Certificate for the Dutch PACC Contest

Slowly getting back on air again after a long break of about 9 months. In the meantime, a certificate arrived in the post for the PACC contest that I had entered last February.

Results of the IRTS 80m Evening Counties Contest...Feb 2017

The IRTS 80 Metres Evening Counties contest was held on Tuesday the 21st of February. It was only one hour long and ran from 8pm to 9pm (20:00-21:00 UTC).

The results have just been published....click HERE

A total of 35 station logs were submitted which accounted for 781 QSOs.

I stayed on cw for the duration of the contest and this was my result...

Results:  80 Metres Evening Counties Contest, 21st February 2017
Total Score calculation: Entrant in EI/GI
Total Valid QSOs: 16
CW QSOs with EI/GI stations: 10*8=80
CW QSOs with stations outside EI/GI: 6*2=12
QSO Points: 92, Multipliers: 6
Total Score: 552

Out of the 32 counties in Ireland, 11 were not in anyone's log...
Missing Counties (11)... CARLOW, CAVAN, GALWAY, LEITRIM, LIMERICK, LONGFORD, OFFALY, ROSCOMMON, SLIGO, TYRONE, WICKLOW

Some are small counties and might be expected to be missing. But Galway and Limerick???

UKEICC 80m SSB Contest...Wed 1st March 2017

The UKEICC run short one hour contests on 80m which are ideal as they don't take up much time.

Back at the start of February, I was on for one of the SSB legs and I managed to work 8 stations with my 5 watts into an 80m dipole. At the time, I wasn't set up properly to log stations and submit an entry within the space of an hour. In hindsight, this was a pity as there is a multiplication factor of 4 for anyone working a QRP station on 5 watts or less.

The next SSB leg was on the 1st of March 2017 and I worked 18 stations this time around, again with 5 watts. Even though I started 10 minutes late, conditions seemed much better than last time and the map below shows the locators worked...

I tried calling CQ a few times but it's hard to have much of a presence on the band with 5 watts. Instead, all of the stations I worked were as a result of calling them.

The two furthest stations that I worked were PE4BAS in JO33 and SM5CSS in JO89. I was also their best DX and the multiplication factor of 4 for them for working a QRP station would have given them a good few extra points. As can be seen below, they finished 2nd and 3rd out of 44 entries in the Low Power (100w or less) Unconnected section.

Low Power - Unconnected

  Call Pwr Grid Raw Dupe Bust NIL Good Total -- Best DX --
  QSOs QSOs Pts Call Km
1 SO7BIT L JO91 47 0 2 0 45 209 EI5KF 1915
2 SM5CSS L JO89 36 0 0 0 36 202 EI7GL 1853
3 PE4BAS L JO33 61 2 0 0 59 187 EI7GL 1107

I heard several strong French stations but none calling CQ. I got an 'EI7??' back from DL8UD in JO43 but I was just too weak to complete a QSO. Strangely enough, I don't remember hearing any GM stations from Scotland...so maybe it was just chance?

All in all, it was really interesting to see just how far 5 watts can go.

Results on UKEICC website.

Entry for the French HF SSB Championships

Back at the end of January 2017, I put in an entry to support the French HF CW Championships. That time, I managed 138 QSO's spread out from 80m to 15m.

The SSB leg of the French HF Championships were held last weekend so I decided to concentrate on 80m only. This has the advantage that the band would only be open to France at certain times so it wouldn't take up the whole weekend.

France from my location is between 500kms and 1500kms. That's close enough to make contacts possible on 80m SSB but far enough away that making contacts can still be a challenge. I guess I really just wanted to see what could I work on 80m SSB with 100 watts into a half wave dipole about 5 to 7 metres above ground level.

Some observations.....

1) Many of the French stations struggled to hear my 100 watts. I have no doubt that some were using amplifiers and using a lot more power than me. I think another major factor though was that the French stations would have much higher interference levels than me. Signals from other stations on adjacent frequencies would be much stronger for them because of the shorter range. They also have signals arriving from all directions where as I have nothing from the West and only have to cope with interference from signals in the UK and the near continent.

2) I expected to make around 40-50 SSB contacts on 80m. In the end, I managed 111 which was nice.

3) I expected that the bulk of contacts would be in the 500km to 1000km distance. In fact, I managed to work most of  France. These are the departments that I worked....

While the majority of missing departments were in the 1000km to 1500km range, I still got a good spread.

4) The strongest signal was F5MUX in Brittany. This was no doubt due to the 500km distance and the sea path for reflections.

