Two years ago I did 15m QRP in my first real attempt in a CW contest. Last year I had planned on improving my score in the same category, but a cycling accident meant I couldn't do much with the paddle. This year, I decided to see if I could do what I wasn't able to do last year.
This weekend was busy with other things and it wasn't until late saturday evening that I sat down at the rig. I haven't made any CW contacts in a long time, although I do do a bit of practice on morse runner from time to time. So when it came to the real thing, I was pretty slow in picking up calls. I was able to work a couple of brazilians, and very surprisingly, DR1A with a weak backscatter signal, managed to pull me out of the noise, before I headed off to bed.
Sunday morning I got on for an hour and a half and more of the same, it took me ages to decipher calls but got there in the end and managed around 40 qsos. Sunday afternoon I got on again and stayed until the band closed, with 120 QSOs, 18 zones, and 43 countries. So, I didn't beat my 2011 score, but I had fun and worked some nice DX, including the guys at EL2A in Liberia, our Czech friends at C5A in the Gambia, and the lads at D4C in Cape Verde, all in zone 35. I also managed a few nice central and south america QSOs.
So, an uneventful CQWW CW, but at least I'm keeping my hand in with the CW.....
Next contest, ARRL 10m in two weeks time. Watch this space!
(Sorry no photos of this test)
Monday, November 26, 2012
Saturday, November 10, 2012
MORE ON 2 ELEMENT VERTICAL BEAMS
A few months ago, I decided to try out using a parasitic element on a tripod to convert the vertical on my car into a 2 element vertical beam (see http://www.ea5on.com/2012/05/welcome-back-after-6-year-delay-to-see.html)
The more recent tests have been using the vertical dipole, 2 element yagis, and 4 element yagis, also reported on this blog.
At my current location in the port, it seems like development is afoot and shortly I may have to find myself a new spot to operate from since they are planning to build a boatyard where I usually operate from. So. before that happens, I wanted to try to operate a contest from there to see how I got on with the beams. I had thought about CQWW CW but my CW is still quite poor, so, since all the antenna trials are on 10m, why not the ARRL 10m contest?
The recent tests indicated that perhaps on some paths, propagation might not always be coming in on the expected path, and that either an omnidirectional, or perhaps better, a rotatable antenna, would be desirable in order to both check the differences, and of course work more stations in the contest! My idea is to try QRP, so every little extra dB counts.
One idea which is under way is to build a simple rotary 2 element yagi using the 6m mast I used for the quad in CQWPX, and making the vertical elements out of telescoping whips. Watch this space!
In the meantime I decided to take a leaf out of the CBers books and try to make a beam on top of the car. If it was to work, it might be a cheap and cheerful way to get some gain and easy directivity without a complicated setup.
I measured the distance from the back ball mount to a point on the roof where I could mount another vertical reasonably straight, it measures just short of a metre and a half, acceptable for 10m. I put the magmount on, measured another vertical a few inches shorter (this time using a 3 foot mast and a 4 and a half foot telescopic whip) and installed this director element on the magmount. SWR was lowered a bit, as expected.
On-the-air tests yesterday with stations in Ukraine, Canada, and the USA, indicated a more or less expected front to side pattern of between one and 4 s units, depending on the station. However since this depends on propagation and QSB (fading), and there was no reference antenna, plus I wasn't in a great place for 360º testing, I wanted to do more on-air tests.
Here's what it looks like set up:
When is an omnidirectional not an omnidirectional?
The answer is, when it's on a car.
This afternoon I made a sked with Victor EA5KV to do a local test with no QSB. Before doing anything else, I wanted to test the single vertical I normally use, to see if it made any difference depending on where the car was looking. I went to a location close by to my normal spot but where I was able to drive around in circles without any problems.
Conventional wisdom says that the best place to put an antenna on your car is in the centre of the roof. If you put it at the back or front, it will radiate better over the area of metal. That is to say, in my case where the antenna is mounted in the centre of the rear, there should be a stronger signal forward over the car roof.
The first noticeable thing was that there was a big difference while driving around in a 360º cicle, including a big null where Vic lost me completely, we hadn't expected there to be a big difference.
The second thing, which we noticed after getting the compass out to confirm, is that the antenna radiated the strongest signal at approx 70º left of forward, and the null was 180º from that. We checked this three times to make sure it was correct. I can think of no reason why it should be that way. Strongest signal was S7.
Having done the single element test we tried the 2 element, and this gave more of a text book result. About 1 S unit of gain above the single element at its strongest, but the direction was correct. Front to side and back were quite noticeable. I wanted to try FM for better S unit reading but Vic has a fixed roofing filter in his FT-1000 which is too narrow for FM use.
I wanted to continue tests against the 2 element vertical yagi on the fishing rods but the rain started getting very heavy and we had to abandon for today.
