A brief report of my CQ WW SSB operations; Single Operator Assisted High Power 80m.
Shortly before the contest we decided that Devin was using PI4COM and not his own call, so I used my own callsign.
Many hours before the contest we finished building the station and antennas.
So I tried to sleep for a few hours before the contest started.
I used an beverage direction East-West approx 200m long and a beverage for North America about 100 meters long.
The first night was difficult, noticed that I had a RX problems. 160m slammed my entire reception. Mainly as I listened on the beverages.
Only the strong signals came through. Everything was chopped into pieces. It was so annoying that I had considered the 2nd day a couple of times to stop.
Saturday I placed a loop antenna, hopefully to get a better reception. But everything had actually become worse. After brief conversation with Florian PB8DX who was operating 160m I understood that he did not use a band pass filter, the swr from the filter was bad.
Saturday early evening I completely rebuilt my setup. The reception antennas connected directly to the radio via the RX unit KD9SV, all I could connect to the ground was connected. The S9 + 10 dB SPLAT persisted. Thereafter, put a 2nd band pass filter in series with the receiving antennas.
That was possible now because it was redesigned, I was listing now via the diversity mode on the K3 for the first time. (On the left in the headphones to the Rx of the transmitting antenna and the receiving antennas on the right, nice experience).
I also placed the stub for 160m at Florians station. This allows the QRM was only +/- S3.
Florian has just checked the band pass filter and after some bending to the coil was this good again. So now Florian used the 160m bandpass filter and stub.
Problem was not completely gone yet, but larger portions of the band were now usable again. Let’s hope that the multipliers and Americans that I would be still missed the first night again.
Saturday morning I was stopped with almost 400 QSOs in the log.
Unfortunately, the propagation Saturday was on Sunday much less.
No Japanese heard in that direction, only worked: YB, JT.
But also worked a few Americans. Just before 9 pm local time stopped to sleep for a few hours at home. There were at that time in 1.100 QSOs, 98 DXCC and 19 zones in the log.
There will not be many changes that during the final hours of the contest to work more multipliers. (Oh, not forgot to mention I had fallen asleep for half an hour).
Sunday full of fresh courage started the last hours.
The first hour was perfect, I could hear all weak stations without problems on the beverages.
Fortunately Florian had overslept an hour, when he started it was over with the fun. Weak stations were almost impossible to copy.
The last half hour of the contest the band opened to NA, I then worked nearly 30 NA stations, great!!
What I really noticed this weekend that we have no RX antenna to the north/south. Scandinavian and Spanish station very difficult to copy.
Both beverage are substantially the same direction. The next time I will again place a 200 meter long JA beverage and a north/south beverages.
The dipole hung 10 meters high (low), with one leg to NA. That was noticeable, all Americans (50) were worked with that dipole.
No idea why this antenna works so well for DX at this low altitude.
Unfortunately I didn’t improve my PA score of 2008, but there must a challenge otherwise it is not fun anymore.
Kees PA3BWD thanks for the support!
4 weeks to go for the CW contest.
Ronald Stuy
PA3EWP
