Last weekend I fooled around in 3 different contests.

• RAC Winter contest. Ended with 14 (fourteen, no typo) contacts. I wasn't quite active... In stead I moved to 160m to do...
• Stew Perry Top Band Distance Challenge: I expected more of this. Rather: I expected to work more USA. Only a handful and not too loud. 130 QSO or so.
• RAEM contest. I had a blast in 2007 where I did only one hour but made well over 100 contacts. I started early on 80m but needed to QSY because no one answered my CQ. Once on 40m it was better but no where near high rates. Once the sun was up and I moved to 20 (after a quick check for Sunrise Gray Line on 160m in Stew Perry) things speeded up. 15m was... bummer!

Propagation seems absolutely absent. I limit myself to nighttime activities on the low bands. But as usual the most fun is brought to me on 30m. In the morning, right after my sunrise (0800utc), there is a nice opening to Japan and Far East that lasts about half an hour and then slowly fades away. And when the sun sets here (1500-1600utc) , there is a shorter and weaker opening to W6/7 (right after their sunrise). But you pick up a big deal of eastern US too while you're at it. For some reason 30m is my best DX band (although it's only a trapped dipole) and I'm glad I know about these two openings. I discovered this last year and it works every day. Some days the signals are stronger and the opening lasts longer, but both JA and W6/7 are workable every day. I must say that this is with the antenna at least 16m high. If the tower is down and the antenna is only 9m high, things don't work that great.

After the move to Vista on the new PC, my log bookkeeping was a bit neglected. I had about 10 contest logs that needed to be imported in the DX log. I needed to process the ADIF and discovered a nasty bug in my ADIF processing tool that got introduced when I rewrote the routines for multi-threading. It took me a good hour to track it down and isolate the problem. Fixing the code took about 2 minutes. I should work some more on this project although I have no idea where it's heading. But right now it's holiday so I only work DX and walk the dog   :o)

Winter holiday is traditionally my low band activity period. That sounds a lot bigger than it actually is. It only means that I get up around 06.00 local and head to the shack in stead of yawning and turning over to snooze some more. I started this tradition with a simple vertical dipole on 40m (link) late 2003. Then I added a multiband dipole (link) for 80/20/15/10. My modest antenna farm grew from year to year with a tower in 2004. Finally some real antennas and something better (i.e. higher) for 80. But I never had something for 160m. In the end I made a short, coil loaded dipole but that got only up in the air during contests when the tower was up. But now I completed the infamous 80/160 antenna. Guess what? It works. I had a compromise antenna in mind that would work on both bands without the tower having to be fully extended. Now I can be active on 160m during normal daily operation without too much hassle.

Over the last 4 days I was able to work into USA on both 80 and 160m. So I guess my achieved my goal. Working USA on 160m has never been so easy. The Top Band "shorty inverted V dipole" with the apex only 21m high is absolutely not suited for DX. Now I have a serious vertical component and it shows. I've called CQ each morning this week and got called by some loud East Coast DX. Loud being S7-S8. That's loud to me on Top Band...

Unfortunately there has been little US activity around my sunrise (07.45 utc). That's in the middle of the night over there I know. But still... The timing to work Japan is much easier but then again: the path to Japan is so much harder from here. I worked USA by the dozen on 80m years ago with the low inverted V but it took me a good vertical to work Japan and VK/ZL. It will be the same on 160m. And so much harder since 160m is a tough band by itself.

This aside I'm having a great time on the low end of the HF spectrum and that's what counts. Coming weekend is the short (8 hr) but enjoyable RAEM contest and a shootout on 160m called Stew Perry Top Band Distance Challenge. Now there's a contest I never ever have made a single QSO in. Yet another first coming up!

After more than 4 weeks of trial and error with the new antenna... Well, I'm not going into this matter anymore. But it *seems* that I got it fixed now. Finally. You never know, but after 90 QSO on 160m (including W and VE) and 160 QSO on 80m without a single hitch...

Last Wednesday I was trying and testing again. I knew it had worked with the inverted L on both bands in CQ WW. And I knew the dipole got matched on 160m once although last week it was a 'no go' again. I figured out that I was having two different problems with the MFJ-998 QRO AutoTuner. It took a while to get this so I was walking around in circles.

• Problem 1: No match on 160m. It occurred on the 80m dipole but it happened at first on the vertical too. It got solved by placing an emergency order on www.dx-wire.de. So I concluded that still there were stray currents on the shield of the coax, messing the tuner's circuitry.
• Problem 2: the amp giving an 'arc fault' but only on 80m from about 30W of drive (300W out). On 160m I could get a full kW out. This one drove me crazy. If you know what the problem is, you can fix it. But this could be anywhere. In the antenna? The radials? The feedpoint assembly? The coax? The MFJ itself (the horror!). I tried everything over and over for the last four weeks except the latter.

So it was time for affirmative action. Problem 1: get more 'choking' right at the feedpoint. I had 5 big ferrite toroids (outer diameter 60mm) in my stock so I glued these together and wound a 1:1 current transformer on it with 2x 1.5mm² wire. I put this right at the feedpoint which I had to take apart again. The cores were just hanging there in the open, not in an enclosure, for temporary testing purposes only.

Remember my soaked feedpoint (link)? I did not want to have this again although it never happened before so I packed this plug very watertight. After removing the self amalgamating tape there I discovered the female PL quite damaged by sparks. The inner insulator was black and showed some cracks! This must be the cause or result of problem 2 (amp tripping with arc faults). The reason was pretty obvious.  I put some Penetrox in the receptacle where the male PL's pin goes in. For some reason (too much?) the Penetrox got out and flowed between the center pin and the outer thread. As a result, the insulating distance between shield (GND) and center tip became too small and when the voltage between both becomes too high: sparks. OK, found a solution for problem 2 while fixing problem 1. Great! I made a quick temporary assembly to jumper the cracked female chassis PL. Testing time!

On 160m, the MFJ found a stable match right away. I could pump out 1kW on 160m in the inverted L. Now I was anxious to test on 80m. With the Penetrox and cracked PL removed, there should be no arcing anymore. Well cut off my legs and call me shorty! 30W made the amp trip. I told ON4BHQ, who followed my recent antenna woes closely, that I was about to smash the dreaded MFJ with a hammer and then run it over with a bulldozer. After all: I just changed everything for a third time. I spent all my free time during the last 5 weeks on this @#{@|{|@{#@ project. What else could it be than something inside the MFJ-998? The good thing was the temporary current balun did the job to isolate the feedpoint. I went shopping for an enclosure the next day and finished the balun.

I planned LZ DX 4 weeks ago but spent that weekend trying to get the antenna working. Fortunately CQ WW worked out ok. Last week for the UBA Winter contest I changed my last minute plan because of no 160m. Now it's 9A CW and once again... I pulled myself together and installed the finished balun. That left me with the arc fault on 80m. There were two things I relied on and didn't test. Being a) the coax from the antenna tuner to the box in the garden and b) the jumper from this box to the actual antenna. The big coax (a) worked fine with the previous antenna on 80m. The jumper (b) was a new one after the soaked feedpoint issue. And both had worked on 80m during CQ WW. So why suspect this?

Stupid me. You shouldn't trust anything. Nothing is too obvious not to check it. Yesterday I put a loose coax from MFJ to the antenna effectively bypassing cables (a) and (b). A long shot but there you go: full QRO on 80m without arcing. Yeah, don't tell - I know. I cut the sausage in half and used the big RG-217 coax from MFJ to outside box, and replaced the new jumper with the loose cable. Once again success: full QRO and no arcing. So the arcing ghost I chased for over 4 weeks hides in a newly made 4m long jumper. I need to scrutinize it to see what exactly is wrong with it. I never had a faulty cable in my ham career. So I need to know why this jumper makes my amp trip. I just taped all plugs so I could play in the 9A CW contest this weekend. More on that later.

