Category Archives: Contests

Finally, A New HF Rig

My wife and I have a cabin up in the mountains that we use as a getaway as often as possible. Oddly enough, this place is a pretty good location for radio propagation. It sits at 9600 feet in elevation with low electrical noise and a decent radio horizon in most directions.

I’ve been putting up temporary antennas at the cabin for VHF contests, Field Day and the occasional HF contest. I am slowly building the ham station, with high expectations but slow progress. I wanted to get an HF rig to put in the Cabin Shack. Actually, I started out thinking I needed a DC-to-daylight rig so that I could cover all bands in one radio. I had my eye on the new ICOM IC-9100 that was announced back in 2009. I patiently waited for well over a year for this radio to become more than vaporware and they start to show up in the US in early 2011. Unfortunately, the street price turned out to be $3700, which seemed a bit too high to me.

This sent me back to rethinking the whole approach. I have to admit that I had not shopped for an HF rig since I bought my Yaesu FT-847 back in the 1990s. The 847 has been my all-time favorite transceiver based on how the controls are set up and the coverage of HF plus 6M, 2M and 70 cm. My only beef with this rig is that the receiver can get overloaded during heavy band usage (like popular HF contests and Field Day).  I started thinking about getting an HF + 6 Meter rig to complement the FT-847, which would give me two radios during contests. In particular, for VHF contests, I’d leave the new rig on 6 Meters all of the time and jump around 2 Meters and 70 cm with the FT-847. I also wanted the new HF rig to be very solid on HF and include some of the advanced features for DXing and contesting.

Soon I was looking at all of the radios that cover HF through 50 MHz. That’s when I really got sticker shock — the FT-DX9000D costs over $10k, the IC-7800 costs $12.5k, the IC-7700 is $7200, and so forth. All of these radios look like fine gear but I was unwilling to invest that much in a transceiver for the cabin. I quickly redirected my radio hunt to something below $2500, looking at the IC-7410 ($1900), FT-950 ($1350) and TS-2000 ($1575). In the end, I chose the FT-950 due to its price advantage and the ability to share accessories (microphones, mostly) with my FT-847.

I got the radio just in time for Field Day, where I gave it a good work out on 14 MHz, 21 MHz and 50 MHz. Wow, did it work great! The receiver performed very well even when the band was packed. In the heat of the battle, I pushed a wrong button or two and sent the rig off to some new and wonderful frequency. Yes, I did take the time to read the manual but I’ll have to spend some more time with it. This thing has enough features that it will take some time to master it.

-73, Bob K0NR

Did you like this? Share it:

Time to Change the Rules for Field Day

I just finished writing about how Field Day can be “seasoned to taste”…adapted to your particular interests. Overall, I think the ARRL has done a good job of crafting Field Day rules that provide some incentives for certain types of operation and activities. Get On the Air (GOTA) station, the free VHF station, and Class F (EOC location) are examples of positive rule changes that have been made over the years.

Still, I think there is room for improvement:

  • Eliminate the point advantage for CW and Digital contacts Why does Field Day have a scoring scheme that favors a particular mode? That is, CW and Digital contacts count 2 points versus 1 point for Phone. If these modes have some kind of efficiency advantage, then let that be the reward.  If not, then why the scoring incentive? The point benefit makes no sense to me, so I would eliminate that 2X advantage.
  • More Points for VHF/UHF Field Day is supposed to be about operating under simulated emergency communications. However, most real life EmComm activity makes heavy use of FM VHF and UHF to get the job done.  I would increase the number of points awarded for contacts on 144 MHz and higher to 2 points per contact, to compensate for the natural shorter range of these frequencies.
  • Remove Restriction on 146.52 MHz Also to encourage VHF operating, I would eliminate the prohibition against using 146.52 MHz. No other calling frequency is restricted in this way.
  • Make the Contest 24 Hours Field Day is set up to run 27 hours as long as you don’t set up at the start of the contest. It seems that must clubs set up early and just operate the first 24 hours. I would just simplify the event and make it 24 hours.
  • Bonus Points for VHF Packet or APRS Modern traffic handling uses digital methods, so I would encourage this by offering 100 bonus points for either establishing a functioning APRS station or packet radio system.
  • Require Electronic Log Submission Come on, this is the 21st Century….paper logs should be eliminated and all logs should be submitted electronically.

Well, my VHF+ tendencies are showing. These are my suggestions—what do you think?

