My thanks to Lee (G0MTN) James (M3YOM) Terry (G4MKP) and Aidan (M6TTT, Scout) for getting our new station on the air for a first-time-out on WPX.
We also roped in Chris and Dan, two new foundation student contest Scouts for the spotting on the Mult Station. Barry M0DGQ also gets a big thank you for supplying hundreds of meters of 75 ohm coax for James’s stub-filter project and Charles at Moonraker for sponsoring the large number of required PL259 and T pieces.
Pictures here: http://www.m0mcx.co.uk/gallery/index.php?/category/131
We ran a pair of very old Yaesu FT1000MPs (non-Inrad versions) which were completely swamped by QRM to a number of interesting antennas including our new super all-band Mega-Loop (horizontal delta loop at 85 feet) delivering about 12dbi on 20m to US at 10 degrees elevation (more on higher bands). However, it also delivers 10dbi to EU and most of Russia at a very low angle, hence QRM flooding. James’s stub filter project worked but still needs some tweaking. Thanks to K1TTT for helping James get his head around this. Next time, James will have finished Bob Henderson’s filters as well which should sort out any final interference between bands. Poor James soldered nearly 100 PL259s last week. Don’t worry James, fingers should re-grow by CQWW!
The mult station ran Terry’s A3S at 30 feet on my hydraulic tower and also switched in a 200 foot doublet at 80 feet across the tree canopy behind the Scout Hut for the low bands (which worked great on 40m DX but rubbish for 40m NVIS). Need some switchable low dipoles for EU.
We had an initial target of 2,500 QSOs and 1,000 mults and just missed both by a whisker.
Band QSOs Pts WPX
1.8 152 301 50
3.5 574 1513 313
7 866 2203 264
14 722 1378 269
21 102 254 63
Total 2416 5649 959
Score: 5,417,391
We had two breaks of 30 minutes each to sit and have dinner / lunch as a team, an important lesson to keep morale and spirits high. Some day we might not be able to afford time off, however whilst we’re still novices and part-time, we can afford to have a lazy lounge around. We sent our score to GETSCORES every 5 minutes automatically fed by N1MM on a local wireless LAN picked up from my house about a 900 meters away. S51A and ourselves played ping-pong on the scoreboard for the whole 48 hours and we’ve since become competitive friends.
We particularly liked GETSCORES since it’s a way of interfacing with the rest of the world and having even more fun. I don’t understand why more stations don’t use this system. The USA seem to embrace this stuff quicker than others.
There were many highlights. Working VK on short path AND long path on both days on 40m was a privilage. Many more experienced contesters might have done this before but at last a first for me. Having the young non-licensed Scouts successfully finding some RED mults on N1MM was cool. Being called in just to work them was even cooler! Handing the headset over and telling them, “Great. Find some more!” was even better than cool! James’s run into South America was nice on 15m on Sunday, as was the long run on 20m band. Being spotted three times in 5 minutes from the West then the East then the West again was like using a very high gain vertical (which was the bloody trouble actually since we couldn’t dial out the QR Mary).
Like all (good?) contest teams, we’re now working on massive improvements since the station only came together on the Thursday and we started transmitting essentially 90 minutes before the off. Everything worked, nothing broke. Amazing.
73
Callum,
March 31st, 2009
Posted by
callum |
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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 [edited, did say IO92bx..!]). 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. [Edit: since found out this is a Jaybeam Multibeam, 48 element 12dbd ATV type antenna circa 30 years old]. 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)
July 8th, 2008
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callum |
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On Sunday, 17 Feb 2008, the M0XXT boys hosted Thinking Day On The Air (TDOTA) for the local Girl Guide district. We were QRO as usual on 40m and 80m for UK and EU.
The night before we went live for the girls, we ran a pile-up grabbing DX, capturing Australia, Venezuela, Canada and even Ethiopia, all on 40m as well as an ear-splitting pile within EU. Asking EU for silence brought the DX in. We’re learing how to do this. A fascinating insight into the minds of pile-up runners :). Of interest, VK came through at 21:30 UTC which caught us off guard - being a little late.
Thanks to Rod at Ofcom, even after applying extremely late for GB1DSG, he approved our application with hours to go before the event. Thanks Rod!
Pictures and Log to follow.
73
Callum.
February 14th, 2008
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The M0XXT Double Xray Firm had one of our outings again last weekend with myself, Tim (M0URX) and James (YOMsoft author). We built our biggest vertical yet, a loaded quarter-wave for 80 meters. Click the picture to compare Tim and I against its size. Awesome! 21 foot (6 meter) scaffold pole with 40 feet (12 meters) of SpiderBeam pole above. We’re getting an 18 meter version of this which should be great fun.