This morning I heard VE3DO loud on 160m by listening on the 80m dipole. Very loud (S7-S9). Too bad that cursed MFJ-998 can't handle that dipole. Although it should. Although it did last week. My loss.

I worked some USA on 80m And I tried 40m later on. At clear daylight (2 hours past my sunrise) I worked a handful of USA and one JA. Highlight was being called by HR9/WQ7R for what I believe is a new one on 40m. My gain.

Yep, the low bands seem to be in great shape. I just wish I knew what to do to get my simple wire antenna working with that MFJ-998. There has to be a solution but I think I've tried everything. It's driving me crazy and it's all I can think of after more than 4 weeks of trying...

After the troubles with the 80/160 antenna last week, I decided to try the MFJ-998 with a 80m dipole that was made for the UBA SSB contest (link). On 80m of course the tuner could handle the impedance from the antenna and the power of the amplifier. It was cut for 3535 so no extreme impedances to be matched. On 160... you guessed it: no match. I don't know how but in the end the tuner found a match and could accept 1kW on 160m.

Last weekend I found myself with enough time to play around in the UBA Winter Low Band contest. Hey, I could use that dipole on 80 ànd 160 after all! But know what? It refused to find a match on 160 once more. I tried and tried and again wasted a couple of hours. In stead of 160-80-40 CW only I decided to go 80m mix (CW + SSB) in the very last minute. It's also in this very last minute that ON4BHQ and myself discovered that there was a bug in N1MMLOgger. Soon after that local messages appeared on the cluster from people who discovered the same bug. We quickly opened the UBA Sprint contest and with some workaround we could go.

I took a very laid back approach after all these setbacks. These small and local UBA contests do not attract a huge crowd although anyone can work anyone. Unlike both UBA DX contests that do draw a crowd. I started in SSB because I figured that was the place to be. Then I worked Lee G0MTN who gave me #23. I commented that it was a big number early on and he replied the majority was logged in CW. I swiftly moved to CW and made one (1) CW QSO after 5 almost minutes of CQ'ing. So I decided to take a break.

After the break I resumed in SSB. Francis ON6LY called me. He is the contest manager for this particular contest. I asked him if we didn't change and test the N1MM code last summer to incorporate the rule changes for this year. I thought we did. Surely he confirmed that we spent some time pruning the code and testing the changes. It worked somewhere in summer but it didn't now. I don't know what went wrong. Did I forget to send the changes to N1MM? Did he forget to incorporate them? Did any other code change after that point? It doesn't really matter. Absolutely no one planning on participating has tested the latest release in advance. We're all guilty as charged! Now I need to re-install the old VB6 on my Vista machine. And I've come to like Visual Studio 2008 with .Net so much...

I had a modest run in CW which increased the QSO total. The first leg of the contest ended and ON4WIX called me. Glenn is a K3 lover too. He has a very low S/N, he didn't wait as long as I did. We had a nice QSO about the K3, the KRX3, other rigs, receiving antennas etc etc. After that I joined local boys ON4BHQ, ON4ALY and ON6FC for a short 80m chat. That's what makes our hobby so much fun. You meet friends and make more friends. I called it a day and watched some TV with the XYL before going to sleep.

I woke up to start the second leg of the contest. I was not in a hurry, after all not much going about. With a vertical antenna I would have hoped for some DX at my sunrise but not with this low dipole. I know a vertical works better for DX because I used a dipole between 2003 and 2006 and a new world opened up on 3.5 MHz in summer 2006 when the vertical was built. KE0UI called me but I had a hard time copying him and his exchange. It would have been easy on the vertical. Damn MFJ! Now every QSO is worth 3 points and one W was enough for the multiplier. Then W6OAR started spotting stations on 80m. He's a genuine W6 so I knew the odds were slim for a QSO and a spot. If only that  @#{!{|@#{|@  MFJ would work with my vertical! At that point I seriously regretted having taken down the old vertical. It hurt when W6OAR spotted ON5WL. He's a regular and I must childishly admit that me contesting ego got a big hit then. What's that? ON5ZO can't work W6 on 80? And others can? Moehahahaa (*devilish laughter*)!!! I was so glad he finally called me. He was rather loud, no problem copying him whatsoever. And then he spotted me on the cluster. That made my day. It's one of my weaknesses. I am so darn vain when it comes to this. I told ON4BHQ that contesters suffer the "I want to have the biggest and longest" syndrome. I can't help it but at least I know and admit.