73, Bob K0NR

Did you like this? Share it:

ARRL Field Day: Season to Taste

The 2011 Field Day is over. I have to admit that I am a bit ambivalent about Field Day…I can take it or leave it. But I have always thought that one of the great things about Field Day is that it can be tuned to whatever interests you or your club. It can be a serious radio contest (well, almost); it can be an EmComm Drill, it can be a Radio Campout;  it can be a food fest, it can be a beer-drinking party. Insert your idea here.

Here’s how my Field Day played out this weekend. The plan was to escape to our cabin in the mountains and set up a temporary HF + VHF station powered by a gasoline generator (1 transmitter, Class B). I used a basic trap dipole on 40M/20M/15M, a 6M5X Yagi on 6 Meters and a 2M9 Yagi on 2 Meters. I was hoping for some decent propagation on 20 Meters and 15 Meters, if 6 Meters opened up that would be awesome.

An urgent matter popped up on Saturday which took priority for most of the day. I finally got on the air Saturday evening and was pleasantly surprised to find 15 Meters still open. I worked quite a few stations on 15 M SSB until the band faded, then I slipped over to 20 Meters. Later, I noticed that 6 Meters had some life in it, so I turned my attention to that band, working back into the southeast.

The next morning, I checked 6 Meters and it was open again to the east. I was cranking out the contacts on 6 Meters but occasionally flipped around to the other bands. It was interesting to compare the 6 Meter activity on Field Day to the June VHF QSO Party. The propagation and number of stations on the air were similar. The skill level of the Field Day crowd was noticeably lower, with more dupes and sloppy operating. (That would be Field Day as a training event.)

Band  Mode  QSOs    Pts
 7    LSB      6      6
 14   USB     37     37
 21   USB     92     92
 28   USB      1      1
 50   USB    273    273
 144  USB      3      3
 Total       412    412

As you can see from the score, Field Day turned into a second June VHF contest for me, with 273 QSOs on 6 Meters.

A great time was had by me. How was your Field Day?

73, Bob K0NR    1B CO

Did you like this? Share it:

June VHF QSO Party — Awesome Conditions

The ARRL June VHF QSO Party should be the most fun VHF event of the year, but sometimes the propagation works against us. You see, June is supposed to be the primo time for sporadic-e propagation in North America but the ionosphere doesn’t always get the memo. This year was an absolute blowout with 6 Meters open for most of the daytime hours of the weekend!

As I prepped for the contest, I told myself  ”don’t worry too much about 50 MHz, try to fill in some more grids on 2 Meters.”  This might have been my subconscious mind preparing for a crappy weekend on 6 Meters. I did manage to acquire a new and improved 6 Meter Yagi antenna (M2 6M5X), which turned out to be a very nice improvement over the old 3-element Cushcraft that I have been carting across the state for decades. I had decided to ignore the other bands and focus on 2 Meters and 6 Meters.

Here’s the antenna array, consisting of a 2M9SSB (12.0 dBd gain, 14.5 foot boom, 9 elements) and the 6M5X (9.4 dBd gain, 18 foot boom, 5 elements):

I operated from our cabin up in the mountains, grid locator DM78av. I don’t have a permanent station installation but instead operate in a portable mode. That is to say, I strapped a mast onto the front deck and supported the antennas that way. These two antennas are a really good choice for a portable station…not real small but they can be moved around.

The FT-847 puts out 100 Watts on 6 Meters and (with an amplifier) achieves 170 Watts on 2 Meters.

On Saturday morning, 6 Meters was open to the southeast, before the contest started. I held back until the contest began and then jumped in. It was pretty much a blur after that…mostly working 50 MHz but I flipped back over to 2 meters to see who I could work there.

The final score is my personal best for the June event:

 

Band       QSOs X pt =  QSO pts.  X   Grids   =     Points
---------------------------------------------------------------
50         500    1      500           170           85000
144        28     1      28            13            364
---------------------------------------------------------------
TOTALS     528           528           183           96624

 

After the contest, I sent my electronic log into the ARRL for the contest and then uploaded my log to the Logbook of the World. LoTW has had a slow start but they recently upgraded it to handle VHF grids and VUCC. So just a few hours after the contest, I uploaded my log and received over 75 QSOs confirmed! Wow, talk about instant gratification…this is how it should be. No waiting around a couple of years for the cards to show up. If you are not using LoTW, now is the time to get on board.

73, Bob K0NR

Did you like this? Share it: