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I operated a contest yesterday that I’d only ever done before as as DX, The RSGB IOTA contest. In this contest, any station can work any other station, but if you work an island (as defined by the organizers [note that the link goes to a PDF file]) it is worth more points (15, instead of 3 for a non-island contact) and each island you work counts as a multiplier, increasing your score. The contest has some interesting rules regarding hours of operations (you can submit as a “12 hour” or “24 hour” contestant) and some categories that are different from many other contests. (e.g., “Island DXpedition”). I decided that I’d try to operate in the 12-hour, low-power assisted  mixed category as “world” station. That means that my operating time was 12 hours or less, I used 100 watts to transmit, I used the packet cluster to help locate stations, operated both phone and CW, and I was not located on a island.

Unlike many other contests which typically start either in the evening or mid-afternoon for me, this one started at 8AM local (Eastern Daylight Time), and, not being a “morning person”, I didn’t get on the air until around 11:30 AM, and was a little disappointed to find out that the band conditions didn’t seem to be as good as I’d hoped. I started off on 20m phone and made a handful of contacts in the first 20 minutes. I realized that if 15m was open, if I wanted to work anyone outside the US it would have to be early in the afternoon. I switched over to 15m and found … nothing. Well, almost nothing. I did manage to work two stations in about 10 minutes, one on phone and one on CW. Clearly 15m was not going to be a productive band.

I moved back to 20m and worked stations steadily, thought not terribly quickly using Search & Pounce to find stations. I worked a few dozen stations on phone, then another dozen or so on CW and moved back to phone. After another hour of S&P, I was lucky enough to find a clear frequency to call CQ to try to “run” stations. (During most contests, it’s pretty tough to find and keep a frequency, especially for a small station like mine.) I called CQ for a couple of minutes and got one reply from a station in Poland, then about a minute later got a reply from my friend David, K2DSL, who is located nearby. We chatted briefly, then I moved on to work other stations. All of a sudden, a number of stations all started calling me. It turned out that David had “spotted” me on the packet cluster. When that happens many stations will tune to the spot frequency to work whoever is there. For someone like me being spotted is terrific because it significantly increases the rate at which  I can work stations. Prior to being spotted, I’d operated for around 4 hours and had made around 100 contacts, for a rate of around 25/hr. One hour after being spotted I’d worked an additional 65 stations, almost tripling my rate. I finally gave up the frequency after about 90 minutes, making 75 QSOs during that time which comes to around 50/hr. (The final 20 minutes or so of that period was considerably slower). In any case I had a great time and it was a lot of fun being the person that was being called, rather than having to hunt.

After time out for dinner (we were out with friends), I got back on the air at around 11:30PM. The only band that was open at the time was 40m, and because of atmospheric noise due to all the thunderstorms in and around the east coast, the band was very noisy. It was very slow going making contacts, and I suspect that some of the ones that I made then will turn out to be incorrect, since I had a particularly difficult time getting the details of the contest exchange. (For this contest, you gave a serial number, starting at one, and, if located on an island, the island identifier). I gave up after about 90 minutes, with a total of 210 contacts in my log. I thought that it was a pretty decent effort for the seven hours that I operated. Here’s my score summary:

        Band  Mode  QSOs     Pts  Sec
           7  CW      10     138    9
           7  LSB     22     246   13
          14  CW      45     399   13
          14  USB    130     990   27
          21  CW       2      18    1
          21  USB      1       3    0
       Total  Both   210    1794   63

            Score : 113,022

The whims of Cycle 24 presents a challenge for my low power, low profile station. Likewise, the difference between a vertical antenna and a horizontal wire antenna, is most notable during the summer from my location. The difference is becoming evident in terms of logged contacts during an event between summer and winter.

Polarization?
My production slopes toward the negative or dwells at the bottom in the summer. Winter conditions are favorable for my vertical antenna system and its low take-off angle. Additionally, I recently read W1ZR’s article on Antenna Polarization — What Does it Mean and When is it Important?

I’m curious if my vertically polarized signal takes a beating during the summer? I had a dickens of a time during the IARU HF World Championship against horizontal antenna systems. I logged a stunning 7 contacts in 5 hours of operation on the high bands. Perhaps, my doublet is better at focusing radio frequency energy, during the summer when it is really critical given conditions?

Shackadelic Update.
I thought again about a QSL card and Fred, KI6QDH inspired my approach given time budget and resources. Likewise, neither Global QSL or Cheap QSL, are sponsoring my recommendation. However, I chose Global QSL as my bureau manager for DX contacts and Cheap QSL for their thrifty price per unit (10 cents per card) for 100 cards.

Why our stateside bureau(s) are not moving into the space of domestic QSLing is something to think about given today’s austerity. The cost of confirming a domestic contact would fall dramatically when factoring bulk mailings.

I would gladly trade a little more patience for the price of one pound bulk mail. Would staff at the bureau(s) be willing to help out in driving down cost?

TS850S.
I have a few payments left and the shack relaxation zone will sport a used Kenwood TS850S in the near future. My FT100 will move into a pelican case for portable operations especially for 6m during the summer.

73 from the shack relaxation zone.

I heard from my ‘boss’, Rob Mannion, G3XFD, the editor of Practical Wireless the sad news that well-known PW author, Gordon King, G4VFV died yesterday, 24th July. Gordon had been suffering from stomach cancer.

I’d known Gordon on the air ever since we got our Class A licences around the same time. Of course I knew his call as even then he was a prolific author! We had many a good chat, often when I was at my parents’ then house in Cornwall, which was a good distance to Gordon’s Brixham station on 80m.

I’m sorry that I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye to him. A full obituary will appear in Practical Wireless shortly.

I’ve been in Madrid for a few days, on business. I didn’t have any radios with me, though I did have the laptop and a decent internet connection. I had a couple of QSOs using the DV-Dongle on D-STAR – which of course is great fun if you’re stuck in a hotelroom. Not that I was stuck, as such… but anyway it was nice to work Mark, KJ4VO and a few others from time to time and just to listen to some of the reflectors.

Incidentally, I noticed someone the other day lament that there were a lot of reflectors on D-STAR but not so much activity. I’m not sure that’s entirely fair, but I’ve found that rather than operating ‘blind’, I tend to keep an eye on http://www.dstarusers.org and see who’s on and what repeaters / reflectors they’re on. That way, you can easily work out the best place to listen to catch up with activity or a particular person.

I also had Echolink on my PC and I was hoping to try and make some QSOs through the Swindon 70cms repeater, GB3TD with it. However the router configuration of the hotel did not permit the UDP ports required to pass. It wasn’t until later on that I realised that I could have remotely setup an Echolink proxy on my PC at home and used that. Find the Echolink proxy software on the Downloads section of http://www.echolink.org

Call me cynical, but I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like reading this story on the excellent Southgate ARC News site.

So, the producers want to invite amateur radio enthusiasts onto a doubledecker bus for some sort of dating show.

What could possibly go wrong in terms of publicity for amateur radio!

Wouldn’t. Touch. It. With. A. Bargepole.