Monthly Archives: September 2013

2013 BARTG 75 Sprint

Today was a short 4 hour BARTG contest that uses 75 baud RTTY. The difference between the standard 45.45 baud and 75 baud is 66 wpm vs 100 wpm so the transmission speed is faster. This morning before the contest I was on the air and 10m was open so I was hopeful there would be some 10m activity during the BARTG contest but I didn’t hear any and I called CQ for about 5 mins without any activity.

Most of the activity was on 20m and I called CQ on all bands. Not a huge amount of activity but there were short bursts followed by auto-repeat of CQ and me watching the NY Giants play one of their worst football games in their history. I also pointed the NA4RR hex beam to Asia but didn’t hear any JA stations participating on 15m or 20m.

Here’s my score summary:

  Band    QSOs     Pts  DXC  Area Cont
     7       7       7    0    1    0
    14      90      90   18    5    1
    21      34      34   12    4    3
 Total     131     131   30   10    4

Score : 20,960

Here’s a map of the contacts using ADIF2MAP (click to enlarge):

BARTG_Map

Next weekend is the CQ WW RTTY contest so I’ll hopefully be on the air as much as possible. Maybe 10m will be active next weekend.

73,
K2DSL

Summer is ending – Contests (WAE / VHF) & Football

It’s that time year when summer winds down and contest season and American football start up. This weekend had all that with cool evening temperatures dropping into the 40s, a VHF contest, WAE SSB contest and a Giants home football game.

Friday night after work, I made a dozen WAE SSB contacts with 10 contacts on 20m and 2 contacts on 40m in a short time on the radio.  I needed to then gather up things to head out the next morning.

Saturday morning I woke up early and got ready to head to where we keep our club’s equipment (towers, generator, antennas, coax, tents, tables, etc) to help load up the equipment for a trip to the top of a mountain not far from the Tappan Zee Bridge and Hudson River. A group of us met there and pulled out what we needed and loaded it onto a 24 ft rented truck for transporting to the contest site. The weather was gorgeous and a little cool when we started out, but all that lifting gets you warm pretty quick.

Around 9:30am we were at the location and unloading the equipment. We had small teams of people working on the 6m antenna, the 2m/220/440 antennas, the generator, the food area, etc. Everyone was helping out doing something. We had a 6m antenna on a nice 2 section crank up aluminum tower that worked well and the 3 other bands stacked and on another 1 section tower we raised up. We also had a station setup to handle 2m/220/440 FM and a vertical antenna for each. Here are some pictures of the setup and start of operations. Click any picture for a larger view.
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We were on the air right at the start of the contest with one tent housing the 6m station and the other larger tent with the 2m/220/440 stations. I operated the 6m station for a while and though I was able to consistently make contacts, there were no openings out west or south. I stayed around until 9pm and set out for home.

Sunday morning I woke up and made some more contacts on 15m and 20m in the WAE contest. I also exchange QTCs with the EU stations. Sending QTCs is me providing the EU station with a list of (up to) 10 previous contacts not yet given out by me with the time of the contact, the callsign and the serial number the EU station gave me. In the CW and SSB versions of the WAE, we give EU stations the info while in the RTTY contest it can go either way. It’s a good twist and N1MM makes it simple to do. I ended up sending all my QSOs as QTCs which essentially doubles my # of contacts. In the end I ended up with 73 actual Qs logged and 72 QTCs for a total of 145 QSOs as counted in WAE contests.

  Band   Q/QTC  QSOs    Pts  Mlt
     7    QSO     2       2    6
    14    QSO    24      24   30
    21    QSO    47      47   42
    21   SQTC    72      72    0  <-- QTCs sent to the EU stations
 Total    All   145     145   78

Score : 11,310

I wrapped up the ham activities and headed to get my daughter going to college in NYC to join me at the home opener for the NY Giants. It was great spending time with her, but the Giants played poorly and it wasn’t a good football game if you are a Giant fan. It could be a long season ahead! :-(

The contest season is getting ready to get into full swing and hopefully I’ll be able to spend a good amount of time participating and trying out the new NA4RR hex beam.

73,
K2DSL

NA4RR on the air thanks to 2 great hams!

Thanks to both Rob KC2RDW and Niko AA2NI, I am really back on the air now. This weekend they both spent a good part of their Saturday helping me get the NA4RR hex beam mounted up in the air on a Radio Shack rotor I had picked up at a local hamfest a year or so ago. Together they figured out the best plan to get the pole made up of two 1.25″ steel pipes securely mounted on the back of my garage and then get the rotor and antenna on top of it all. We hit a bit of a snag with the mounting brackets I had not well suited for the 1.25″ pipe (though it states it can accept up to a 1.25″ pipe) but they improvised and it worked out fine.

I did measure the height but based on the poles and the rotor I’d guess the bottom of the hex beam is about 18 feet (5.5 meters) or so off the ground and it is working fine. In some tests on Saturday and Sunday after it was up I was able to easily work Namibia, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, a dozen Japan stations in the All Asia contest and even snagged a new DXCC working ZD7DC on St Helena Island in the South Atlantic.

After we got the NA4RR hex beam up, Niko shot a line perfectly placed into one of my trees and we pulled up a line attached to a spare G5RV I had that will allow me to work 40m and 80m in addition to the bands covered by the hex beam.  This replaces the G5RV that was taken down, along with my triband fan dipole when a huge tree fell across my property taken down the wire antennas (and my gutters along with other things) during Superstorm Sandy the end of last October.

Thanks so much Rob & Niko – you made a very happy ham again!

Below are some pictures taken while getting things set up.  Click any picture to see a larger version.

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NA4RR beam getting ready to mount into the rotor. I spray painted the beam (fiberglass polls, center post and center hub) with Rustoleum Painter’s Touch flat black. Makes it less noticeable in my environment as black vs the brighter grey/silver.

 

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Mounting brackets on the side of the garage

 

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Niko (AA2NI) and Rob (KC2RDW) getting ready to mount the beam onto the end of the rotor

 

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Rob (KC2RDW) on the garage roof

 

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Picture of the setup from our deck

 

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Close up of the beam with rotor

 

73,
K2DSL