bob -- K2DRH EN41vr IL
As it turned out, the preamp was just the beginning. Saturday morning my venerable AEA MoseMatic MM-3 decided to give up the ghost as I was putting in the Tx side attenuators on the transverters to reduce to SOLP power levels. I had to rig up the IF rigs internal keyer and find an old J-38 straight key for 902 and above since that rig has none. I bumped the tower a few degrees either way to be sure it was free of the ice, and my SWR was ALMOST down to normal on the antennas when the contest started. Id turned West to talk to a friend just before it started, and was horrified to find it would not turn back East. Of course I had to climb to find out why. It was obvious when I got there that the rebuilt gearbox motor shaft did not turn as freely as it did right after it was rebuilt and that the steady 40 MPH wind aloft (it was relatively calm on the ground) was providing enough extra drag on the antennas that it completely bogged down and stalled the 1/3 HP motor! I had to assist it in turning back east where most of the action is for me, and in so doing it shorted the power FET in the control box so it was constantly ON. Luckily N2KMA was there to shut it down before the rotor loops self destructed, and I had another control box handy so I didnt have to tear it apart.
The wind died out after an hour and the array would turn again, but it kept going slower and slower as the contest went on. Luckily the wind stayed down to a normal 10-15 MPH or so for the rest of the contest, and it held in there. With the cold and rainy weather there was no way I wanted to go back up to replace it! The fog came back and I settled in to a normal flat conditions January pace. It wasnt long before I realized that I could hear really well on 222 but everyone told me I was weak, and I was not hearing as well as I usually can on 902/3 but others noted that the Tx seemed to be normal strength. SWR was 2.5:1 on 222, no doubt folding back power from a wet spot somewhere in the coax since feedback said it would suddenly burst up in strength. Luckily I found out that leaving the power meter in the line was enough of a load to fool the brick into outputting about 50W to get me through, but not before I shorted out the sequencer/preamp bias tee. Again luckily I had another one to replace it! Nothing much I could do about 902/3 except listen really hard.
Conditions were flat, flat, flat with no enhanced propagation to speak of. No Es and nothing like the unusual tropo inversion to the east that wed had just a weekend before. It was the pretty typical for January. 432 was good but the higher bands were a struggle made worse by the problem with 902/3 and the dead 3456 preamp. Luckily some stations were strong enough to overcome those obstacles for me. My arm is still sore from all that straight key sending and I would just about wince whenever someone asked me to beacon to them so they could find me! I'd never sent that much CW for that long a time as a Novice!
About an hour into my WSJT skeds it started raining really hard and didnt let up much for 3 hours. 6M did OK since signals are much stronger there, but when we switched to 2M (the very top antennas) the +10 rain static made it all but impossible to decode much unless I got pings through a momentary lull. Unfortunately there were not a lot of those so we failed on 2M more often than not. The preamp is useful on 2M for the really short underdense pings that decode to partial messages which can be strung together to get all of the information quicker. But when the precip static is that bad I have to shut it down because the static levels have blown it before! I kept all my skeds hoping it would stop, but lost out on many mults. My apologies to the other stations but there was not much I could do about it. It doesnt usually rain like that in January and snow static is a lot less challenging!
Sunday started out slow and steady, once again with no enhancement that I could tell. QSB was killer and it took a lot longer to work the higher bands. Bright spots for the contest were sweeping 6 bands with W9FZ/R in all 6 grids, working NE8I/R and a new rover KO2R/R that went to a few needed grids. Sweeping 7 bands with W9SZ on the hilltop (he didnt bring 6M) was really good too! But for the most part it was a butt in the chair slugfest made way more difficult by the many equipment failures.
About three hours before the end of the contest I switched over to 1296 on a band run and heard nothing! The transverter had apparently just quit. I resurrected an old one from the basement that I hadnt used in years, but I soon realized that the keying polarity and drive levels were incompatible, and with the way my luck was going I was afraid to blow up something else if I tried to kludge it in. Besides, I was just too tired and disgusted by then to really care, so I took a break to regain my composure! At that time of day without any prop the rate is maybe 15-20 an hour anyway thanks to the football games, so hopefully I didnt miss much. Of course after that I had several requests for 1296, so I missed a few Qs and a couple of mults. The contest ended in the last minute with KF8QL in EN72 giving me a nice new mult on 2M, but insufficient time to QSY to add more band mults. All in all Im happy with the outcome, but it sure could have been a lot better.
73 de Bob -- K2DRH EN41vr IL
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