Tuesday 24 June 2014

50MHz Trophy 2014

This event used to be one of my favorites and I had a string of successes in the 1990s.  The last time I put on a "proper" station was 2007 (see www.g4bvy.com/contests).  And then I did the 6 hour section in 2010.  So it was time to "do it properly" again.  My only concession was to go with a main array of 2 * 5 element NBS yagis and a single 5 element Tonna.  (The full system had a pair of Tonnas for the second array but takes even longer to build !!).

So forget all of the pre-event testing and vehicle packing, this is still a mammoth undertaking.  Leaving home at 08:30 on Saturday morning, it takes 90 minutes to get there and five hours to build the station.  (Then there is a contest - see below).   Then it takes two and three quarter hours to disassemble and pack it up, a thank you call to see the farmer followed by the drive home to arrive at 19:00 on the Sunday.  Thankfully the weather was dry all weekend and the was more cloud cover than forecast which kept me a bit cooler.


OK - enough of the logistics - how about the contest ?!    Well here is the main antenna system on its 36 foot mast under construction.  Remember that this is single operator so that is me holding the antenna up while taking the photograph ?!




 

 And this is the full system with the second antenna array.  This is looking North East and you can just spot the Malverns on the horizon to the right of the main mast. The first test is to usually see if you can receive on both systems and that the pair gives a stronger signal.  Panic (?!) - I was hearing completely different signals on the two antenna systems.   Yes - they were pointing in the same direction - not !!  One was east and the other one was west !!

  And then there is the station.  Note the extremely comfortable operating position complete with extra padding!




The event got off to a swift start with 60 tropo contacts in the first hour.  Then at 15:24 the Propagation God switched the sporadic E on.  No weak stuff first like there usually is, but bang - there you are!  The Es lasted for about two and a half hours and there were two, or maybe even three, reflecting centres.  The main one gave activity mainly into Italy, Croatia, Serbia and surrounding countries.  The second one was into Spain.  So with the two systems it was two different pileups - one in each ear ... decisions decisions!!  There was also a more minor event at the same time into Sweden.  And that was the end of the main excitement.  There was a tropo enhancement into PA and ON and one ON called me to say that I had been a very steady S7 for hours on end.  At dusk on Saturday evening there was a very visible inversion.

So in all I operated for about fourteen and a quarter hours.  It would have been 15 but the K3 developed an interesting fault where it would not receive or transmit !!  I worked a total of 487 stations in 122 squares and 33 countries.  The only one missing on the map is the best DX which was the Canaries at 2865 kms. 


9A
13
EI
3
LA
3
SP
4
CN
1
F
25
LZ
1
SV
1
CT
2
G
267
OE
4
TK
1
DL
3
GI
1
OH
1
UR
4
E7
1
GM
3
OK
1
YO
8
EA
24
GU
4
ON
15
YU
12
EA6
1
GW
9
PA
9


EA8
1
HA
8
S5
4


EA9
2
I
41
SM
8







Apathy has ruled

Well the blog seems to have taken a back seat in recent times.

So you haven't heard about:
1.   The March 144/432MHz when I took my 70cms system to G4TSW to investigate the 144MHz QRM into the 70cms system that plagued VHFNFD in 2013.  Well - we confirmed that we have a big issue and didn't find a solution!  Though the preamps work fine in the shack if you can put up with the added cable loss?!  And then we had a weather event during the takedown and I haven't been as wet for a long time.

2.   The First 50MHz contest.  G4FRE returned from Dallas for a family wedding and managed to arrange dragging me out on this one during his short stay in the UK.  A pleasnt event with good weather from Ankerdione Hill.

3.    The CQ WPX CW contest at the end of May.  I was sort of arm twisted into this one by a friend (G4FJK) who I narrowly beat in the CQ-WW-CW contest in November last year.  We decided that we would both do a single band entry on 10 metres using assistance - i.e. the cluster, reverse beacon network etc.  I would be using 100 watts to my end fed half wave vertical with the base at about 30 feet.  Tim would be using 100 watts to a 4 element beam - but he claims not to be a CW operator !!

After the euphoria of the 10 metre conditions over the winter, this was a reality check.  Signals around Europe varied from massive to very weak.  Africa, Asia and Oceania were virtually non-existent.  For the first time ever in an HF contest I did not work a single station in either W or VE.  Interestingly the VOACAP online propagation predictor got that just right.  There were a lot of South American stations on.  Most of them were very weak.  Had I not been used to listening to white noise on VHF and UHF, this would have been an interesting challenge.  Whether this was F layer or multi-hop Sporadic Es I'm not sure as there were openings on 6m at the same time and that is definitely multi-hop Es.

Given the band was not packed, I found the combination of the pan adapter and the RBN spots in the N1MM band map to be a very effective way of identifying new people to work.

It is quite surprising now looking at the log to discover that I only actually operated for a total of eight and a half hours - it seemed much more than that.  Though I did manage to watch both the Monaco qualifying and race as well as both the Championship and League One play off finals!.

Most of the operating was search and pounce as I really struggled to get a run going when calling CQ.  An amplifier or an antenna with gain would have been a massive boost under these conditions.  So, I managed 211 QSOs into 52 countries.  Of these 171 were Europe, 24 were South America, 9 Asia, 6 Africa, 2 North America (actually the Caribbean), and one into Oceania.

Given that prefixes are multipliers, a lot of really obscure callsigns appear on the band.  I think the best I worked was 4X266POPE !!!!  Why 266 ?

As you will have guessed by now, I was soundly thrashed by Tim who worked 299 QSOs - I really think that the beam helped under these conditions.  Still my overall 2014 score has increased to 138 countries and amazingly I've worked 108 on 10m so far this year.