For speed of assembly on the day, we used 4 very thin strands of insulated copper wire out of a three-pair (6 way) telephone reel for the elevated radials. They’re very thin but would do the job of allowing us to raise this baby up in the air 6 meters.
The radials ended up at ground level, wrapped around galvanised tent pegs. Without realising it, we were trusting the insulation coating of the wire itself to keep the radials from being grounded. Actually, we never really thought about the consequences! Anyway, a 100w squirt proved most efficient and we achieved a 2:1 SWR curve from 3.625 to 3.750. We needed to shorten it a few more inches, however before we took it down again, I thought it prudent to fire some real RF up it to make sure nothing broke down. Thump; I stuck a good carrier from the ACOM 2000 down the pipe and “pop”. The SWR pinged up to over 3:1. What had happened?
The insulation on every single tent peg had broken down in an instant and melted through to convert our careful elevated radial system into a grounded system in a flash. Literally!
More pics here: http://www.m0mcx.co.uk/gallery/index.php?/category/54
73,
Callum, M0XXT Double X-ray Firm
January 28th, 2008
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See http://www.m0mcx.co.uk/gallery/index.php?/category/45
This was our first time out with our shiny new callsign with Chris (G1VDP), Tim (M3SDE), Lee (G0MTN) as well as myself as the main ops able assisted by Marti (M1DCV) and our 12 year old scout helper, Aidan - who ran the spotter station for the first time in his life - thanks Aidan. Colin (M3OFW) popped in a couple of times and took great interest in the setup - welcome to Colin.
For antennas, we went to town on qtr waves as well as dipoles for 80m and 40m but we let ourselves down by the tribander which we couldn’t get to work properly - showing fluctuating SWR, particularly on 20m where we could really only effectively run lower power. We found out afterwards that only one strand of copper was being used as the main feeder at the connection point to the driven element. Clearly a serious blow and we should have made many more Qs on 20m.
As a first time QRO /p station, we targeted ourselves at half a million points but fell short, mostly because of a lack of a big session on 20m but also due to lack of mults on 15 and 10 in my opinion. However, we aired the new tent and generator as well as my new ACOM and it all worked perfectly barring band filtering between stations which is being corrected by some band filtering currently on the drawing board of my friend Barry (M0DGQ). The main run station was my trust MP with Inrad roofing filter but due to a blow-up of my Mk5, we reverted to a backup plan of a TS2000 which actually performed pretty well as a spotter connected to a vertically polarised 40m loop which worked “all band” on receive. All coax was 50m lengths of Westflex.
Highlights was being called by ZL and VK on Sunday morning on 40m between 7:30am and 8:00am local time as well as hearing Tim asking for GW0AAA’s serial number again and again on 10m. I was out dropping the 80m and 40m verticals in the morning but was happy to hear a multi coming through. I found out later that some QRN gave him too much grief and we never made it, sorry chaps!
In terms of shifts, Tim and I worked the night - although I got the better shift; midnight to 3:00am. Tim went graveyard through to 6:30am (he’s a star!) and only woke me so that I could work the ZLs and VKs coming in. Is that because I’m older? :)
I realise that the interesting thing about these team events is how you put on a better show the next year etc. Of course, doing this with the open section means that you gradually get bogged down each year with bigger and better ideas until finally one becomes completely sensible and joins the likes of the Bristol chaps and string up a long wire or doublet with 100 watts. I believe that we have a couple more years left of being completely daft I think so perhaps there a chance of getting a higher score one year.
This is a new callsign / club with a new direction and a number of people need to be thanked for riding this wave with me, particularly all those mentioned above: Tim, Chris, Lee and Barry - and of course young Aidan and all those other young scouts that we hope to introduce to contesting over the years.
Anyway, just over 1,000 QSOs for 381,477 points.
September 10th, 2007
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Reg Brown, G7OJO, passed away on 22nd January 2007. Reg was a member of Wythall Radio Club and in the words of Chris Meadows (Chairman), a “stalwart” of the club. Today was Reg’s funeral and a quite a few of the club turned out at Robin Hood Cremetorium.
He was “Piped” up the driveway by a Scottish piper, all the way into the chapel. The vicar’s sermon included references to Reg’s fishing and radio hobbies and afterwards, Reg’s Brother-in-Law was invited to say a few words. It was a very moving speech and he said goodbye to Reg using the radio ham terminology, “G7OJO, 73 Old Man”.
Afterwards, at the British Legion, Stratford Road, we compared stories about Reg’s exploits. I loved the one about Reg having an accident with a car on a slipway at a harbour. He was launching a small boat and his kids were watching at a safe distance with Pauline his wife (who told me this story) sitting in the car. Pauline said that something went wrong and she ended up at the bottom of the harbour inside the car. Reg dived down and got her out! Amazing.
