ARRL June VHF Contest - 2020
Call: K2DRH
Operator(s): K2DRH
Station: K2DRH
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: EN41vr IL
Operating Time (hrs):
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
6: 698 169
2: 73 36
222: 14 10
432: 24 12
903: 3 3
1.2: 3 2
2.3:
3.4:
5.7:
10G:
24G:
-------------------
Total: 815 232 Total Score = 200,680
Club: Society of Midwest Contesters
Comments:
Woke around 8 AM up to find my 28VDC power supply dead. It was a nuclear grade
conventional one I pulled out for a mod at my old work QTH about 15 years ago
after many years of continuous duty. Worked fine during the Spring Microwave
Sprint. It powers all the tower relays for the preamps above 432. It’s a
rack mount dual unit and one side was dead, the one I use for the 2304 50W Class
A amp that draws quite a bit of current. I crawled under the desk with a wrench
and switched it to the other side with the relays, but when I keyed down the fan
stopped and a half second later it smoked. It was hanging in for the small
current the relays pull, but as soon as it was challenged it gave up the ghost.
I managed to jack in another spare from the same pull but it was from a
different sub vendor than the 1st one and had a different internal configuration
so modifying it to my use took some time, more time than I really had. Ten
minutes to contest time I was out of the shower and ready for the bell with a
bowl of reheated left over gumbo for breakfast.
All was great and 6M had a weak opening to the west with W9RM DM58 first in the
log. I worked legacy mode SSB for an hour. That died off and I went to start
FT8. No TX. Stayed up the night before until 2 AM making sure all the computer
control and audio flow was flawless. Nothing had changed, just needed to reboot
everything including the radio and it all worked just fine again. No clue.
Little did I know this was just the first of many computer related problems.
So when the main VHF/UHF tower quit rotating I was ready to throw in the towel
out of disgust. Despite spending a few hours on the tower cleaning the gearbox
grease out of the DC motor and having it working perfectly two days before, it
hung up again about 2 hours into the contest. Back up the tower to check it out
and it looked like I’d never cleaned it. The gearbox shaft seals must be
totally shot. I suspect I’ve just plain wore the motor and gearbox out after
20 years of madly rotating to catch the next band run and need to replace both.
Luckily I have spares of both, but that’s gonna take more than a few hours to
accomplish. It started working for a bit but it soon quit again. The other
tower has the 6M 8x7 array and a small 9el 2M at 25 feet so I could still
operate, but greatly compromised on 2M and up. I need to put some stacked loops
for 222 and 432 on the top!
Computer number one is an I7 multicore that has 2 screens and I use it for my
day to day monitoring of ON4KST and two instances of FT8 on 50313 and 323. I
reconfigured it to run MSK144 on 6M in one and 2M MSK144 or FT8 on the other as
well as my main N1MM logger for the bottom 4 bands that have (almost) fully
automated bandswitching now. N1MM kept sending to me to where it felt like on
each band rather than where I was the time before when I used the band change
buttons and for some reason would not do the usual SO2R keystroke change to go
from one (virtual) radio to the other on both RX and TX so that was a hassle.
Wound up typing in the frequency in N1MM on a band QSY change, but here were few
of those since I couldn’t turn the antennas. I read later that K9CT said N1MM
bandswitching for VHF was broke and I should have loaded a beta version to make
it work.
The second computer is an I5 laptop with a second monitor that runs the Flex
6700 itself with 3 panadapters and multiple slices. It runs another copy of
N1MM that is set for manually logging all the microwave transverter bands since
the 2M IF radio for those is an old Yaesu FT-726R that is definitely not CAT and
a single copy of N1MM doesn’t do more than 2 radios anyway. I’m still in
process of setting up a second Flex 6700 that I normally use for HF for that
task. While I used to run the bottom 4 off one Kenwood TS-850 for the IF, now
one Flex panadapter monitors and works 6M cw/ssb with a single slice and is
radio number 1 in N1MM. Panadapter two is radio number 2 and runs the
transverter bands 2M, 222 and 432 on all modes. Panadapter three is dedicated to
6M WSJT modes and has 3 slices, one for MSK144, one for FT8 and one for FT4.
