de W7CF = tnx fer cl OM es YL » contesting

W7CF moving to new QTH, so QRT for now

W7CF David — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 20:59:00 +0000

back in September my XYL Lisa and I bid for a new home with 2.5 acres of space, a bright quilt studio for her, a large woodworking shop for me and surrounded with plenty of 80-110ft high antenna supports. Last week our purchase finally closed.

I’ve been off the air for the past 6-8 weeks already (missing dear contests like Salmon Run CalQP, NAQP, CQ WW DX RTTY, etc), as we were too busy getting our old place spiffed up and updated and get it ready to put it on the market.

Yesterday, I disconnected and packed my radios, antenna and feedlines. Once the dust of our move settles, maybe in 2-3 weeks, I can think again about getting an antenna up and be QRV again

What is contesting?

W7CF David — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 01:26:36 +0000

this is a question I do get asked by friends and coworkers when I mention that I’ll be spending my weekend in front of a radio…. Admittedly, to make sense of such an intention, one has to experience the music and rhythm of the contest exchanges, especially in CW.
BTW: last weekend (FieldDay 2008 with RTKCC, MicroHams and RedmondARES), I sat next to Alan AC2K for almost an hour just listening in how he search&pounced the band and made plenty of contacts. He didn’t even bother using precanned CW sequences, all code was live keying with his Begali single-lever key. Ok, now I know why I need to further practice my code speed

Here’s a YouTube video that explains and conveys the contest rhythm quite nicely:

ARRL VHF contest June 14th

W7CF David — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 04:55:25 +0000

This was my first attempt at both contesting outside of HF and away from my QTH: packed up my FT-817 up to TIger Mtn (CN97) to participate for a good hour in the VHF contest, namely on 6m. RX was great, helps to have an antenna more than 2700ft high But reaching more remote stations, TX with QRP level is quite limiting unfortunately.
http://trailmaniacs.wordpress.com/2008/06/16/tiger-mtn-summit-2/

Debugging my antenna

W7CF David — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 09:23:14 +0000

Several weeks ago, in the ARRL RTTY Roundup, I noticed a weird effect when sending in rapid succession: over several seconds, the SWR at my radio ramped up to ~3:1, consequently my transceiver folded back its output power. After maybe 20-30 seconds of rest, everything resumed to normal again.

On first hunch, this looks much like a thermal issue, something is heating up and cools off to revert to normal. On to debugging my antenna system. A quick test with a dummy load hooked directly to the transceiver showed no problem with either PA nor power supply.

Rain, work (and skiing, I admit) kept me from looking closer at the outside antenna components; besides, with lighter load cycles e.g. in CW, no repro. But this weekend, there was yet another RTTY contest, CQ WPX RTTY.

Since it seems to be a thermal issue that only reproduces unter load, the antenna analyzer measurments didn’t yield anything other than solidifying my initial gut feel.

Several components were suspects: coax run to antenna base, remote tuner (AH-4), balun, lightning protector or antenna insulators. Since I only send barefoot with 100W at most, any antenna insulator breakdown seemed improbable; also, a defective coax (water, rodents?) would be a more clear and consistent failure.

With my XYL as the remote control in the shack to start/stop RTTY transmission (with a preconfigured text, including proper identification), I sat at the antenna base, observing tuner, balun and protectors. After ~90 secs, the SWR spike showed again. With TX off, the quick touch test showed the balun’s core to be very warm. So looks like the core is oversaturating, heating up and therefore changing its inductance. Appears the prospect’s “200 W” spec isn’t for 100% duty loads like RTTY. I’ll wind my own and sturdier balun and try again to fully proof my failure theory.

first contest

W7CF David — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 02:44:25 +0000

what a thrill, this weekend I participated in my first contest, CQ WW CW! Well, stricly speaking it is my second contest, I had fun for a few hours with the WA state’s QSO party, the Salmon run, earlier in September.

Given that my CW skills aren’t a full match to the typical 25-35WPMs, I limited myself to Search&Pounce. I’ll do more practicing with MorseRunner to at some point be able (and having the confidence) to actually run a frequency (for the non-hams: running the frequency means staying on one frequency and keep calling CQ so other stations will contact you)