More crazyness will follow when the sun comes out!
The more recent tests have been using the vertical dipole, 2 element yagis, and 4 element yagis, also reported on this blog.
At my current location in the port, it seems like development is afoot and shortly I may have to find myself a new spot to operate from since they are planning to build a boatyard where I usually operate from. So. before that happens, I wanted to try to operate a contest from there to see how I got on with the beams. I had thought about CQWW CW but my CW is still quite poor, so, since all the antenna trials are on 10m, why not the ARRL 10m contest?
The recent tests indicated that perhaps on some paths, propagation might not always be coming in on the expected path, and that either an omnidirectional, or perhaps better, a rotatable antenna, would be desirable in order to both check the differences, and of course work more stations in the contest! My idea is to try QRP, so every little extra dB counts.
One idea which is under way is to build a simple rotary 2 element yagi using the 6m mast I used for the quad in CQWPX, and making the vertical elements out of telescoping whips. Watch this space!
In the meantime I decided to take a leaf out of the CBers books and try to make a beam on top of the car. If it was to work, it might be a cheap and cheerful way to get some gain and easy directivity without a complicated setup.
I measured the distance from the back ball mount to a point on the roof where I could mount another vertical reasonably straight, it measures just short of a metre and a half, acceptable for 10m. I put the magmount on, measured another vertical a few inches shorter (this time using a 3 foot mast and a 4 and a half foot telescopic whip) and installed this director element on the magmount. SWR was lowered a bit, as expected.
On-the-air tests yesterday with stations in Ukraine, Canada, and the USA, indicated a more or less expected front to side pattern of between one and 4 s units, depending on the station. However since this depends on propagation and QSB (fading), and there was no reference antenna, plus I wasn't in a great place for 360º testing, I wanted to do more on-air tests.
Here's what it looks like set up:
When is an omnidirectional not an omnidirectional?
The answer is, when it's on a car.
This afternoon I made a sked with Victor EA5KV to do a local test with no QSB. Before doing anything else, I wanted to test the single vertical I normally use, to see if it made any difference depending on where the car was looking. I went to a location close by to my normal spot but where I was able to drive around in circles without any problems.
Conventional wisdom says that the best place to put an antenna on your car is in the centre of the roof. If you put it at the back or front, it will radiate better over the area of metal. That is to say, in my case where the antenna is mounted in the centre of the rear, there should be a stronger signal forward over the car roof.
The first noticeable thing was that there was a big difference while driving around in a 360º cicle, including a big null where Vic lost me completely, we hadn't expected there to be a big difference.
The second thing, which we noticed after getting the compass out to confirm, is that the antenna radiated the strongest signal at approx 70º left of forward, and the null was 180º from that. We checked this three times to make sure it was correct. I can think of no reason why it should be that way. Strongest signal was S7.
Having done the single element test we tried the 2 element, and this gave more of a text book result. About 1 S unit of gain above the single element at its strongest, but the direction was correct. Front to side and back were quite noticeable. I wanted to try FM for better S unit reading but Vic has a fixed roofing filter in his FT-1000 which is too narrow for FM use.
I wanted to continue tests against the 2 element vertical yagi on the fishing rods but the rain started getting very heavy and we had to abandon for today.
More crazyness will follow when the sun comes out!
Friday, November 02, 2012
CQWW SSB 2012 ED5T
Rather than repeat it all over again, best check out the link on 3830:
http://lists.contesting.com/archives//html/3830/2012-10/msg02787.html
Also this time I tried my hand at making a video. Being my first attempt, it's not great, but it gives you an idea:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_fxQEzrsCc
Since Andreu couldn't stay for the test, we took the usual post-test photo before we started!
Seated from left to right, Jose EA5GS, Victor EA5KV, Andreu EC5AA, Elías EB5KT, Juan EA5GIE. In the foreground, your scribe, EA5ON.
Thanks to everyone who called us!
http://lists.contesting.com/archives//html/3830/2012-10/msg02787.html
Also this time I tried my hand at making a video. Being my first attempt, it's not great, but it gives you an idea:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_fxQEzrsCc
Since Andreu couldn't stay for the test, we took the usual post-test photo before we started!
Seated from left to right, Jose EA5GS, Victor EA5KV, Andreu EC5AA, Elías EB5KT, Juan EA5GIE. In the foreground, your scribe, EA5ON.
Thanks to everyone who called us!
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Getting ready for CQWW phone
Once again we are at the end of October, synonymous for many hams around the globe with CQWW SSB, a festival of contacts on the air for 48 hours.
For the fifth year running, I will be taking part in the multi-single team at ED5T with my friends Victor EA5KV, Elías EB5KT, Jose EA5GS, and Juan Carlos EA5UF.
In order for all of this to happen, there has been a lot of preparatory work going on behind the scenes, and apart from the above mentioned, we have counted on the multiple skills of Juan EA5GIE and the helping hands of Belar EA5YI.
