I wasn’t sure I would have an opportunity to operate in this contest but at about 6:30pm on Saturday 2nd April I decided I should put up an 80m antenna and have a go.  At 6:40 I had identified a two section telomast and was measuring out some guy ropes for it.  Having found some stakes, guying ring and found the wire antenna cross-boom with the attached halyards and pulleys, I was able to assemble the mast, attach the cross-boom, lay out the guy ropes and do a trial setup to get the guys set to the right lengths.  Once that was done I hammered in three stakes and attached the guy ropes to two of them.  Walking the mast up to vertical showed I had set one guy at an impossibly long length so it all had to come down.  Next time was ok so I could walk the third guy out to the stake and tie it off.  One 20 ft feedpoint suspender ready for action. Time about 7:15.

I had a 80/40m dipole assembly last used two years ago at a rental property in Canberra.  I attached the centre conductor to one of the halyards and hauled it up to the dizzy 20ft height of the mast.  Then I attached some light cords to the antenna ends and tied it to the fence at one end, and to some ground stakes at the other end of both dipole wires.  This work was completed in the dark as the sun set at about 6pm local time.

The two dipoles are joined at the centre.  This works because the 80m antenna is a very high impedance on 40m, so is virtually “not there at all”. The 40m dipole detunes the 80m one slightly but I went through the adjustment process with this antenna about 20 years ago and have simply rolled it up when I finished using it each time.

Then I got out the FT817 and found a suitable keyer cable, microphone, power supply.  On 80m the dipole presented a 1:1 match on the CW end of the band so that was fine.  On 3690 it was about 1.3 but my Emtron tuner handled that mismatch with a fairly broad dip.  The time now was about 19:45 local and the contest started in 15 minutes, or so I thought.

At 20:00 local time I heard a station calling CQ TEST so I answered, received a number, gave a number, signed off.  Good start to the contest, I thought. Then I called CQ TEST myself.  No replies.  Tuning around showed nil activity.  Called CQ again.  This time I got a reply from an operator who kindly advised me that the contest was not due to start until 2100 local time.  I opened up the computer and checked the contest rules.  Start time 1000 UTC, which was 9pm local, but somehow I had reverted to non DST in my calculations due to daylight saving ending later that night.  1000 UTC was almost an hour away.  So I had time for some dinner!

About 45 minutes later I went back to the radio and started the contest again at the right time.  Signals were strong and most stations were in the vk2, 3 and 4 areas though there were some vk5, vk7 and ZL stations worked too at signal reports of 559 or so.  I made 10 cw contacts in this hour.  A slow contest compared with the DX contests but it was also quite relaxed and unrushed.

At 1100 UTC the SSB section commenced, operating between 3550 and 3590. Signals were very strong from some stations.  Again a few names were exchanged as well as the contest numbers.  15 contacts on SSB, and I got the impression the antenna was working well, as mostly my replies were answered after only one call.  Quite good for a 5 watt signal.

I have sent in my log and I don’t think this is the only QRP event I will operate in.  This was a very enjoyable process and quite rewarding for the minimal effort required to get on the air.  Next time: antenna up another 10 feet.  And the ends should be higher too!  Should be no problem.  I might even do most of the work in the daylight next time.

Antennas for 144, 432 and 1296

I plan to operate in this event from home, starting on Saturday evening due to a family commitment that afternoon. I will operate on 144, 432 and 1296 MHz bands only, unless I am inspired to erect more antennas.

Post contest note: I made 40 contacts in the few hours I was able to operate on 144, 432 and 1296.  Only a couple of contacts on 1296 but one was to VK2BPK a club station operating from a hill just north of Grenfell.  I think that’s the site of the Grenfell 2m repeater.  133km from my location at Yass.

In completing the log and looking at the scoring I noted that the scoring for home stations does not appear to give any incentive for home stations to make contacts with the more distant field stations.  The 2 points I get for working a local station on 2m is the same as I earn for  a 505 km contact with VK3UHF near Geelong, a much more difficult contact.  The purpose of increased points for more difficult contacts is to encourage people to improve their stations and in this kind of contest it encourages home stations to make contacts with distant field stations.  There is a full table of scores earned by field stations for different distances.  However much the field station may wish to make long distance, difficult contacts, the home stations have no incentive other than their own interest in such contacts.  An odd aspect of the rules.

Contacts were made on all these bands.

