ARRL 160-Meter Contest
Call: K5NA
Operator(s): K5NA
Station: K5NA
Class: Single Op HP
QTH: STX
Operating Time (hrs): 34
Summary:
Total: QSOs = 1374 Sections = 80 Countries = 35 Total Score = 347,070
Club: Central Texas DX and Contest Club
Comments:
The ARRL 160M Contest has always been my favorite contest and it is a tradition
for me to enter as a single-op. Twenty years ago, I won this contest several
times. But now my goal is to do the best I can and to see if I can finish in the
top ten. I might have a chance to do that this year, but there are a lot of fine
operators at excellent stations ahead of me.
My biggest surprise this year was working a SWEEP. I got all 80 sections and
this is the first time I have ever done that. I wonder if anyone had ever done
it before in the ARRL 160M Contest? Could this be a first?
I went into Saturday night needing four sections, NL, VI, AK, and NT. I found
KV4FZ in the DX window and he was an easy QSO. Later I found VO1AU in the DX
window and worked him too. VO1HP later answered my CQ as well.
But then I went several hours without a sign of a KL7 or a NT station. I was
convinced that I would not be able to get those two. But at 0800Z I struggled
with a weak caller and finally copied KL7J for the QSO. Now I needed only one
more.
I wasn't disappointed because at 0945Z, VY1JA called me for the sweep. J's
signal was quite good and he must have found me at a peak for us. It was an easy
quick QSO. Thanks J! It was a thrill to work you again on 160M and to get a
sweep at the same time.
I have two side-by-side FT1000MP MkVs here. The usual 160M rig when DXing is the
right-hand rig but it had been giving me some problems with rx antenna
switching. The internal relay would hang occasionally causing me to tap the
footswitch frantically until receive signals returned. So I decided to use the
left-hand radio and use the right-hand one to tune as a second receiver. Having
a second receiver is much, much better than using the sub-vfo in the MkV.
Especially on a crowded 160M band in a contest.
I took the trouble to wire both radios so that the beverage input of both was
grounded when I would transmit on the left-hand radio. Even using the beverages
exclusively, I worry about blowing out the front end. Nothing blew out, so it
was probably a good thing to do.
Using the headphone switching with Writelog and the W5XD SO2R keyer box, I could
listen to the left radio exclusively or switch to having a radio in each ear. I
could not listen to just the right radio exclusively.
After starting the contest I listened to both radio split into both ears and
that worked pretty good for louder signals. But the split radios were a major
distraction. When listening split, it seemed that no signals were focused in my
brain. It was as if right-hand signals were way off to my right side and the
left-hand signals were way off to the left. But with weaker signals, it was very
difficult focus on the signal and to copy it. It these situation, I would just
switch one radio (the left radio) into both ears, focus on copying the weak
signal, and (usually) make the QSO.
As I got into the European band opening on Friday, I found that I was struggling
to copy the signals after switching to one radio. I would hear a caller on the
right radio in my right ear, but after switching both sides of the headphones to
the left radio I could not hear the signal as well as before. After the end of
the European and JA openings on Friday night I finally realized that there was a
difference between the two radios.
The left radio had a constant noise level on the receive antenna input that was
two or three S-units louder than the right radio. When using the beverages on
both radios the noise floor on the right radio was much further down than the
left radio. That extra two or three s-units of noise in the left radio was a
killer when trying to pull out a weak signal.
The headphone selection switching only allowed for using the main radio only or
split operation in each ear. I couldn't easily listen to the 2nd radio alone
without a lot of extra software switching effort during each QSO. And I didn't
want to change and my the right radio the main radio because of the intermittant
beverage receive relay.
My problem answer for Saturday night was to get another set of headphones and
plug them into the 2nd radio. For all of Saturday night I was picking up and
changing headphones. When using the second headphones on the right radio I had
gone back to the old days of having separate transmitter and a receiver. That's
what it was like.
During the Sunday morning JA run I thought I heard JT1CO calling me once. But
was unsure enough that I just sent a "?" and had another blast from the weak JA
pileup. I should have gone with my instincts and called him but I didn't. As a
result, I may have been the only W5 not to have worked him this weekend. I did
have several other good multipliers from the west call me, like VK6, ZL, and
HL3.
Now that the contest is over I need to trouble-shoot the left radio and find out
where the extra noise on the beverage receive antenna selection is coming from.
It is interesting that the actual received signal levels are the same on both
radios, but the left one hears more background noise on the beverages. On the
transmit antenna they both seem to hear the same, but the noise level on the
transmit antenna is always up around S7 to S9 and that may hid any internal
noise. I switched the beverage input receive cables between the beverage box
outputs and the problem seems to be internal in the radio. But I haven't done
extensive testing yet.
Anyway, I still managed my best score ever from this Texas location and enjoyed
the contest immensly. Maybe next time I will be able to hear better.
73, Richard - K5NA
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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