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Map of IARU contacts

This weekend, I took part in the IARU contest and entered the CW category. The solar conditions made the contest a challenge with G1 and G2 conditions along with a bouncing ball Bz. This made QSB an issue, along with very few DX contacts in the log. I pulled the plug for a while on Saturday, when on 20m, my signal was almost being treated as  ground wave from the propagation gods. I did get on early Sunday morning Conditions on 40m were not too bad. I stayed with it until the end of the contest, which was 9 am local time on Sunday. On Sunday, I was able to make it to ZW5B and ZL6HQ on 40m, who both were booming in. 

Final score

Overall The conditions made this contest a part-time effort, as I am not going to sit in the chair and endlessly call CQ contest. I hope that soon the Genvyshev gap (if that is what we are having) comes to an end soon. I am missing the great conditions we were having. What is the Genvyshev, you ask? Well, it is explained very well by fellow blogger Bas PE4BAS here

 The other day, I battled the heat and installed more radials for my Hustler 4BTV. I have an extra 14-gauge wire left over from when I first installed the radials, and for some time, I was planning to install the remainder, but never got around to it. Well, it is now done, and I am about 15 radials richer, bringing the total to close to 40. After the install, I was wondering if my radiation pattern has changed at all? I connected my WSPR transmitter over the period of 24 hours. For some reason, when I set it up, it was only sending signals out on 20 and 40m. I found out I neglected to save the settings, and the 20m and 40m setup was from the last time I used it. So I only have at this time data for those two bands. 

Below are the patterns before the radial additions. 

After the radials upgrade  

Have a look at the above picture and see if you can see an issue? I operate SO2V in contests now, and this shot was taken during the RAC Canada Day contest on July 1. Operating SO2V is new to me, and I am still getting used to things. If you are familiar with the Icom 7610, you may see the issue in the picture. 
Now that you have looked at the picture, let me tell you what I did.....Since I am new to SO2V, I have been trying to get used to VFO A sound in my left ear and VFO B in my right ear. At this time, I had been listening and operating on 15m but just had 20m up on the screen with no audio. Things started to pick up on 20m and drop off on 15m. I then pressed a key on my keyboard (Pause key), and this put me back on 20m and set up N1MM+ to log contacts on 20m. 

The odd thing was I was calling CQ contest on 20m for about 5 minutes and no answers. I could hear a noise floor, but I was not getting any replies to my CQ. Then it clicked, I looked at the radio and forgot to take VFO A off mute! The orange light you see in the picture on the main VFO AF/RF control means the audio is muted for the main VFO. I was hearing VFO B in my right ear but I did not click into that. Who knows how many ops called me, but I just could not hear them as the audio was muted. Live and learn, I guess.  

My Hustler 4BTV has now been up for 5 years and is serving me very well, I might add. I felt it was time to take it down and clean it. I know, as Murphy would have it timed that something went wrong and it would be the middle of winter on a very cold and windy day. The items I used were a wire brush to get inside the tubing to clean, 99% alcohol for cleaning and a roll of 3M 33+ tape. This tape has a good temperature range. Finally, a Scotch Brite pad....which I never ended up using. I had read online that it was great for cleaning the aluminum tubing....found out not so much. It has been retired to the kitchen for pots and pans. 

Top of spider arm

Bottom of spider arm

Example of clean trap

Damaged spider arm

Inside tubing

Base section before cleaning

 This weekend was the running of the ARRL Field Day event. For some they get out into the elements and set up an emergency-type station. Both individuals and clubs take part all over Canada and the U.S. There is a category for home stations on mains power....that was my preferred setup. This year the solar conditions were a bit of a challenge which involved considerable fading. I find that during ARRL Field Day when calling CQ FD I had to really listen for stations. There were many QRP stations, those using minimal antenna setup and then the good old poor solar conditions. I found many stations coming back to me just at the noise floor. I entered CW only at 100 watts from my home station and to the noise floor stations who were running who knows what I could be booming into them. I wanted to make every effort to make the contact. It was a good workout of skill. Below is the final score I did pull the plug a bit early as I found myself just calling CQ FD without any responses. 

My 10m sweep

My Hustler 4BTV has now been up to 5 years and I was thinking it was due time to take it down and give it a good cleaning. Before I do that I wanted to take a baseline SWR of each band and see if the SWR changes after the cleaning. I used my NanoVNA to take the SWR readings and in my opinion, my 15m readings looked a bit odd. I have posted a sweep of 10m and then 15m and you can see the large spikes in the 15m readings. I am not sure why this is and I am searching for some input. 

15m sweep

what is your shack monitor real estate? For many of us, our hobbies and computers are intertwined, there are many programs out there that can enrich our radio experience. As we indulge in programs I find the monitor real estate becomes a bit crowed. Sure you can put things in the taskbar until needed again and I did this but then the taskbar became a bit crowded. 

As I became more involved in contesting I found I needed more programs running as well needed to see them up close and personal on not taskbar jumping. Also many modern transceivers today have a monitor-out option, which is nice and allows a larger view of the waterfall. But that is another monitor that is needed just for this option. Now a basic setup is two monitors. In my case, I have one monitor for the Icom 7610, 2 monitors for my PC and one monitor for Ham Clock running on a Pi 3. Some may think that two monitors for your PC is a bit excessive and there are some very large monitors one can easily fit everything into. I find these monitors to be pricey and I found 2 Samsung 24-inch monitors for 1/2 the price of a very large PC monitor. 

The part of the hobby I really enjoy is contesting and 2 monitors allow me to comfortably have Win4icom radio control program running, N1MM+ logger, VFO A and B waterfalls working ( as I operate SO2V) and finally an open window of Firefox as well. My second monitor looks after N1MM+ VFO B logging window and VFO B waterfall along with the open Firefox window. This monitor is on my right, I also have my external VFO B RC-28 knob on my right as well. This way everything to do with VFO B is on my right. Therefore when I look to the right it's all about VFOB.  I use Firefox to monitor live contest scoring, reverse beacon network and during slow times look up contesters I worked on QRZ.COM to learn about them. The final monitor looks after Ham Clock and I mainly use that for the solar conditions as well as which bands are open for me as Ham Clock has VOACAP on it.. For example, if I am taking part in a German, North American or Spain contest I setup the a VOACAP in the country or continent I am working and I get informed about the open and closed bands between them and my location. Elwood does a great job at updating this program and it is well worth adding it to your station's software. 

Finally, all my monitors are on swivel arms so they can be adjusted to my liking. Because I spend a lot of time in front of the screens I like to have the most commonly used ones at eye level and my left and right monitors set up so that my head does not have to move just my eyes. For me the less neck movement the better over the long-term contesting adventures. The Ham clock monitor is the only one up high and I only check that screen now and then. 
So what does your monitor real estate look like?