Tiny Elephant's Contest CornerThe Latest Contest News -
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Tiny Elephant's Contest CornerThe Latest Contest News -
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Well here it is on the eve of December and the contest season is in full swing. I sure want to thank “Maestro Mike”, NE1V, for orchestrating last month’s column while I was out of town. It looks like Mike did such a good job maybe I should travel the first of the month more often, hi.
During the past month or so, I’ve had the enviable pleasure of operating a brand-new Yaesu FT-1000MP rig. Like a number of rigs I’ve used in the past, this one was graciously loaned to me run it through its paces in contests. It kinda seems like a dream come true to have a superb rig to go with my antenna farm. It reminds of the old baseball dilemma: all glove and no hit. I got the rig around mid October about 2 weeks ahead of the CQ Worldwide Sideband contest. It sure was nice to have time to get used to the look and feel of a new rig with more than 24 hours before the contest period. If there is something vaguely familiar about the Tiny Elephant having a new rig just before a major contest, there should be: K1HI and I used a brand-new ICOM 775 for the same contest last year.
The “MP” in the rig’s designation is in honor of JA1MP, the late founder of Yaesu Musen. One could easily mistake the suffix to mean “Mostly Programmable” since it seems every function on the rig has a software-selectable feature, with the exception of the power on/off button. For those of you familiar with rigs like the ICOM 765, Yaesu FT-1000D, Kenwood TS- 940, and even higher, dozen of pushbuttons and knobs and a foot-long display are common place. I found the rig a BIG step up from the ICOM 735 workhorse I’ve used for 11 years now. The large display has 8 bar graphs of various functions, two large digital readouts to 0.01 Hertz for the two VFOs, a separate digital indicator for the clarifier offsets, still another readout for the memory channels (somewhere around 100 memories are selectable in groups), and 23 (yes, 23!) illuminating “hamspeak” words in the background - WHEW!! These words let you know what antenna connector you’ve selected, which VFO is being used, operating mode, tuner activation, memory tuning, split operation, and the temperature of the coffee. I had the impression I was looking at the cockpit of a 767 jet.
Once I got past the pushbuttons and the display, I focused on the “analog” stuff known as knobs and switches. The FT- 1000MP has a number of the features of the aforementioned rigs. On the left side of the main tuning knob are switches for 3 levels of AGC and 4 levels of attenuation; ganged AF gain knobs for each VFO, ganged knobs for the mic gain and processor gain, a monitor level adjustment, manual and VOX transmit buttons, and the RF power out knob. The centerpiece of the left side is a framed set of buttons labeled “Bandwidth”. This “window” shows the filters activated for the 8.215 MHz 2nd IF and the 455 KHz 3rd IF stages. The filters available in EACH stage include 6 KHz, 2.4 KHz, 2.0 KHz, 500 Hz, and 250 Hz; all filters selected using the adjacent buttons.
By now I was suffering sensory overload but I managed to train my eyes on the right side of the rig. Hear, the second VFO tuning knob dominates. To the right of it are controls for the IF Shift and IF width ganged knobs, Notch and Noise Blanker ganged knobs, the Clarifier knob, and controls for keyer activation (full break-in available), pitch, and speed.
The last set of ganged knobs are the unique feature of the FT-1000MP. Below the letters “EDSP” is one of the “hyphen buttons” that illuminate with a red or green LED when pushed. The EDSP stands for Electronic Digital Signal Processor. For those of you working in the field, this is not true DSP at the IF level but the more familiar audio DSP. Before turning your nose up in disdain, however, read on. The outer knob selects 1 of 4 possible algorithms for processing interfering signals. The inner knob enable 4 different filter contours. The first one is the normal bandpass type of filter which features 3 programmable levels for CW (60, 120, and 240 Hz) and automatic high-cut or low-cut filter selection for the sideband mode selected. The other 3 choices of filters are high-cut, mid-cut, and low-cut that emphasize low, mid, and high frequencies, respectively.
I haven’t mentioned the keypad yet located between the two VFO tuning knobs - and I do not intend to do so. It’s time to get on with operating. The best test of a new rig is how good is the receiver. For an avid CW DXer, that means only one thing: TOP BAND. The 160 meter band is legendary with its headache-inducing noise levels and puny-weak signals from “ordinary” European DX. I was very pleased to find the EDSP lives up to its billing as the bandpass contour filter closed the door on a lot of the noise and adjacent strong signals. I got a chuckle out of the number of stations stepping on the DX station because they couldn’t hear him while I had no trouble hearing the guy. The dynamic range of the receiver is also very good. On several occasions, I observed a DX station working split just 1 KHz up. Local stations that were 30 over didn’t cause any noticeable desensing of the S5 DX station.
The CQ Worldwide SSB contest provided the battleground for REAL interference testing. Hearing signals that are +/- 5 KHz wide is not uncommon during this contest. To top it off, my hearing is far from good. The contest gave me a great appreciation of the effectiveness of IF shift tuning and passband width control. It was a pleasure to just slide away from that 20 over IK3 station while copying the S7 signal from 9K2. The Notch filter did a number on the “carrier crows” that tuned up on rare stations. I also used the mid-cut contour filter a lot as it emphasizes the voice frequencies and further attenuates the shrill, off -frequency splatter.
Alas, all that glitters is not gold. There were two annoying things I found with the rig, only one of which was the rig’s fault. The FT-1000MP contains a row of small knobs across the bottom 3/4” of the front panel. The whole row is recessed making it difficult to see the headings for the knobs and to easily adjust them. It was not a problem for me since I have the rig about 8” off the desk on a shelf. However, anyone using it sitting on the desk would have to hunker down and squint to find the control. I think these knobs could have been located just below the display and everything else shoved down; all the other knobs and labeling are much larger.
The other complaint arises from using the CT contest logging program. The version of CT I used supports the FT-1000MP but the CAT light on the rig flashes continuously. A folded business card strategically placed solved the problem. A more serious problem occurs when sending out a DX spot on packet using the CT function keys. I noticed several of my announcements were posted 30 to 50 KHz off the frequency I was reading. I got concerned about a number of amateurs questioning my parentage until I realized that CT reads the VFO setting; I had been sending the spots out while in the MEMORY setting!
Well, I’m looking forward to using the new rig in the CQ Worldwide CW contest in a couple of weeks. I also hope to try it out for these contests coming up in December:
73, de K2TE