Performance of the station on 1296 MHz was not as good as in previous years.  This may be due to conditions, or to a problem with my antenna or my location on Mt Ginini.  It is becoming increasingly more difficult to find suitable places where even two required directions are not partly blocked by the trees on that mountain.

Some pictures are already on http://www.flickr.com/photos/exposite/sets and I’ll be putting some also onto the vk1da.info photo pages.

I met and chatted with a number of other people about VHF activities in Australia and heard discussions on contest rules that were familiar issues.  Should contest points be based on distance or on grid squares, or power, or what?

In the US VHF sprints they are trying a distance based formula based on 6 character grid locators.  They have found that this approach has been well accepted by contest participants.  It is now quite feasible to calculate distances based on 6 character locators, since computers are so common.  Maybe this is what Australian VHF operators would like.  The grid square bonus system is much simpler but some people think it doesn’t give recognition or incentives for longer distance contacts.

It will be interesting to see whether they decide to keep the distance based scoring formula.

This time Dale VK1DSH and I operated as a multiop station on 50, 144, 432, 1296, 2403 and 10368 MHz.

Successes:

• Dale made several contacts on 10 GHz with Andy VK2AES operating south east of Bungendore.
• Despite leaving the feed for the 2.4 GHz dish at home, we still made a contact with Andy on that band, using a “field day special” feed constructed onsite from a piece of wire and a N type socket connected to a piece of cable through the dish centre and attached to the normal feed hardware.  Signals S9 over the 70 or 80 km path.
• Several successful contacts with Dave VK2JDS near Bathurst on 1296 MHz. Some persistence was needed for the first contact, when conditions were not so good and we had to get our beam headings right.  More power at both ends would have been a help.
• Other than that, we had a fair contact rate on 144 with many throws to other bands.
• For this event I used one of Owen VK1OD’s Roger Beep boards.  I assembled the board on the previous weekend, mounting the board into a small box with the Icom mike plugging into a socket on the RB box, and mike output to the IC910 through a short section of shielded cable. I set the CW speed to 30 wpm and selected the K option.
• Despite some thunderstorm activity in the area, we didn’t have to shut down.

Activity was a little lower than in the past.  Chris VK2DO was away on a business trip and Matt VK2DAG was roving up and down the NSW coast and unfortunately we didn’t work him once. Our score was just over 2000 points, though, with the help of the additional microwave bands. We were grateful for Andy VK2AES’s efforts in going portable on both days and giving us contacts on all bands, in particular 2.4 and 10 GHz.

VK1DA portable in VHF Field Day January 2010

The field day shack

Later I made contacts were made with VK1BL/p and VK2AES/p on all six bands (3400 only with VK1BL) but conditions and activity from further afield seemed quite poor with only weak signals from a small number of other portable stations.

I was running my station from a newly purchased inverter generator.  This was not a name brand but an import sold by a Victorian dealer, mostly marketed via Ebay.  I was pleased that its noise performance was much better than my previous generator.  However at about 9pm on Saturday night, within 20 minutes have having its fuel topped up, it slowly ran down and stopped.  All efforts to get it going again were unsuccessful.  I SMSd the other local field stations telling them I had a power problem.  The next morning I could only pack everything up and go home.

What happens to the generator has not been resolved yet.  My confidence in this particular unit is zero.  I have not been able to restart it, despite following the advice of the dealer and changing the fuel to premium unleaded.  I can believe it would run better, but I don’t see why it would simply fail to restart on ordinary unleaded.

I did examine the spark plug and found it was fouled considerably.  The recoil starter still reveals compression is good so I don’t think the rings have given up.  I suspect ignition circuit failure.

Fortunately others didn’t have this problem and went on to make more contacts.  The contacts with Doug 4OE did not work out too well, with Ted VK1BL making only marginal contacts on 144.  Contacts on higher bands were not possible.   Conditions were simply too poor.

Better luck next time.

This arrangements works by “gentlemen’s agreement” during non-contest periods, but falls down in the heat of a contest. It is often found that a strong, well located station can dominate a calling frequency and make it very difficult for any others in their local area to use the calling frequency at all. This requires discipline on the part of all operators and the willingness of all to gently remind frequency hogs to QSY (move frequency) once they have set up a contact.

I think there is a case for abandoning the calling frequency concept during contests.

1.  If all stations want to use one frequency for calling CQ, there must be a queue.  Why a queue on a band with hundreds of KHz of free space?

