Tiny Elephant's Contest Corner

The Latest Contest News -
A NARC Bulletin Exclusive

A monthly column by Ed Deichler, K2TE

Wow! It seems like Field Day was only yesterday and now we are moving into September. I know it’s close; the yellow people eaters have been out chugging along with the morning commute to see if they can make it through another year. What kind of fuel do those things use, anyway? I find myself gagging worse from a school bus exhaust than the output of a plain old diesel whenever I get stuck behind one. If it is gasoline, it must have an octane rating of 50.

Unfortunately, choking on bus fumes has been more frequent than choking on DX. When Summer rolls around, DX takes a vacation which is only fair. I did have some fun last month working the IARU contest which was surprisingly active. No doubt the special World Radiosport Team Championships (WRTC) that co-participated in the contest had a lot to do with it. It was fun working some of the 1 x 1 calls from California during the contest. An even bigger surprise was the opening to Europe on 10 meters. I managed to work several stations during the time I operated. It was nice to know the band is beginning to stir from its long sleep.

With contest activity light, I used the time to complete my 160-meter inverted L antenna project. The antenna goes from a support post about 15 feet away from my tower up to a pulley at 100 feet and out and down to another tree. The vertical part goes from a height of 7 feet to 100 feet and the tapering part ends about 80 feet up. I have four elevated radials running at right angles to one another from the base of the antenna through the woods where they end about 15 feet up. Each radial is about 135 feet long. The antenna started out around 145 feet and ended up about 137 feet after a couple trips up the tower to trim it.

I found tuning the antenna with a rig at the base of the antenna and a noise bridge convenient although a little tricky. If you’re not familiar with a noise bridge, there are separate adjustments for the impedance and resistance values. I found it to be fairly broad at first when I tried to adjust for a zero impedance setting (i.e., purely resistive reading to represent the resonant point. I also had to make a guess on the antenna resistance, which I set between 25 and 30 ohms. A cross-check with the SWR bridge showed a 2:1 SWR bandwidth of 1810 to 1870 KHz with a reading of 1.5:1 to 1.7:1 from 1825 to 1850 - just fine for DX work..

On-the-air tests have been a bit sparse given the time of the year. I did manage to work a new country (Estonia) and a couple of Europeans without having to call constantly, so it sounds like a go. I ran an analysis using ELNEC to see what type of pattern I could expect. I found that the elevation pattern looks like a pile of bread dough when plotted. This is to be expected since the tower (modeled as a fat vertical wire in close proximity) and the antenna’s tilt toward it have an influence on the pattern. The antenna has a takeoff angle of 23 degrees above horizontal and backlobe takeoff angle of 31 degrees. This is close to what one would expect for a vertical.

The azimuth pattern shows the influence of the tower a little more clearly. I discovered that my “main” lobe is toward the Southwest - the direction of the tower from the antenna. I’m not to worried about this since the front- to-back ratio is only 1.5 dB. Running the same analysis without the tower present showed a difference in gain of 0.6 dB and no change in the antenna pattern. As the saying goes, however, “actual mileage may vary”. I have not tried to model the effect of the monobanders that are in close proximity to the antenna. I’m not sure how well ELNEC can model such interactions, but it is something I plan to check out.

At any rate, it looks like I finally have a decent antenna for 160 meters, I’m looking forward to the Fall and the start of the contest season. Speaking of contests, here are some to check out this month:

Hiram P. Maxim Birthday Celebration. 31 August to 8 September

This is the third year for this contest that is rapidly growing in popularity. The object is to work as many stations as possible that will be signing “/127” after their calls (e.g. W1AW/127) to commemorate the 127th birthday of Hiram. The exchange consists of RST and name for non-127 stations, and RST, appointment (for example, VE, SCM, VP, etc.), and name for the /127 stations. You can work the /127 stations on any band and any mode, including repeaters, although usual courtesy when using repeaters should be observed. For those who rack up the contacts, there are certificates available for working 25 stations with endorsements in increments of 25 up to 100 stations. The endorsements require log data accompanied by $3 to the HPM Celebration, c/o ARRL.

RSGB Field day IARU Region 1 (SSB). 7-8 September.

This is a 24-hour contest sponsored by the Radio Society of Great Britain, the British version of the ARRL. I believe the contest requirements are similar to the IARU HF contest back in July where the exchange is signal report and IARU zone (#15 for NH and MA).

CQ Worldwide RTTY Contest. 28-29 September.

CQ Magazine kicks off the contest season with the first of several 48-hour contests. The contest sports the usual categories of low power/high power single operator, multi-single operator, and multi-multi classes, with (assisted) or without (unassisted) packet. The contest exchange is signal report, state, and CQ zone (zone 5 in NH and MA); note the addition of a state in the usual CQ contest exchange of RST and zone. Last year, I worked the contest from NE1V’s QTH and had fun working a number of first-time DX stations. This year, I plan to operate from the home QTH. I’m hoping that conditions will be slightly better this year so that the bands will be open a little longer.
I’m also looking forward to trying out the new RTTY by WF1B version 5.2 program that I bought recently. Like the CT contest program, Ray keeps upgrading the program with fixes and support for new contests. I had planned on using it for the SARTG RTTY contest on the 17th, but travel commitments curtailed that idea. I’ll let you know how it works next month.


73 de K2TE

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