5) It's only when I checked the distances on the map that it became obvious what a big country France really is. It seems odd how someone in Brittany can be only 500kms from Ireland and still be 1000kms from the South-East of France.

6) The path to France on 80m was open from about 30-45 minutes before sunset. Any earlier and the signals were too weak as the D layer in the ionosphere absorbed too much of the signal. It might be possible to work someone earlier on say a quiet band but not in a contest....not with my set up anyway. The same applied 30-45 minutes after sunrise.

7) In contrast to the CW contest, I used the SD contest logging programme for the SSB contest. It made things so much easier as it makes checking for potential duplicate contacts so much faster. The only problem I had with it was that it wouldn't accept TK5KP in Corsica as a valid contact with points and multiplier. After the contest, I tried closing and re-opening the programme and editing that contact but to no avail. When I put in a dummy French QSO in its place, it worked ok. I then replaced the dummy French callsign with the TK5KP qso, it accepted it fine. I'm not sure what was wrong but it worked out in the end.

8) Post contest, I had to edit the Cabrillo log file like I did for the CW contest so that the French website would accept it. Other than that, the entry process was simple.

Overall, the 'Coupe de REF' French HF Championships contest seemed to be a pretty good one as contests go. It was also my first SSB contest in about 15 years ;o)

Additional info...
1) French HF Contest website

2017 Dutch PACC Contest

The annual PACC contest was held last weekend the 11th and 12th of February 2017 and is the highlight on the contest calendar for many Dutch radio amateurs. I hadn't really planned on entering but I thought I might support the contest of a neighbouring radio society.

There are 12 provinces in the Netherlands and each one was a multiplier on each band...

I operated on CW only on 40m and 80m and only replied to stations calling 'CQ TEST'. I had a quick listen on 20m during the daylight hours but I couldn't hear any Dutch stations, only stations in Eastern Europe looking for PA stations. Obviously with a Solar Flux in the low 70's, the MUF was pretty low and the distance for EI to PA was too short for F2 propagation.

As I don't have an antenna for 160m, that just left 40m and 80m for working into the Netherlands.

40m seemed good from about 3 hours before sunset to well into the night. It was the same the next day...good until about 3 hours after sunrise.

80m was a lot more defined as it had to be dark for the path to work. It was interesting how nearly all the PA stations disappeared on Sunday morning within a 30 minute window as sunrise occurred in the Netherlands.

Of the 12 provinces, I worked 11 on 40m and 11 on 80m. I probably could have worked the missing ones if I had gone hunting for them but I was only giving out points to contest stations.

I ended up with 94 contacts including one dupe which crept in. Someone was sending PACC as part of their callsign and I mistook that to be a special contest station. In hindsight, it probably wasn't.

Some of the stations I didn't work were...
a) Ones who was sending cw so fast that I couldn't make it out.
b) Stations who were hopping around. They would call CQ....I'd check my log in case it was a dupe...but they were gone before I could call them.

Links
1) PACC Contest

Entry for the French HF CW Contest...Jan 2017

The French REF CW contest was held on Saturday the 28th and Sunday the 29th of January 2017 on the HF bands from 10m to 80m. For stations outside of France, the object was to work as many French stations and departments as possible.

I hadn't really planned on taking part but once I worked the first few, I just kept going. In the end, I ended up with 138 QSO's on CW.

As expected, the best bands to work into France were 80m, 40m and 20m. The best DX contacts were with FY5KE (French Guyana) on 15m and FY5KE, FG4KH and FG/F5HRY (Guadeloupe) on 40m.

The antenna on my side for all contacts was an 80m dipole about 7m above ground level feed with 300 Omh ribbon cable from an ATU.

Yesterday, I downloaded a copy of the SD Contest Software by EI5DI and registered it. As with anything new, it took a while to get used to all the commands but I managed eventually to put in all the contacts.

Entering wasn't without its problems though as I got several error messages when I tried to upload it to the contest website.

a) Error found in your file : LOCATION field not found. This field must contain DX for all non french stations. eg: LOCATION: DX

......With some help from EI5DI, it seems as if the French entry system didn't recognise the standard entry for location. In SD, it is 'CATEGORY-LOCATION:  DX' whereas the French website was looking for 'LOCATION: DX'. Obvious to the eye but a robot system just rejects anything that isn't in the exact format. It was easy to edit the .LOG file with Notepad, remove the CATEGORY- part, save it and then try again.

b) At this stage, the French website thought I was trying to put up Spam with my multiple attempts so it rejected any more efforts. I was stumped for a while but I then used another browser to fix that problem. i.e. no cookies on that one.

c) Back in again but another error message...