I switched back to CW and found a balance between phone and CW contacts. It slowed down and I moved back to SSB. Then it began. "Is this frequency in use? QRL on this frequency?" Nothing heard. So I launch my CQ. Soon after some guy steps up and asks for a QSY because blahblahblah. I'm not in the mood for a discussion so I move. "Is this frequency in use? QRL on this frequency?" Nothing heard. So I launch my CQ. Soon after some Dutch guy steps up and asks if it's possible to QSY because there is the weekly net of guys using AM mode etc etc. I'm not in the mood for a discussion so I announce my QSY and the guy is so polite as to tell me he appreciates my move. That felt good: polite hams with common sense and of course a lot of goodwill from my side.

"Is this frequency in use? QRL on this frequency?" Nothing heard. So I launch my CQ. I run for about 20 minutes with modest rate and no problems. some G guy steps up and asks for a QSY. Or rather he DEMANDS that I immediately move because I am bothering their QSO blahblahblah. What a rude ham. Still not in the mood for a discussion I tell him that I asked two times wether the frequency was in use and that no one replied and that I had been active there for over 20 minutes. Then his friends join him and they're bashing me. Still not in the mood for a discussion (in contrast with my attitude) but not willing to let these pigs sit on my head, I firmly tell them that "I asked if the frequency was occupied, that I had been there without problems for 20 minutes, that no frequency in the ham bands could be monopolized and that I wasn't about to move so QRZ UBA contest de OQ5M". They threw some insults at me and the smartest guy told his friends that "he doesn't care because he's an idiot". None of the pack did ID with a callsign but that guy surely has some psychological insights in yours truly. They continued to jam me but they were so weak that I didn't care indeed.

To change the Cabrillo logs with the wrong Spring format to Winter Contest format, I quickly wrote a tool in VB.Net on Sunday night. For about 250 QSO or so, editing it in NotePad would have worked fine but I liked the challenge to make this tool. I'd rather think and program a solution than do mindless ASCII editing. One hour later both mine and ON4BHQ's log were mangled through the mill. I offered my service to fellow ON hams but there seems to be no demand for this service. All the better of course.

Other than that, I was the ARRL 10m contest which once more was a complete non-event. Some very weak local EU (DL, PA, OK) and one W4 in Florida. I had to call a dozen times but we did work in the end. Result: 36 QSO. I can't wait for 28 MHz to explode again like in 2001 but will it ever happen?

Long story and long overdue (but who's waiting anyway?) but here it finally is: the long and extended and most of all never ending story about my new 160/80m vertical antenna.

"In the past", being from summer 2006 up to now I used a "shorty loaded dipole" on 160m. It was an old 80m dipole loaded with coils made by Hy Power Antenna Company. My goal was to work local mults in contests like CQ WW and RDXC. I knew this antenna wasn't going to kick ass but I must admit that out turned out to work way better than hoped for. The thing is suspended by a rope on a pulley on the top of the tower but can only be deployed if the tower is at least up one level. Simple trigonometry teaches that the dipole is too long if the triangle's top is too low.

On 80m I used an elevated ground plane antenna. It was built from heavy duty aluminum telescopic tubing with on top of that about 7m of fiber glass fishing pole. The feed point is 4m above the ground and is connected to two tuned elevated radials. A wire went up for about 10m and then another 10m run horizontally. It was basically an "elevated inverted L with 2 elevated radials". Now this antenna rocks! For its simplicity and price, it can't be beaten. I worked tons of nice DX on this one. But the WX needs to cooperate. Due to the location of my lot and the specific setup, it can't be guyed. I don't want to bother the land owners around me. So if the wind blows a tad too hard, the antenna shows odd behavior (remember the Lambada?). During CQ WW CW 2007 I needed to adjust the position a couple of times during nighttime due to increasing wind speed and changing direction.