This year, we decided to concentrate our pre-contest efforts on an area where we could do with making some improvement and which, if successful, will give a boost to our score. I'm talking about antenna improvements on 80 metres.
Our mainstay antenna at ED5T for many years has been a bazooka, held up in an inverted V from tower 1. In last years CQWW, the antenna failed on us in the middle of the night and was replaced by a half wave dipole which appears to work just as well. In the past, and in an effort to try to improve over the bazooka, we tried a single full size vertical, a two element full size vertical, and a vertically polarized delta loop. None of those antennas worked better than the bazooka.
Based on that experience, we decided to build a rotatable dipole, on the basis that a) the ends would be higher off the ground and in theory perform better and b) we would be able to rotate it to be broadside to wherever we want it.
The design chosen was a helical winding on fibreglass and aluminium tips for tuning. The antenna is 24 metres long. Part of the reason for choosing this design was that we already had a lot of the material available. The drawback is that since it is physically smaller than a full size, it will not be as efficient, and also will have limited bandwith. Also, the use of fibreglass makes proper guying obligatory due to it being extremely flexible.
The antenna was assembled and tested on the ground and looked good. However installing the antenna was not easy and when finally up, the resonance had risen 200KHz. It took another day and a lot of hands to get it to a more reasonable point and to get it back up in the air. In this photo you can see Juan and Victor finalising assembly.
As you can see, it was already dark by the time we finished. Again....
How does it work? Ahhhh, can't tell you that! You'll have to wait until after the contest to find out! :)
Tomorrow, setup of all the gear, including beverages in the forest courtesy of "Magic" Andreu, EC5AA. And at 0000 utc saturday..... CQ CONTEST!
For the fifth year running, I will be taking part in the multi-single team at ED5T with my friends Victor EA5KV, Elías EB5KT, Jose EA5GS, and Juan Carlos EA5UF.
In order for all of this to happen, there has been a lot of preparatory work going on behind the scenes, and apart from the above mentioned, we have counted on the multiple skills of Juan EA5GIE and the helping hands of Belar EA5YI.
This year, we decided to concentrate our pre-contest efforts on an area where we could do with making some improvement and which, if successful, will give a boost to our score. I'm talking about antenna improvements on 80 metres.
Our mainstay antenna at ED5T for many years has been a bazooka, held up in an inverted V from tower 1. In last years CQWW, the antenna failed on us in the middle of the night and was replaced by a half wave dipole which appears to work just as well. In the past, and in an effort to try to improve over the bazooka, we tried a single full size vertical, a two element full size vertical, and a vertically polarized delta loop. None of those antennas worked better than the bazooka.
Based on that experience, we decided to build a rotatable dipole, on the basis that a) the ends would be higher off the ground and in theory perform better and b) we would be able to rotate it to be broadside to wherever we want it.
The design chosen was a helical winding on fibreglass and aluminium tips for tuning. The antenna is 24 metres long. Part of the reason for choosing this design was that we already had a lot of the material available. The drawback is that since it is physically smaller than a full size, it will not be as efficient, and also will have limited bandwith. Also, the use of fibreglass makes proper guying obligatory due to it being extremely flexible.
The antenna was assembled and tested on the ground and looked good. However installing the antenna was not easy and when finally up, the resonance had risen 200KHz. It took another day and a lot of hands to get it to a more reasonable point and to get it back up in the air. In this photo you can see Juan and Victor finalising assembly.
As you can see, it was already dark by the time we finished. Again....
How does it work? Ahhhh, can't tell you that! You'll have to wait until after the contest to find out! :)
Tomorrow, setup of all the gear, including beverages in the forest courtesy of "Magic" Andreu, EC5AA. And at 0000 utc saturday..... CQ CONTEST!
Sunday, October 21, 2012
VERTICAL BEAMS ON SALT WATER - Part 2
Today I finally managed to get round to doing the second part of the experiment with the vertical beams which I started last month.
After the limited success with the 2 element model, I decided to continue with the model suggested by Dave HK1A and make the 2 element into a 4 element by adding two directors. Director number one was tuned for 29.640 and director number 2 for 29.930. Element spacing was 2.07m approx between each element.
Having already done the 2 element version, making the next two elements was a breeze and pretty soon the antenna was up and playing. SWR with the 4 elements gave a good curve although resonated a bit high up the band at around 28.7 MHz.
As in the previous experiment, I did A/B testing with the same reference antenna as before, the quarter wave vertical on the car. Today, the band was mostly open to the states and I worked numerous stations who were kind enough to give me reports on the two antennas. In the previous tests, stateside stations were mostly a bit better on the quarter wave. Today, the stations closer in (east coast) did not notice much difference, some giving a slight edge to the quarter wave and most noting no difference or the beam one S unit better. On the midwest to west coast stations, there was generally more difference in favour of the beam, up to 2 S units in some cases. When N6HD in Los Angeles suggested that propagation was strange and he was getting EU best over 90 degrees instead of the normal 30, I moved the antenna a bit further south and signals improved very slightly on that path.