After Reg switched off one night after having a natter on 2m FM, Chris (G6KMQ) and myself noticed a carrier come up on the frequency and we could hear someone in the background clearly tidying up and generally making human noises(!). Chris and I discussed who it might be and all of a sudden Chris said, “I know”! and disappeared. Shortly afterwards, I heard a phone ringing in the background from the FM set that was emmiting the carrier and then Reg’s voice, “Bl**dy hell”, he shouted to Chris’s advice and took the MOX switch off. He had pressed that instead of the ON/OFF switch! I believe his vocabularly may have been slightly worse than that quoted in this text!
I’m gonna miss you Reg. Rest in peace OM.
C McCormick, Tues 6th Feb.
February 6th, 2007
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I hit upon this article whilst looking for equipment boxes for the wireless router project. it’s not until you get to about page 3 that you start to think with this is either a wind up - or he’s a potential radio amateur!!
http://www.diynot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=39099&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
It’s no wonder they created legislation to protect those stupid enough to kill themselves with electrikery!
January 21st, 2007
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Thanks to Lee for finding this link: http://flakey.info/antenna/waveguide/ which is about some keen guys putting together a “Circular Waveguide Antenna for 2.45 GHz / 802.11b / WiFi / WLAN” achieving a 2200 meter link with tin cans. There’s hope for us yet!
January 21st, 2007
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AFS starts soon. I’m here early setting up for it. I can’t hear much, are the bands open? N1MM is working OK but my voice keyer is making nasty noisy QRN from the computer and it’s horrible so I’ve ditched it whilst I consider what to do. This means more fluids (to keep voice in working order!) = more toilet. Last CQWW I used a bucket so I wouldn’t lose my frequency. I’ll just have to cross my legs this time!
I’m logged into the Wythall chat room and waiting for people to join. I love these club activity contests. The anticipation kills me!
At 45 minutes before the off, I am holding 3.697 MHz and calling CQ, speaking with MU0FAL (Colin), M3NSQ (Steve in Hornsea), M1EBV (Bristol) and G0ICJ (David from Wythall Club) and I stay on that freq at the off, gradually moving up to 3.698 MHz until 16:21pm with 213 QSOs in the bag. Over the next 100 minutes, I only scored another 45 QSOs, mainly because I lost my frequency through stupidity by deciding I could score more doing some single VFO work, cruising from the bottom of the band through to the top, then I realised what a fabulous frequency I had!
I ran full UK legal power (400 watts) though my FT100Mp Mk5 and my Ameritron 811 amp almost on tickover using a turned-down Class A from the 1000 as the driver for the linear amp. Anyway, finished on 259 which is about 20 QSOs better than last year.
Wythall Chatroom:
15:28:56 [ChrisG1VDP] I am stuck between 2 very loud and wide stations on my running freq…
15:29:24 [g6kmq] m0mcx one of them?
15:45:16 [g0mtn] we’re finished now - time for shopping
15:45:56 [m0mcx] Shopping? Loser
15:46:32 [g0mtn] 133 first hour though. can’t complain
16:50:43 [g7ugc] You swine Chris pinchinf my QSO
16:51:02 [g6kmq] who me?
16:52:21 [g0mtn] back from shopping. now starting cooking… (!)
16:52:26 [g0mtn] scores on the doors so far ?
16:52:44 [g7ugc] 53
16:52:49 [g6kmq] 54
16:52:51 [g0eyo] 54
16:53:24 [ChrisG1VDP] 66
16:54:43 [m0mcx] 234
17:40:54 [m0mcx] Last year: http://www.contesting.co.uk/hfcc/results/2006/afsssb2006.shtml
17:51:23 [g0mtn] remember: fivers to me after the contest
17:54:08 [g0mtn] just received my first log not even finished yet
17:56:07 [m0mcx] Got called by DL16XXV - sounds like a post code!
18:00:49 [ChrisG1VDP] Do we send the logs to lee to enter the contest?
18:00:58 [g0mtn] yes please.
18:01:24 [g0mtn] i will then send them to myself
18:02:12 [g0mtn] qsy dinner
18:02:53 g0eyo exits from this room
18:03:06 [m0mcx] Me too !
January 20th, 2007
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I have a first class project in tow to put a 2.4GHz link in to the club about 4.5 miles away. I’ve just secured 5 grid dishes with 24dbi of gain for £125. What is a Fresnal zone and how do I spell it?
Anyway, there’s this great site to calculate the potential likelihood of succeeding in putting a link up between one site and another: http://www.atdi.uk.com/WebObjX/default.asp. It also gives you the dreaded Fresnel Ellipse data which I think I’m slowly starting to understand - essentially, you can block around 40% of the ellipse in one place and the link should still work, but no more. Google it for more.
January 19th, 2007
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