Regular readers know that WX hasn't been kind to field day style contesters in 2008. Even when the wind blows considerably, I can crank up the tower. So I have the yagi and 160m and a 40m GP. But the Achille's heel of ON5ZO is 80m. Wind means no 80m. No 80m means no contest. So I had to do something. I cannot put 80m on the tower together with 160m, so I came up with the following idea...

• Forget existing 80m and 160m antennas.
• Run an inverted L as high up the tower and far away as you can. Add some more elevated radials.
• Use matching device at feedpoint to trick amp into 50ohms.

This had the following consequences (pro and con):

• No more flimsy 80m vertical = independent of the wind. Practical construction shows that this is the case.
• Go vertical on 160m = more chance to work DX. Proven in last CQ WW CW. Easier to work USA and got called by ZY7C for a new DXCC on 160m.
• No more retuning antennas from CW to SSB for the occasional phone contest. Small benefit but you never know.
• Sacrifice 80/160 monoband operation for SO2R. This hurts, as I witnessed in last CQ WW CW. Learn to live with it for now.

The plan had been ripening for a few months. Only unknown parameter was the matching device. I've been lucky with an SGC-230 in the past but it is rated 200W and I need beefy QRO ratings. All stuff that matches weird impedances to 50ohm all by itself and handles 1000W or more is either homebrewed or extremely expensive. I've got more time than money so homebrew it is. Then along came a bargain and along went the bargain, read all about it here: Garage Sale @ ON5ZO. Return to zero then...

One day I was talking this over with Wim ON4BHQ = OQ4B and he told me that he was about to lay his hands on a good-as-new MFJ-998. I am not familiar with MFJ other than their questionable reputation but I was very intrigued by this device. It looked like it was what I needed. My only problem: I could not put the tuner in the shack because of my setup. I run with two feedlines from the shack to the garage. There is my antenna switching box. I don't want to run my coax and relays with high SWR under high power and the tuner has to be on the dedicated coax for 80/160. If it's in the shack, I need to switch it off when not on 160/80 etc etc. So I contemplated and decided that "remoting" it should work as the tuner automatically tracks bands and searches a match.

I waited until Wim got his and invited myself over to check it out. Wim said that the auto-tuning works fine except after a QSY you sometimes need to hit the tune button. That would be impossible in my case since it will be in the garage where it's out of reach. I decided I needed to plunge into the unknown and just order the MFJ-998. CQ WW CW was approaching WARP 6... The box arrived short after ordering from a German distributor and I quickly hung up the 80m inverted L. On the tower this time, not on the wiggling aluminum tubing. I could find a match on 80/160. Next up: try to match it with the amp. Or rather: match the amp to the match found by the tuner. That didn't work at all. I could turn the dials on the ACOM amp but never would I reach a match. I discovered a water soaked coax jumper could be the culprit. I anticipated on having it all ready the Saturday before CQ WW CW to try it out in the LZ DX contest. No go, read it here: Countdown to CQ WW CW speeding up.

So I tried numerous and countless things to get it working. I was lucky to that Peter from DX-wire.de offered prompt support and sent off a couple of current chokes optimized for the low bands. That problem was solved. Now I encountered the problem ON4BHQ described: after a QSY, no match was found automatically and you need to hit the button that starts the tuning sequence. How much troubles can you have? I've built numerous antennas in the past but none were so hard to get working. But quitting was not an option with CQ WW CW starting in less than 48hrs. Desperate measures for desperate situations. I drilled a hole in the tuner's bottom plate (bye bye warranty) and routed a small cable through the hole. I soldered the cable across the pins of the tune button. I used a free pair in a multi-wire running from garage to shack and soldered a push button on the cable's shack end. There you go: I could now remotely tune the thing. I exchanged a few emails with MFJ prior to this. They were pretty responsive. It seems that a genuine remote controller is in the works for the MFJ-998. They already have one for the other models of automatic tuners.

