Tiny Elephant's Contest Corner

The Latest Contest News -
A NARC Bulletin Exclusive

A monthly column by Ed Deichler, K2TE

Are You Ready?

Time to get serious about contesting after the Summer months. The muscles have finally unwrapped after my climbing marathon during Field Day. The Summer has been kind enough to give us good weekends so that I could work on antenna projects again. I finally got around to tuning my ewe receiving antenna for 160 meters. I found that I had to use my 735 to help me adjust the terminating resistance for the antenna because the noise bridge was not accurate enough below 2 MHz. A check on the FT-1000MP indicated that the antenna seemed loud enough with the preamp on; now if only I can find some DX to try it out and see how well it rejects stateside stations.

I also bought the EZNEC antenna modeling program produced by Roy, W7EL. EZNEC, the big brother to Roy’s ELNEC, is based on NEC-2, a very powerful modeling program. EZNEC has much of the look and feel of EZNEC so it was easy to get off and running with it. One distinctive feature of the program is a 3-dimensional plot of your antenna pattern superimposed on the 3D illustration of your antenna. Using the 3D plot allows me to see the impact of nearby structures (such as my tower) on the antenna pattern. Now that I have the EZNEC program, I can check out all kinds of variations on existing antennas. I can also verify proposed designs that I other hams have documented and see how they could work with my setup. I’m looking forward to using the program to help me tweak a 2- element 80-meter quad antenna featured in the ARRL Antenna Compendium, Vol. 5.

The XYL and I managed to take a week off this Summer and visit my folks in Ohio over the 4th of July. If any of you have ever driven to the Midwest, it is a long day’s drive to get there. I grew up near Youngstown just across the Ohio/PA state line but it was still over 600 miles. As we neared my hometown, I noticed several towers right next to Interstate 80 with beams everywhere. I remembered the location from the next exit and was surprised that it was less than 10 miles from my old home. A few days later, I finally got the chance to break away and head east to find the antenna farm. It didn’t take long to find the place, especially since it was nestled next to the interstate. I drove very slowly around the perimeter roads, looking more at the antennas than where I was going. The property was mostly a level, grassy meadow with some large trees near a large house toward one end of the land, much like an old farm. Based on the roads I drove to reach the place, I knew it was on top of a hill (surprise, surprise).

As I got near the house, I noticed an older gentleman mowing the vast lawn on a huge mowing tractor. I hailed him down to introduce myself and ask about his QTH. He was happy to have someone give him a break from mowing. He was the father of Tim Duffy, K3LR, the owner of this magnificent “Ham Heaven”. Tim was not home but his dad was happy to tell me about the place. Tim has five towers scattered over 11 acres. Three of them were around 100 feet tall, a fourth was 200 feet tall, and the fifth was actually a quarter wave vertical for 160 meters. The tallest tower didn’t seem like it was 200 feet tall; maybe it was the full-size 3-element 40-meter beam about 2/3 the way up that made it look small. The tower had a familiar look about it, much like the NARC tower 3 from Field Day only with MORE antennas on it. There was also a 4- square array of 80-meter verticals. Along the perimeter road were wooden poles that looked like the old telegraph poles except they were too short. It dawned on me that they were supports for beverage receiving antennas. In short, Tim has assembled a super contest station for Western PA that looks very much like our Field Day setup. If you happen to work K3LR during Sweepstakes or one of the DX contests, tell him you heard about his antenna farm. (Tim, if you run across this article during a web- surf, drop us a note.)

Well, it’s time to stop pining about a superstation and get back to working on things for this coming contest season. As we head into September, propagation picks up and DX starts coming through for longer periods of the day. Here are some contests that cover the high bands and all modes to give a test of how things are shaping up:

CORONA 10M Digital Contest 7 Sept.

This contest, sponsored by the DARC, is a sprint-type event geared to digital modes. Open to RTTY, AMTOR, PACTOR, and CLOVER, the contest starts at 1100Z and runs until 1700Z which covers the expected window when 10 meters would open. Single operator operation and SWL are the only categories. Exchange is RST and serial QSO number. Multipliers: DXCC countries in Europe and each call district in Japan, Canada, and the US. Each QSO counts as one point so that the final score is the sum of QSO points times sum of multipliers.

WAE DX Contest, 13-14 September.

The SSB version of the Worked All Europe contest is a 48-hour event taking place on 80 through 10 meters with a minimum required time of 15 minutes on a band. Operating categories are single op/all bands, or multiop/single transmitter. A second transmitter may be used to work multipliers on other bands. Single op stations are limited to 36 hours of operation. Exchange: RST plus serial QSO number. Multipliers for us are the number of different European DX stations worked on each band.

This contest features QTC traffic handling for earning extra points. The QTC is sent by non-European stations only to European stations and lists one or more QSOs with other European stations. The QTC list must contain the time, call, and QSO number received from the station. You can send up to 10 QTCs to a station. The only restrictions on the QTCs are reporting a QSO only once and not reporting it back to the original station. Each station reported in the QTC is worth one point. Contest logs go to WAEDC Contest Committee, POB 1126, D-74370 Sersheim, Germany.

Air Force 50th Anniversary QSO Party, 20-21 September.

This is a special, 48-hour contest to celebrate 50 years of the US Air Force. The contest covers all bands and all modes so that a station can be worked more than once per band as long as a different mode is used. Stations with no Air Force affiliation identify as “Air Force One” on SSB or “/AF1” on CW or digital modes at the end of their calls. If a station licensee has been in the Air Force, that person’s entry date is subtracted from 1997 and used in the suffix. For example, an operator who enlisted in 1966 would say “Air Force 31” on SSB; another who served in 1951 would say “Air Force 46”. The number received is the point value for the contact, so that original Air Force members from 1947 are worth 50 points. Logs go to K5HOG by 15 October 1997. Make sure point totals are tallied on each page of your log sheets.

CQ Worldwide RTTY DX Contest, 27-28 September.

The biggest RTTY contest of the year anchors the last weekend in September and covers 48 hours. Like other CQ Magazine contests, there are a variety of categories to choose from for operating: High power or low power (<150 watts) for single op/all-bands and multiop/single transmitter; Single op/single band; Single op/assisted (packet spotting network); and Multiop/multi-transmitter. Operation takes place on 80 through 10 meters. Eligible stations are all 48 continental states, 13 VE provinces, and all DXCC countries. The exchange for stateside is an RST, State, and CQ zone number (5 for us), while DX stations send an RST and CQ zone. Each state/province and DXCC country counts as a multiplier on each band, and each CQ zone worked on each band counts as a multiplier (maximum of 40 CQ zones). Logs should go to KT1N by 1 December 1997.

The Summer is cooling down and the contest season is beginning to heat up; are you ready?

73 DE K2TE

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