I had scheduled a busy ham radio weekend. There were four contests I had put on my agenda. Actually three and a half. There’s the JIDX where you only work Japan. There’s the Georgia (state) QSO Party and the local UBA Spring contest on 80m SSB. But yesterday my motivation was ZERO. First of all: SFI = 69, A = 8 to 10. Working JA with these figures? Only a handful but nothing more. The same for the GAQP with the smaller stations and the mobile rovers that don’t run HP into a big antenna. And now for the half contest as in “3.5”: the local 80m SSB contest on Sunday. Working SSB in such a lame contest? Not this time, thank you.

What’s that you say? Only up to 2.5 contests? Well another contest I missed was the EU Sprint CW. I would have loved doing that because I like the Sprint concept. And I always complain that Sprint would actually be more fun with a lot more activity yet I bail out myself. This contest is also a historical landmark for ON5ZO. The Spring leg of the EU Sprint marks the start of the seventh year already from this QTH. I put up a wire in April 2003 when we didn’t even move in yet. The coax was running through an open window. There was no power outlet in the garage yet so I used an extension cord from the kitchen into the garden to feed the SGC SmartTuner. I remember the feeling though: finally my own QTH with room for a tower and real antennas. And from my 3830 post that weekend: “I had a hard time to get concentrated, I was very distracted by the fear of QRM/TVI in the new neighbourhood, but I have had no complaints about this so far”.

A lot of things have changed since then. And more changes are to come this summer with some major construction projects that have nothing to do with antennas. But there is a temporary impact on the antennas. I took down the low band 160/80m vertical and all the elevated radials. I need to cut some trees and prune all the rest and I use these to suspend the radials. The feed point post will have to move too. So I found myself without 80m antenna which I needed in Sprint and the local UBA contest on 80m.

I could have overcome that problem by putting up the 80m dipole I still have. But for that I needed to raise the tower which would have helped in JIDX and GaQ too. But I wasn’t in a tower raising mood at all yesterday. The weather forecast was talking T-storms and I’m not particularly keen on having the tower up with lightning all around. But as always the T-storms do not hover over ON5ZO when all his coaxes are unscrewed and his antennas are down. Furthermore we did some heavy work in the garden on Friday which made for very sore limbs yesterday. I know: not used to hard labor… So given the propagation, the T-storm threat and my aching muscles I wasn’t in a DX / contesting mood yesterday. I’m glad I’ve finally learned to say “thanks but no thanks” when I am not motivated to sit down and participate in a contest. In stead I cleaned the windows, washed the car, walked the dog and worked on a homebrew project. No, not a ham radio project, rather a general proof of concept but it could serve a radio purpose in the end.

In case you wonder why some guys are so loud in contests, here’s a guy from Italy who bought a killer amp and is not afraid to admit it:

i have bought a mount ago this amplifier, test it during a contest. OH MY GOD I have never seen anything like that during my radio life. this is a spits fire watts amplifier, you can run all night and day without any problem with 3.5KW, the rating peek power is over 4 KW with 90 watts drive. buy one and you can enjoy your self     (source)

Unlike this guy, it strikes me that the UK guys are always emphasizing they don’t drive their amps over 400W output when they review their kW amps but “in a dummy load, it puts out well over 1kW”... Benefit of the doubt? I say having equals using. Anyway, I looked up some “ham radio power limits” and found them on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio. Interesting figures.

One step further: those who read CQ-Contest know that over the last two years there have been hours wasted on whining and complaining and finger pointing about cheating. Favorite topics are packet versus unassisted, single op versus M/S, open logs, making corrections after the contest, self spotting etc. But never excess power. Not a word. Although the protagonists of fair play in ham radio contesting SWEAR by the rules. Contest rules are their holy bible. The sponsor’s word is bond. I tried to touch the subject once (read here) but there seems to be some consensus about more power than the rules allow. And a ”let’s not go there”-attitude. Most contest rules clearly state that High Power is 1500W max. But that just is not important it seems. I admit: power limits are hard to check and to enforce. But sometimes you see pictures of contesters in their shacks with amplifiers that put out well over 3 kW. I say having equals using. Facts are sacred, opinion is free. I once talked to a guy who visited some Balkan contest stations. Do they have big amps? His words: “power fetish”. No wonder…

Not that I’m missing sleep over all this. When I bought my 1 kW amp I thought I was playing QRO until I found out I wasn’t. Belgian hams are allowed 1kW output and I stick to that. Maybe because my amp does not produce more RF? Otherwise I might say having equals using. But sometimes I freak out about all the crap on CQ-Contest but never a word about cheating with 2 or 3 times the power allowed. The review I just read triggered that again. Other than that: nothing to report. ON5ZO QRT.