Now I tested this setup with the tower 2/3 up and there was no problem on 160m. That worked. However on 80m I would get 'arc faults' on the amp as soon as the key down level exceeded 500W or so. This would happen in the CW sub-band (lucky me with a CW contest coming up) with key down for a few seconds in order to find a match and write down the values in my tuning table. This lead me to further investigate the antenna, re-attach radials etc - yet another complete revision of the antenna. In the cold. In the rain. Once more. I've had arcing errors in the past and usually it tracks down to something in the antenna system. But this time the antenna seemed OK. One thing I had noticed when opening the tuner to solder the wire, is that it was rather warm inside. Not hot, but too warm for a) temperatures in the garage and b) the power levels applied. So maybe this specific setup on this specific frequency resulted in such a combination that the capacitors would break down?

The solution seemed simple: use very low drive levels to match the amp and then increase the drive. I could then match the amp on both bands and get 900W out without a problem while sending CW. Not key down of course because then the arc errors would show up. I never run more than 900W anyway. The next day I cranked up the tower until it was fully extended. My fear was that by raising the vertical part of the L and shortening the horizontal part, a lot of new problems would show up. But it didn't. The antenna did its work on both of the lowest bands and never did I encounter an ARC fault and my extended tuning table with values every 10kHz was every accurate. I was very glad and I intend on looking of a weatherproof plastic housing to put the antenna tuner outside and eliminated the 10m coax from garage to feedpoint.

But I told you this is a never ending story. Yesterday I cranked up the tower to 2/3. Guess what: no problem on 160 but arc faults on 80m galore. There must be something with this particular setup on this specific frequency that makes the tuner act weird. To be continued (unfortunately)...

Soon after ordering my K3 I updated the order to add the KRX3 (second RX module). With the huge delay at first (I waited 4 months for the K3) and the KRX3 still in the R&D stage, all I needed to do was wait. Now I see that the KRX3 is shipping for orders placed in August. I wondered what happened to mine and a mail to Elecraft learned that they sent a mail half November to confirm the order. However I have not seen this mail. I do not use spam filters so I might have deleted it by accident - that's the only reasonable explanation I can come up with.

Anyhow the order is now confirmed and I added a second 5 pole 500Hz roofing filter just like the one in the main receiver. Maybe it'll be here for the holidays? I hope it'll be a useful addition for my station. I have never owned a rig that had this option but everyone who uses it, tells me it's a FB feature.

On Monday I was feeling... "not very well". Sore throat, snotty nose, feeling cold and of course very tired. At first I wasn't too happy with my result overall. It is not a stunning score nor a top level performance from my side. But then again: I knew I was going to be tired and exhausted during the contest. I know my setup has limitations for the nature of CQ WW. And I know that I'm a poor mult scoring operator. So after coming to terms with this, I felt joyful. Nothing like a good long CW bash to clear one's mind of the daily worries. And I made more +100 QSO/ hour periods than ever before. So I'm a happy camper. Now only draw some conclusions and work on the station's hardware as time and mood permit.

Now some geek talk coming up. The rest of the week I worked on my ADIF log processing tool for .Net. There was an ASCII parsing process that takes quite some time for larger log and the GUI freezes up until the job is done. Solution: use .Net's BackGroundWorker class. This simply launches routines in a new thread. Simply? MultiThreading apps are not really that easy for a teach-yourself-programming guy. And I wrongly assumed that reading the file and write it to an array takes a long time but it turns out that displaying the log line per line into a ListBox control is the culprit. So I rewrote the code and put this in a new thread only to find out that addressing user controls in a separate thread 'may' cause security errors that 'may' result in errors' to quote MSDN online help. So this problem needs some special attention.</geek talk>

And to finally deal with my aging 'portable IT warehouse' I did an upgrade yesterday and I'm now running a reasonably powerful dual core Intel T7500 and 4GB of RAM. I decided to finally plunge into Vista (Home Premium SP1). By now I have mastered XP inside out and am feeling a total n00b once again. Where to find the MAC address to add it to my router's MAC filtering list? And I was glad to change the GUI theme to 'Windows Classic'. I have been running XP Pro in that theme too. I like the simple no frills GUI à la Windows 98. I don't need widgets and flashy desktops. Simple and sober, like myself. You might beg to differ on that one.