In summary, the 4 element antenna did not give the improvement I had hoped for, but it was not worse.
There was one case which had me particularly curious and to which I don't have an easy answer. I was called by EA5KV when he was beaming south. I was beaming east, at 90 degrees to him and he logically heard me better on my quarterwave than on my beam. On my receive I noted the same. However when he called in a bit later, with his beam pointing at me (north) there was a very considerable difference in favour of my beam. Does anyone have an explanation for this? He was located about 15km from me and using a horizontal ultrabeam.
The final test will be to use the four elements in a 2 x 2 phased array to see if this gives an improvement over the straight 4 element vertical yagi. Stay tuned!
Today I finally managed to get round to doing the second part of the experiment with the vertical beams which I started last month.
After the limited success with the 2 element model, I decided to continue with the model suggested by Dave HK1A and make the 2 element into a 4 element by adding two directors. Director number one was tuned for 29.640 and director number 2 for 29.930. Element spacing was 2.07m approx between each element.
Having already done the 2 element version, making the next two elements was a breeze and pretty soon the antenna was up and playing. SWR with the 4 elements gave a good curve although resonated a bit high up the band at around 28.7 MHz.
As in the previous experiment, I did A/B testing with the same reference antenna as before, the quarter wave vertical on the car. Today, the band was mostly open to the states and I worked numerous stations who were kind enough to give me reports on the two antennas. In the previous tests, stateside stations were mostly a bit better on the quarter wave. Today, the stations closer in (east coast) did not notice much difference, some giving a slight edge to the quarter wave and most noting no difference or the beam one S unit better. On the midwest to west coast stations, there was generally more difference in favour of the beam, up to 2 S units in some cases. When N6HD in Los Angeles suggested that propagation was strange and he was getting EU best over 90 degrees instead of the normal 30, I moved the antenna a bit further south and signals improved very slightly on that path.
In summary, the 4 element antenna did not give the improvement I had hoped for, but it was not worse.
There was one case which had me particularly curious and to which I don't have an easy answer. I was called by EA5KV when he was beaming south. I was beaming east, at 90 degrees to him and he logically heard me better on my quarterwave than on my beam. On my receive I noted the same. However when he called in a bit later, with his beam pointing at me (north) there was a very considerable difference in favour of my beam. Does anyone have an explanation for this? He was located about 15km from me and using a horizontal ultrabeam.
The final test will be to use the four elements in a 2 x 2 phased array to see if this gives an improvement over the straight 4 element vertical yagi. Stay tuned!
Thursday, October 18, 2012
MORE DX!
This week, I received another couple of those cards I was waiting for, for long forgotten contacts:
And today, in spite of my misgivings about being able to work the T30PY expedition to West Kiribati, all of a sudden today, the unheard of happened: crossing over 14.195 I heard what sounded like a french station working them on simplex. They completed the contact, I called, in spite of hearing them at not more than a whisper, and got a 55 right back! Right after that, I heard Julen EB2AM (owner of the EE2W contest station) work them too. The way things are with the propagation, I think I can count myself very lucky.
This week, I received another couple of those cards I was waiting for, for long forgotten contacts:
And today, in spite of my misgivings about being able to work the T30PY expedition to West Kiribati, all of a sudden today, the unheard of happened: crossing over 14.195 I heard what sounded like a french station working them on simplex. They completed the contact, I called, in spite of hearing them at not more than a whisper, and got a 55 right back! Right after that, I heard Julen EB2AM (owner of the EE2W contest station) work them too. The way things are with the propagation, I think I can count myself very lucky.
Saturday, October 06, 2012
It's been a quiet couple of weeks for me on the radio. This week, I had the misfortune to have my car break down, and since I had a business trip during the week, wasn't able to pick it up from the garage until late on friday afternoon. I had hoped to do a bit more vertical testing on friday, but it wasn't to be....
Regarding the vertical testing, the previous friday was impossible too. We had the wettest and windiest conditions in a long time and no way to even consider any tests. So, let's hope third time lucky and next week I can see about getting the 4 element for 10 working. Watch this space!
The good news is that I was at least able to work 3D2C on Conway reef on 10m and 17m, for country number 303 from the car.
Regarding the vertical testing, the previous friday was impossible too. We had the wettest and windiest conditions in a long time and no way to even consider any tests. So, let's hope third time lucky and next week I can see about getting the 4 element for 10 working. Watch this space!
The good news is that I was at least able to work 3D2C on Conway reef on 10m and 17m, for country number 303 from the car.
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