Helvetia Contest, 23.-24. April 2005
HB9CZF - SOAB CW
I took Friday off and since weather forecast was good we spent most of the day with antenna tests. The main antennas were a 3el SteppIR for 10/15/20m and a 41m LW for 40/80m.
Mainly for 160m a 2x 41.15m doublet was attached to the main tower (13.5m high). One leg towards the hiking sign and the other was strung against an apple tree; roughly 90 degrees angle in between. The feeder consisted of 25m CQ553 wire attached to my newly purchased BT15000A symmetrical tuner. Low SWR could be achieved on all bands from 160m up to 10m. On the higher bands the C was always at the reading "0".
| Palstar BT15000A Symmetrical Antennatuner | ||||
| QRG | C | L | ||
| 1.83 MHz | 35 | 0 | Low Pass | High C |
| 3.53 MHz | 37 | 115 | Low Pass | High C |
| 7.03 MHz | 28 | 177 | High Pass | High C |
| 14.03 MHz | 10.5 | 206 | Low Pass | High C |
| 14.03 MHz | 88 | 211 | Low Pass | Low C |
| 21.03 MHz | 0 | 211 | Low Pass | Low C |
| 28.03 MHz | 0 | 223 | High Pass | Low C |
Remarks:
L = 0 means max L of approx.2x 22uH
C = 0 means min C; C = 100 means max C of approx. 960pF (High C) or 65pF (Low C).
High Pass / Low Pass switches the C to the other side of both L.
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This picture shows the BT1500A just outside of the window with a rainshield on top. One hour after this picture was taken two rabbits paid a visit but when I tried to catch a photograph they hopped away :-( |
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My second antenna for 10, 15 and 20m was a quad with 20m circumference. The fibre mast and loop can be purchased from DK9SQ. Instead of feeding the antenna vertically I modified the setup and attached at the lower corner 10.5m CQ553 feeder. This results in a reasonable SWR on the three bands and nice pattern with low angle take off. Not visible on the picture is the ridge towards East and the sloping terrain towards North America which gave the antenna additional gain. Sunday morning when I was dual CQ-ing on 15m (Omni VI+, 500W, 3el SteppIR) and 20m (K2/100, Loop) this antenna easily worked ZL, JA and K. This loop outperformed the 2x 41.15m doublet on the higher bands but not the 3el SteppIR :-) |
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This picture shows the details how I fed the 20m loop. A SGC231 is directly attached to the feeder. One wire to the "hot" end and one wire to the chassis. Several ferrit beads suppress any current on the outside of the koax. |
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In the warm shack I was using following setup. From left to right: TL-922 @ 500W, matchbox used as an antenna switch between the 3el SteppIR and 41m LW; all connected to the Ten-Tec Omni VI+. Further to the right one can see a K2/100 which was used as second TRX and the 2x 41.15m doublet fed through the BT1500A and the 20m loop fed through the SGC321 antenna tuner were the antennas of choice. The blue boxes build the W3NQN filter setup for my SO2R. PC was running Writelog with 10.53E (never upgrade to the latest version before a contest). |
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This "mess" shows the six W3NQN filters, one for each band. |
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and the finally a rare photo of the OP; half an hour before the end - just hitting 1000 QSO. |
A few comments about the contest:
- 10m was closed but 20 HB were worked at the start of the
contest.
- 15m was open towards JA but activity was low. Everybody in SP DX RTTY ?
- 20 and 40m were the workhorses.
- Almost no conds on 40 and 80m towards K.
- Sunday morning around 8 UTC I heard something hammering against the wall. Was it an
angry neighbour? No there are only cows around. Was it the TL-922, the heating system, ...
? No. It sounded like morse signal but very much QLF. A quick look outside the hut
revealed the culprit: A woodpecker was working on our birdshouse. Until next year you have
to improve your CW! It was awful.
- Saturday I discovered the nicest Writelog SO2R feature: Dual-CQ. Omni VI+ on 20m and K2
on 80m alternate with CQ. This brought many 3-point-QSO with K while I had to spend my
time on the low bands. The feature was also very usefull towards the end of the contest
when all bands were worked out. CQ on 15m interleaved with 20m. I even managed to work two
QSO at the same time - one QSO on each TRX - a few time. Mind you the long exchange @ 26
WPM.
- Don't try "high-speed" CW (e.g. 30 WPM and above) in order to controll the
pile-up. Most of the stations called in a second time when I was back to 26 WPM :-(
- This year I didn't move multipliers over the bands. Most of them came automatically and
working DX is more fruitfull.