I still had to write something about that one. Given the propagation I experienced the week before in RDXC, I had no plans to play in WPX SSB. But being a contester, on Sunday it started itching. So I cranked up the tower one level so the tribander was at 16m high. The goal was to play fresh meat on 20m with the OQ5 prefix and have some good rates. Yeah right. I worked only 300 QSO SB20 in a few hours off and on but no real rates. Even the packet pile ups I had hoped for did not happen. SSB in combination with no propagation equals total boredom!

This is one of only two contests that the Belgian M/M OT5A is on the air. A crying shame that this mega-station is only active in CQ WW and CQ WPX and only in SSB, no CW. If you look at their contest pictures it seems to me that eating is more important than making contacts.

After WPX I left the tower up which makes working DX somewhat easier. I wouldn’t have worked YJ0TXF and VK9LA on 30m if the tower was down. I found that KH6 comes through each morning on 30m and 20m. Yesterday I was CQ’ing on 17m and worked JA, 9M6 and HL with fair to good signals. Only there weren’t many callers. I guess the band was open but almost no one was there.

I’ve been neglecting VK9GMW on Mellish Reef for yet another new DXCC. They were booming in yesterday afternoon with an S9 signal. Of course the usual morons were there too. I managed to work VK9M but the QRM made me doubt slightly. My DX’ers gut told me the QSO was OK because I clearly heard my call and a TU after me report. Only there was a short pause between my 5NN and their TU so I wondered if something went wrong… But the online log now shows my gut feeling was right. New DXCC!

Another game was trying to work my local friend Eddy ON4AFU who’s active as XU7AFU. I heard and worked him on 20m and I believe on 17m too (need to check that, log not on this PC). He dropped me a line to tell that propagation is really different from XU7 compared to ON. Maybe he means that from XU7 there actually IS some form of propagation? He also did an excursion to some IOTA as XU7KOH. I worked them on 20m easily. On 17m I heard him working VK/ZL/JA but I could not get through that wall from here.

Oh yeah, bad news too: the Elecraft solid state amps are not for the near future: “We will not be releasing amps at Dayton this year. In addition to our ongoing K3 work, have other fish to fry. :-)      73, Eric  WA6HHQ” (link). Too bad because I would fancy a second amp for SO2R. I’m curious about the frying fish though…

Yeah I wish. But it was a license plate on a car: SFI-512. I was carrying some bags and when I returned empty handed I wanted to finally put my cell phone to good use and make a picture of it, but by then the car was gone. No picture.

I needed to tackle VK9LA for a new one. I managed to work them on 40 and 30 quite easily. New DXCC! Globetrotter G3TXF on Vanuatu provided another new one. I worked YJ0TXF on 17m. He was very light because there is no such thing as SFI = 512. But I worked him for another new DXCC. Later that day he was on 30m with a pretty good signal being so early for 30m. He only grew stronger but so did the pack of [^{#^@^#{^{[  EU idiots.

That’s where the K3’s KRX3 comes in handy. You can actually follow the clueless lids. There’s this OH2 with a very interesting approach. His tactic is called: “Send your call a lot”. It was so funny I started counting. He sends his call 8 times or 9 times in a row without pausing. In the mean time, YJ0TXF has worked a station and sent “TU UP”. Then OH2^^ hears nothing and sends his call again 7 times. While he keeps sending his call, the DX once again has worked a station while OH2^^ does not have a clue about what is going on.

Another popular specimen in the pile up is the ‘Morse Dyslectic’. The DX sends: “OM3 OM3?”. The pile up has a Russian ^^3MM, an EA3^^^ etc answering. All this served on a bed of tuners-on-DX-QRG with a nice sauce of simplex callers. Side dish was a family pack of Frequency Cops. I really hate this. Hat off to guys like G3TXF who manage this zoo from such a distance with such marginal signals. I didn’t manage to work YJ0 on 30m in the end, and the next day he was QRT. You can’t win ‘m all.