Error found in your file : CATEGORY-OPERATOR field is not set properly. This field must contain operator-category. operator: SINGLE-OP or MULTI-ONE or CHECKLOG eg: CATEGORY-OPERATOR: SINGLE-OP
We found the string below in your log file: CATEGORY-OPERATOR: SINGLE OP     (please check the op SINGLE-OP or MULTI-ONE or CHECKLOG)

Again, it was just a case of editing the .LOG file and I changed the 'CATEGORY-OPERATOR: SINGLE OP' to 'CATEGORY-OPERATOR: SINGLE-OP'. The French system wanted a hyphen in there.

Tried again and it worked!

My first entry for a CW contest and I would guess that it's my first entry for a big contest in about 15 years.

The next question is how many of the contacts will count? How many errors were there? I used a straight key for all the contacts with some being in the early hours of the morning....plenty of scope there for mistakes ;o)

Operating QRP in the UKEICC 80m SSB Contest...1st Feb 2017

The SSB leg of the UKEICC 80m contest was held on Wednesday the 1st of February 2017 between 8pm and 9pm. As a test of a Yaesu FT-817 rig and as an experiment, I took part in it with just 5 watts into my 80m diplole.

I only managed to work 8 stations but I also didn't actually hear that many more anyway with my S7 noise level on the band.

All the stations I worked were within 500kms with the exception of GM3X who was about 750kms.

GW9J...IO72
GW4J...IO73
EI7CD...IO63
EI2KA...IO51
2E0KVJ...IO80
EI6JK...IO53
EI5KG...IO62
GM3X...IO88

Both EI5KF and F1FPL were quite strong but they couldn't hear my 5 watts. I could hear stations in Hungary, Slovenia, Germany and Sweden but it was pointless calling them as they were relatively weak at my end.

The whole contest seemed to be a tale of two halves. Conditions seemed reasonable in the first 30 minutes but the band seemed to collapse in the second half hour. It was almost as if something happened up in the ionosphere. The geomagnetic conditions are at a storm level at present so that might explain it (K index = 5).

Looking at the results and the comments, it seems as if everyone found the conditions to be awful. Still though, it was interesting to get 8 contacts with 5 watts.

Results of the 2017 IRTS 80m Counties Contest on New Year's Day

The annual IRTS 80 metre contest was held on the 1st of January 2017 and the full results are now available HERE

The chart above shows how the number of entries have changed over the years. While they are down on the initial years, they have  increased since 2014. It's good to see that the entries for the SSB/CW section have reached an all time high and now make up roughly half of all entries.

IRTS 80 Metres Counties Contest...1st Jan 2009

This was my first time trying out this contest as I had been off the air for the first 3 (2006-2008). I repaired my HF doublet antenna on the 31st of Dec so that I would be ready for the contest on the 1st. I had no real intention in taking part in the contest as such, more just to get on and give away a few points.

My contest...

The contest started at 14:00 and lasted until 17:00.

14:00 to 15:00...I spent the first hour on CW calling CQ Test, worked 19 stations and gave away a few points.

15:00....Time for coffee!! ;o) I spent about 15 minutes listening around. Going from CW to SSB was like changing to a completely different band. On CW, there was hardly any contest activity at this stage. Just some G and European staions in qso mode. On SSB, the contest segment was hopping and all of the EI stations seemed very busy.

15:15 to 16:00....Back on CW calling CQ Test. Worked just 6 stations in 45 minutes with most of my CQ calls going unanswered. By 16:00, the CW part of the contest was well and truely over.

16:00....More coffee!! This CW is thirsty work ;o) The SSB section was still hopping at this stage. I was half thinking about calling it a day but seeing as how busy the band was, I decided to give away a few more points. Time to get the microphone out of the drawer ;o)

16:15 to 16:48...Tuned up and down the SSB part of the band giving away a few points.

16:48 to 17:00...Found a clear frequency and called CQ Contest so that anyone tuning around the band would find me. Worked about 16 stations in the last 12 minutes.

Totals......61 contacts, 25 on CW and 36 on SSB. 18 counties worked.

Overall Impression and thoughts.....

1) An excellent contest. 3 hours is just the right lenght, 80 metres is the right band and it was great to see so many EI stations on the band.