2.  If just one station decides to run a contact on that frequency, all others must wait.  see 1.

3.  If there is a mixture of technical capability, ie. power, location, antenna gain, quality of fittings combining to give variations in range capability of the stations in any area, the use of the calling frequency by the stations with less technical capability makes it useless for the others.  A couple of stations running 20w to discones can make the frequency useless to everyone else until they complete their contacts.  And if they don’t hear the dx, won’t they simply call CQ again?

4.  There is also the “hidden transmitter” problem.  eg. two well located stations 600km apart are capable of a contact on 2m.  Unless they happen to call on  a frequency free of interference from lower powered/equipped stations calling CQ (randomly and without asking QRL? first) * they will never make initial contact.   So they cannot possibly use a “calling frequency” even to make initial contact, because they won’t hear each other beneath the qrm even from a city 300km away.

5.  As has been observed by many others, notably a recent vhf column in QST, most contacts made on the bands above 144 arise by “throws” from 144.  There are few random contacts made by calling cq on the higher bands.   This makes it sensible to use the same offset on the higher band as is in use on the lower band.  Eg.  contact on 144.180, then 432.180, 1296.180 etc.   if you go to 432.160 you may well run into others who moved up from 144.160.  If you use .150 you may well be QRMd by someone calling CQ and the odds are they won’t be aware of your dx contact.

These are just the beginning and I’m sure everyone who has ever been on a decent hill in one of these contests would have other examples and scenarios.

The only situation where net frequencies or calling frequencies are practical is where there is a very low level of activity, or a very low possibility of contacts, making it vital that frequencies are co-ordinated.  The EME and MS operators need coordination or they would never get anywhere (though modern SDR receivers are making that less necessary than it has traditionally been).   But for a contest, where there is a wide range of stations operating, with plenty of opportunity to work the higher and medium powered stations at good distances, a calling frequency creates QRM, sends the wrong message to new operators and hinders contact rates.

A comparison with HF operating techniques is useful. Imagine too how the operators on 40m would react to being told they need to make contact first on 7050, then QSY up the band.  They would simply say, don’t be silly, that will never work.  They would be right.

The high point for me was working 3UHF on 1296 with only a single 18 el yagi, and barefoot (10w nominal).   The distance was 501 km according to the VK1OD distance calculator, using the VK1DA/p and VK3UHF locations from the VHF Logger.

I didn’t like my chances of having hf antennas stay up and didn’t want to extend the tear down process, so I limited myself to the vhf/uhf bands.  I had a car full of antennas and several extra masts but in those conditions, there is no point in trying to do too much.

The temp in the tent at 5AM Sunday morning was 3.5 C though the official overnight minimum according to BOM was 2C.   No wind gust peak data was available.

Operating techniques and problems observed.

There is a continuing tendency for operators to call and make contacts on only one frequency, 144.150.  Can everyone please tell their club operators that there is no repeater there, they are allowed to move the big knob in the middle of the radio panel.  It is ok, nothing will break, the rest of the band also works for making contacts.  It would be better to train vhf ssb operators on HF so they get to know how to operate on ssb, how to work the tuning knob and how to  tune around the band to find stations to work.  FM channels and repeaters are quite the wrong training ground for SSB but I’m afraid that the FM repeater operation mode (staying on one frequency, as if it is the only conduit to any other station) is the method many operators learn and continue to use.

It is up to the experienced operators to teach new operators better techniques.  I appreciated those experienced operators who I heard requesting a QSY as soon as initial contact had been made.

During the contest I tried many times to make contact with some stations in the greater Sydney and Melbourne areas, whose signals were perfectly readable, but whose operators seemed to want to chat to locals interminably, on 144.150.  There are bonus points for working longer distances and these operators were ignoring those chances.  eg. a contact with another local station is worth 2 points, but a contact with a station 300+ km away would be worth 50 points.  This surely would make it worth listening to a weaker signal.

We should encourage people to operate in vhf events in a manner similar to the HF bands.  Find a clear frequency (within the band plan) and call CQ.  If looking for a contact, tune the band.   If activity is low, don’t move too far from other activity (but be mindful of local interference problems – this is why I qsy 30 kHz up from 150, not just 5 kHz as I might on HF).  If activity is high, move further out.  Give the dx something to tune for.  Don’t clump up and make it impossible!

My QSO tally

All contacts ssb.  These scores are about half the corresponding number from the summer VHF/UHF field day in January.

6m – 9
2m – 54
70cm – 31
23cm – 7
13cm – nil.