Another Big One behind us. And Big it was. I had high hopes and I really wanted to do well. But in the end, I failed to meet my own expectations. Now it's up to me to see what went wrong and what can be done. Still it was big fun although at some points in the contest I questioned myself: "WHY???" Here are some random things about the contest.

The Stuff and how it works

• In the shack the trusty N1MMLogger and a K3 / TS-850 SO2R combo controlled by the microHAM MK2R+.
• On my 21m high telescopic tower there is the OptiBeam OB3-11 triband yagi (3/3/5 full size). This is a great antenna on a small boom. A killer for its size but maybe a bit too light for a 'the' DX contest?
• For 40m I had two sloping vertical dipoles suspended from the tower with a simple A/B relay switch. One to USA and another to 60°, between JA and VK. This 'array' performs great for its simplicity and price. Not to be compared with a 2el yagi but then again I don't have to worry about tower and rotator load.
• For 80/160m a brand new vertical antenna. This deserves a more elaborate description because I have been talking in and out about it lately. More precise: how I got it working in the end... So a dedicated posting will follow this week when I caught up some sleep. It's a 30m wire going up 18m and 12m horizontal with a few elevated radials and feedpoint about 4m above the ground. Matching is done with an MFJ-998 automatic antenna tuner. I need to think some things over to get a figure of its performance. Later...
• A triband Frizel vertical for SO2R on 10-15-20.
• A "beverage on ground" (BOG) for low band reception.

The Rigs

I am a big fan of the TS-850 and it serves as my benchmark for any other rig. I've used a few other transceivers elsewhere but nothing could convince me. Early 2008 I took a wild shot and ordered a K3 to replace one of my two TS-850. During this weekend the left ear heard the TS-850 (barefoot S&P rig) and the right ear listened to the K3 (running rig with the amplifier). Conclusion: fatten the pig and gut it to replace the TS-850 with another K3. The TS-850 is a great rig but it can't be compared to the K3. K3 reception and operation is excellent but most striking is the audio noise the TS-850 puts out. Even with the volume pot closed it gives a very high noise level. So the noise does not come from the RX but from the audio chain. Sorry dear '850 but after using the K3 for 5 months and the first time in a BIG CW contest: you're overpowered.

Useless antennas or not?

• For real SO2R I need monoband antennas. To get on two of the higher bands at once, I use a trapped triband vertical from Fritzel. While this has worked before it turned out to be useless this past weekend. This simple antenna doesn't cut it with the poor propagation. And of course: what to work on 10 and 15m when all the action is on 20m or lower?
• The short BOG for low band RX was tested a few weeks ago and while not a killer it sometimes gave an advantage over the TX antennas. It looked promising. I don't know why and further investigation is needed but after deploying it again right before the contest, it doesn't work as well as during the initial test.
• I traded in monoband performance on 80/160 by making a dual band antenna. I gained vertical polarization on Top Band which definitely helped on 160m but the second rig was idle when on 80/160m apart from going up and down 40m. Another advantage is that I am no longer depending on the absence of wind to get the flimsy 80m GP in the air since this one is suspended from the tower. Probably a keeper.

Operating the contest

I really got everything out of the closet and into the air antenna wise. Quite some job setting it al up. And with the time consuming project of troubleshooting the 80/160 antenna in the extreme cold weather (at least to ON standards), I was totally stressed out and tired to start the contest. I knew this was going to hurt and the effects soon started to haunt me. I had to take a few short brakes and naps. The first one was Saturday afternoon about 1200 utc. I had a light lunch which tasted fine and took a short nap after that. When I woke up and went upstairs in the operation chair, I got hit by a sudden fatigue that made me nauseous. Luckily that feeling passed pretty soon.

