Tiny Elephant's Contest Corner

The Latest Contest News -
A NARC Bulletin Exclusive

A monthly column by Ed Deichler, K2TE

The contest season is in full swing and I'm enjoying it just fine. During the past few weeks, I had the opportunity to work three different contests in three different modes. During the third weekend in October, I jumped in the Japanese Amateur Radio Teletype Society (JARTS) contest and worked about 100 stations on RTTY, many of them new band countries for me. The last weekend featured the CQ Worldwide SSB DX contest and I teamed up with Rex, K1HI, for a new personal best here. Last but not least, I had a relaxing weekend working a couple hundred stations in the ARRL CW Sweepstakes contest. I managed to work 62 sections, so no coffee mug here (where WERE those Canadians ??).

The CQ Worldwide SSB contest had its good points and its bad points. Among the good points are the fact that I logged nearly 1100 QSOs for the weekend with several new band-countries. I'm grateful to Rex for helping out and showing me some of his tricks. Rex was a big help running stations for several hours. It wasn't long before I got the hang of it and overcame my lousy ears to do a creditable job of running Europeans. The funny thing I notice about this contest is that it starts out a completely incomprehensible babble worse than Congress. By the middle of the second day, however, I'm an old hand at recognizing phonetics with a Spanish, French, or German accent (I let Rex try the Japanese one, hi). I even find myself putting on the same accent in the silly thought that the DX station will recognize it easier. During the gray-line periods, we found that we could set the TA36 tribander on South America, the KT34XA on to the Pacific, and switch in my 20-meter monobander to Europe, depending on what we heard. My beverage came in handy when the Pacific started coming in and the local QRM covered them. On the beverage signals were not strong but the atmospheric noise was gone and so were the locals.

Some of the bad points could have been a real show-stopper. As some of you may have heard, I was fortunate enough to borrow the ICOM 775 DSP HF rig that NARC used so successfully on Field Day. Like Field Day, I had about an hour to become an expert with it. The first thing I noticed is that the rig is still so new that the CT contest logging program does not support it. This meant no automatic frequency tuning ("warp-drive tuning"). I probably could have selected an ICOM 765 or 781 from the choice menu in the program, but I didn't want to take a chance with the program crashing just as the contest gets underway.

The signals were nice and clear on the receiver. The filtering and DSP did their thing as we hardly noticed carriers or static crashes. Mechanically, I think ICOM needs a new designer. During the first day of the contest, Rex noticed that the main tuning knob was getting progressively more difficult to turn. Eventually, it reached the point where we needed to use two hands to get it to budge. The rig has a capability to use up or down arrow keys to automatically tune in preset increments. We tried this for a while, but the lowest increment for this mode is 1 KHz (how about 0.1 KHz or 0.01 KHz, ICOM?). Rex came to the rescue by simply selecting the second VFO and forcing the dualwatch mode - i.e., a neat feature that lets you listen to both VFO simultaneously with a balance control just like your car stereo - to the second VFO. We were able to keep things going this way since the second tuning knob worked fine.

When it looked like we outsmarted Murphy for once, guess again. I was contentedly doing my thing with search and pounce when the rig went black.. My first thought was that a breaker popped in the house but the desklamp instantly dispelled that excuse. Being seasoned engineers, we checked the fuse. No problem here. Now it was time to read the manual. "If the rig loses power and the fuses are OK, try turning it on and off again to reset an internal breaker. If it still doesn't work, contact your authorized dealer for maintenance." Wonderful. We looked at each other and sighed...time to put the lowly 735 on the air. Rex had a better idea: lets use his 751. This turned out to be a much better alternative since we were both comfortable with the 751.

Oh well, so much for my fantasy of a new rig for each contest season. It was awesome while it lasted. Maybe some day I'll get my own rig to break, ah, break in gently. Lets see...Santa is going to be here soon...

Speaking of Santa means Christmas is fast approaching. Lets see what contest gifts are out there as the year winds down...

ARRL 160M CW Contest. 1-3 December

Contest starts 2200Z on Friday, 1 December and concludes at 1600Z on 3 December, with operation permitted the whole 42 hours. Exchange: signal report and state/province; for DX stations, a signal report is all that is required. Speaking of DX, look for them exclusively between 1830 and 1835 KHz in the so-called DX window. If you try to work stateside stations by calling CQ in this window, don't be surprised that you will be roundly harassed. Operating categories are QRP, low power, high power, and multioperator. Scoring: 2 points for each stateside/Canadian QSO and 5 points for each DX QSO.

ARRL 10M Contest. 9-10 December

Contest starts at 0000Z on the 9th and concludes 48 hours later at 2400Z on the 10th. Maximum operating time is limited to 36 hours, and covers CW and SSB. Exchange: Signal report and state/province for us while DX stations send a serial number and signal report. Stations can be worked once on each mode. A window from 28300 to 28350 KHz has been reserved for non-contest activity, so DON'T OPERATE THERE. Scoring is set up as 2 points for an SSB contact, 4 points for a CW contact, and 8 points for a CW QSO with a novice or technician station. These guys are encouraged to sign "/N" or "/T" after their calls to make it easier to find them.

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