Claimed Score
Band QSOs QSOPts Cantons DXCC ------------------------------ 10: 20 20 12 1 15: 148 278 17 30 20: 311 531 19 39 40: 263 293 14 39 80: 188 200 20 31 160: 83 85 20 19 ------------------------------ all: 1013 1407 102 159 score: 1407 x (102 + 159) ---> 367'227
Continent List
160m 80m 40m 20m 15m 10m Total %
EU 82 182 248 201 83 20 816 80.6
AS 1 6 14 43 60 0 124 12.2
NA 0 0 1 61 0 0 62 6.1
SA 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0.1
OC 0 0 0 5 5 0 10 1.0
Rate Sheet
CW/Mul by hour and band
Hour 160m 80m 40m 20m 15m 10m Total Cumm OffTime
D1-1300Z - - - 26/13 13/12 17/12 56/37 56/37 D1-1400Z - - - 81/17 6/4 - 87/21 143/58 D1-1500Z - - 4/5 44/10 6/3 1/1 55/19 198/77 D1-1600Z --+-- --+-- 51/22 33/3 --+-- --+-- 84/25 282/102 D1-1700Z - - 49/11 16/3 - - 65/14 347/116 D1-1800Z - - 93/9 2/2 - - 95/11 442/127 D1-1900Z - 39/25 32/2 2/0 - - 73/27 515/154 D1-2000Z 23/17 51/8 - - - - 74/25 589/179 D1-2100Z 33/15 20/9 - - - - 53/24 642/203 D1-2200Z 15/6 14/3 - 16/0 - - 45/9 687/212 D1-2300Z 12/1 30/4 - - - - 42/5 729/217 2 D2-0000Z --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- 0/0 729/217 60 D2-0100Z - - - - - - 0/0 729/217 60 D2-0200Z - - - - - - 0/0 729/217 60 D2-0300Z - - - - - - 0/0 729/217 60 D2-0400Z - - - - - - 0/0 729/217 60 D2-0500Z - 25/1 29/1 - - - 54/2 783/219 2 D2-0600Z - 9/1 1/0 32/2 - - 42/3 825/222 D2-0700Z - - 1/1 5/1 24/8 - 30/10 855/232 D2-0800Z --+-- --+-- --+-- 13/1 32/7 --+-- 45/8 900/240 D2-0900Z - - 2/2 9/1 27/3 1/0 39/6 939/246 D2-1000Z - - 1/0 15/2 25/8 1/0 42/10 981/256 D2-1100Z - - - 17/3 15/2 - 32/5 1013/261
Total: 83/39 188/51 263/53 311/58 148/47 20/13
Worked Cantons
Nothing heard from AI, NW and OW
(they were only on SSB).
QSOs MADE IN EACH COUNTRY
160m 80m 40m 20m 15m 10m Total
4J 2 1 3
4X 1 3 4 8
9A 1 2 2 5
9V 1 1
BV 1 1
BY 1 1
DL 16 36 51 11 7 121
DU 1 1
EA 2 3 1 6
EI 1 1 1 3
ER 1 1 1 1 4
EU 5 5 1 11
EX 1 1 2
F 3 5 8 2 1 19
G 3 9 13 1 26
GI 1 1
GM 1 1
GW 1 1
HA 5 7 4 1 17
HB 31 38 25 43 42 20 199
HL 1 3 4
I 2 8 10 1 21
JA 5 10 27 42
K 1 59 60
LU 1 1
LY 2 4 4 6 3 19
LZ 1 8 14 1 24
OE 1 1
OH 2 2 6 5 5 20
OK 2 15 14 2 2 35
OM 3 7 11 1 22
ON 2 1 2 5
OZ 1 2 1 4
PA 4 4 7 1 16
S5 1 2 7 10
SM 2 2 3 6 2 15
SP 2 3 4 4 13
SV 1 2 3 6
SV9 1 1
T9 1 1
UA 3 12 18 42 7 82
UA9 1 4 6 21 13 45
UN 1 2 6 5 14
UR 4 11 25 5 45
VE 2 2
VK 2 3 5
VR 1 1
VU 2 2
YB 1 1
YL 1 3 4 5 4 17
YO 2 5 5 9 1 22
YU 7 8 5 20
Z3 1 1 1 3
ZL 2 1 3
More Statistics needed ?
Gross QSO's=1052 Dupes=39 Net QSO's=1013
Unique callsigns worked = 632
The best 60 minute rate was 100/hour from 1740 to 1839 The best 30 minute rate was 118/hour from 1347 to 1416 The best 10 minute rate was 132/hour from 1401 to 1410
The best 1 minute rates were: 3 QSO's/minute 21 times. 2 QSO's/minute 244 times. 1 QSO's/minute 462 times.
There were 195 bandchanges and 84 probable 2nd radio QSO's.
Number of letters in callsigns Letters # worked ----------------- 4 83 5 492 6 416 7 10 8 8 9 2 10 2
Multi-band QSO's ---------------- 1 bands 409 2 bands 128 3 bands 53 4 bands 26 5 bands 11 6 bands 5
The following stations were worked on 6 bands:
HB9AZZ HB9BMY HB9HC HB9DDO HB9AGO
----- S i n g l e B a n d Q S O ' s ----- Band 160 80 40 20 15 10 ---------------------------------------------- QSOs 22 58 118 153 54 4