The second nap was Sunday morning about 01.30 utc. The packet pile up on 40m for double mult ZS4TX drove me nuts and I got so caught up in trying to work him that it cost me a lot of energy. So I went downstairs and crashed on the couch. I set up my cell phone to wake me 90 minutes later which it did. But I was feeling so cold and my body was shaking, I decided to take a hot shower. That brought me back from Zombie Land into the chair.

The higher bands once again were a crying shame. Nothing on 10m. Short and weak openings on 15m. Some nice runs on 20m but it seemed to close pretty soon for zone 3. Low bands seemed good. Amazingly 40m never closed. I was working USA and Japan on 40m at the same time at my local noon (1200 utc) with the barefoot rig on a vertical dipole.

Operation was smooth and no hardware troubles were encountered. It was the first and last major contest of 2008 that I did seriously. The others were skipped or entered casually. It's safe to say that my "operational dip" is over and if all goes well I'll pick up serious participation in 2009.

Packet pile ups

I was "assisted" because I have the feeling that it maximizes my fun. It's a remainder of my early DXing days where I used contests as a vessel to rake up new DXCC's. I am by no means a "spot hopper" and my main mode of operation is running. I hate the mandatory S&P for scoring mults (you can tell that from my mult numbers each and every contest) and I know that jumping from spot to spot is a complete waste of time. I have now reached the point where I question the effect of using the DX cluster in CQ WW DX.

The packet frenzy seemed worse to me this time. Guys keep calling and calling creating a zoo. Contest operation is simplex so you get the problem that in the end everyone calls the DX but no one hears the DX. This is a killer for the rate of the DX contester as well as the other side. And because no one hears the DX working anyone anymore, you just throw in your call once again, making the mess even worse. On a few occasions I decided not to log my DX contact because confirmation got lost in the madness. Simple solution: EVERONE sends his call once or twice and not more and then just shuts up and waits until a) the DX has picked and sent a call and b) the DX sends his TU message. Everyone would benefit from this.

By the end of the contest I was so tired that I couldn't even be bothered to try and call some guys. Nice and easy double mults but a waste of running time trying to get through. Did I say I love running and hate S&P? My disgust probably is partially caused by the phenomenon mentioned above.

Noticeable contacts

Quite a few and I didn't take notes. ZY7C calling me on Top Band for an all time new one? OX5AA returning my CQ out of the blue on 80m? Some very nice and loud DX calling me on 40m? Mostly I remember the quest to work 3X5A on 10m. It took precise aiming of the yagi and turning up the amp's drive another notch and with a short spike in propagation and quite a few calls I established a double mult QSO.

The targets (and not meeting them)

I silently wished for 3000 contacts. Extrapolating the average rate from the first 6 to 8 hours showed this was perfectly possible but the rate collapsed and so did my stamina. My QSO total is only 100 QSO shy of last year's but the score is hurt a lot. Mainly on 10/15m.

Too bad I work a lot of 1 point contacts on the low bands. I'm happy with a few good 20m runs to USA and quite some DX on 40m but on 80/160 it's almost all EU. My guess is that my setup runs into his limits in a CQ WW where the total score is so heavily determined by DX. It's better in contests à la RDXC and WPX where the majority of mults can be scored in a 5000 km range.

I like running a lot but S&P is not my thing. You need to do it to maximize scoring and my reluctance to quit running for S&P shows in my mult totals each and every time. A second amplifier would partially overcome that problem? And better antennas for SO2R in stead of the triband vertical? Ain't gonna happen.

I know I can't do 48h straight. I prefer 24h or 36 or of 48h contests. But it was worse this year. Maybe I should consider SB40 in CQ WW CW just like I always do SB20 in SSB?

All in all good fun as always. Thanks to all fellow contesters and DX travelers for a major fun event and special gratitude to my ever supporting XYL for coping with my madness. Next time I question myself: "WHY???" the answer is simple: what else could we do? Collect stamps? Start a knitting ensemble?