2) Good to see that the IRTS have not introduced that 'Sprint'/ 'QSY' rule like they did for the 2 metre counties contest.

3) After the first hour, the CW section of the contest was more or less over. If anyone is going to try CW, then the first hour is the time to be on that mode.

4) It seems a pity that for those in the Mixed contest, CW contacts only have the same value as SSB. If someone was going to try and win the mixed section, there would be a case for just working 2 to 3 CW contacts and then spend the rest of the contest on SSB to maximize the points. Perhaps if CW contacts had double or triple value, it might make things more interesting. i.e. Do you stay on CW with a lower qso rate but higher value points or do you try SSB with a higher qso rate but lower value points.

5) Looking at the results for the last 3 years, these were the entries...

Section......2006........2007.........2008

SSB............29..............45.............47

Mixed........11...............20............7

It will be interesting to see what the entries for 2009 will be like. Listening to the serial numbers given in the contest, I'm guessing that the SSB numbers will be up while the Mixed entries will be low again.

So overall, a good fun event. I might try and make a serious effort at it next year.

ARRL 10 Metre Contest...13th/14th December 2008

Considering that this is the only band I am really currently active on, I was on during the 2 days of this ARRL contest to see what would pop up. At this stage of the solar cycle, the solar flux level (~70) is way too low to support direct F2 propogation from this far North in Europe (52 deg N). However, some Winter time Sporadic-E came to the rescue and there were short weak openings to F and EA from here. It's amazing that when all that activity is concentrated on one band, every propogation path becomes obvious and is spotted on the DX-Cluster. Most of the signals were weak although one French station did peak at 599+10dB. However overall, most signals were weak and CW was really the only way of working most stations.

Some observations...

1) In total over the 2 days, I worked 7 EA stations, 3 F stations and 1 S5 station. There might have been some openings to Germany as well but either I was missing or it was too weak for me to hear. The band opened up for a while to LA as well with the beacon LA4TEN in JO28 making an appearance for a while. No LA stations were heard though. In terms of DX, V51AS was heard although very weakly.

As you see from the map, the orange areas represent was worked....all Sporadic-E and about 1,000 to 1,800 kms distance. The V51 station was probably a combination of both Sporadic-E and F2 layer propogation. Sporadic-E from here (IO51) to Spain and from there probably by F2 to V51.

2) This year, the contest coincided with the peak of the Geminids meteor shower. I heard plenty of pings from beacons over the weekend and no doubt, a good few contacts made by stations in the contest may have been due to meteor scatter whether they realised it or not!

3) On a personal level, several years off the radio didn't do much for my CW!.........Oooo........very rusty ;o)

4) After I worked the S5 station, I heard Robbie, EI2IP working him. Later that night I noticed that Robbie had put up the following spot on the DX Cluster

EI2IP-@ 28000.0 EI7GL John ur cw tone is not so clear! 1215 14 Dec

So, I turned on a 2nd reciever with no antenna attached and listened to my signal on 5 watts....

di...di...di...dah.....di...di...di...dah........sounds ok........Turned up the power to 50 watts.....

ch...ch...ch...chirp.....ch...ch...ch...chirp.......Oooooo......Not so good!! :o(

It reminded me of when back in the days when the Soviet Union existed and a lot of the stations there were using home made rigs and plenty would have a chirp on cw.

How to fix my problem??? I thought at first it might be too much RF in the shack. I know I cause interference to the loudspeakers of the PC in the shack so I thought that might have something to do with it. Perhaps RF was getting into the power supply or somewhere else.

Connected up my 20 year old home brew 100 watt dummy load and tried it...

ch...ch...ch...chirp.....mmm.....no joy. Then I looked at the power supply. It's a variable power supply going from 0V to 20V with a small analogue meter to show the o/p voltage and current. Looked a bit low.......mmm......checked it with a digital volt meter.....~11 volts!

Turned it up to 13.5 volts and tried again...

di...di...di...dah...success!!...........It turned out that I must have knocked the voltage dial at some stage and the Kenwood transciever didn't like transmitting with a low voltage supply. Not only that but my max power out now has increased from 80 watts to the full 100 watts.

All from a simple spot on the cluster!....Thanks Robbie :o)

5) .....and on a final note, I found myself listening nearly all the time on the CW part of 10 metres for the duration of the contest. I listened to the SSB section for a while, heard some weak signals but to be honest, I never felt inclined to open the drawer, take the microphone out, plug it in to the rig and call someone. I wonder if I was operating just SSB only, would I just get bored of the whole radio thing again???