Computer 2 also looks at PingJockey for MSK144 stuff and had a few utilities
like grid square bearing programs for pointing and the Midwest fixed stations
and rovers spreadsheets on line.
I was using a Third computer I’d just bought, a real nice refurbished
multicore I7 that can easily handle multiple copies of WSJT-X and another copy
of N1MM logging software that interfaces and auto logs the digital mode stuff.
Had it set up for 2 monitors and the FT8 and FT4 screens needed for contesting
on 6M as well as some other stuff like propagation maps etc. With the advent of
SDR, digital modes and numerous Internet resources required to effectively work
a VHF contest these days my shack looks more like one of the desks at NASA
Mission Control! I spend maybe 25 percent of my hobby time with towers and RF
and the rest fighting with computers and software to get them to do the stuff
they’re supposed to!
When I came off the tower Computer three’s screens were dark so I rebooted it
again. Nothing. Totally dead. Murphy had decided to be my best friend. Luckily
it’s still under warrantee. I had to replace it with the I3 laptop that is
really inadequate for the job and the reason I had acquired it in the first
place. It was already mostly set up so I brought that back into service. It
worked reasonably well considering it only crashed a few times, usually at
inopportune moments. The DAX on that computer kept getting corrupted and I had
to restart it often, but it got me by.
Reconfiguring cost me even more time and it was after 2200 before I had it all
working reasonably well again. I did some on the fly FT8 with Computer 1 while I
was setting up replaced Computer three and some analog 6M but there were few
signals besides occasionally an Es bubble on 6M and the locals mostly went to
FT8. Even when I did get somebody on SSB they just about all told me they would
be on the other bands LATER – my favorite term for NEVER since I rarely run
across them on another band later – even some veterans who really should know
better. I asked several to call me on the phone when the band died which it did
a lot (it was more dead than alive here most of the day) but only ONE actually
did! I was resigned to losing and ready to scream by then, especially after
having to sit out both Sept and January due to things beyond my control; but I
wanted to at least run up some QSOs for SMC and the Club gavel chase. I hit a
real low, but good thing I rallied since I really don’t know the meaning of
quit.
This time most folks seemed to be running contest mode on FT8 and the ones that
weren’t didn’t fail open. I was grid sniping mostly, and FT4 on 6M was
working out pretty well but not nearly as populated as FT8. As usual pleas to
QSY off FT8 with TX5 messages were mostly ignored. I gave into the madness only
because I couldn’t rotate anyway for effective band runs but did try a few
pointed in the wrong direction and was moderately successful since it was
pointed pretty much east where most of my action is. My worked grid map on 2M
looks like the west fell off the map, even worse than usual since its way less
populated that way! There were NLRS rovers to the NE up by the Twin Cities of
Minneapolis/St Paul, but they don’t even look my way anymore unless I call
them on the cellphone and it was pretty pointless to do that anyway with the
tower stuck.
I was working a few on FT8 at 0200Z when I started seeing W1 and 2s, then looked
over and saw the panadapter for 6M ssb was finally hopping with signals.
Squeezed my way into a spot and for the next hour ran just under 200Qs. I was
pretty much exhausted from lack of sleep and all the exercise I’d gotten in
the morning going up the tower and crawling under the desk schlepping around
heavy 28V power supplies and computers, but the pileup adrenaline rush kicked
in. Sadly one good hour was all I got before it died. The spike on my ratemap
looks really absurd going from 10 Qs an hour to 200 then back to 10. When I
hooked up later with N0URW 60 miles to the west in my grid and K9CT in the
adjacent EN40 70 miles to the south for band runs they both told me they had Es
in solid for several hours and K9CT had run over 600 Qs! That really bummed me
out. But Es is really particular about location, location, location and there
was always tomorrow!
Buoyed by a second wind, I made my few prearranged Ms skeds with the small 2M
antenna, but it took a bit longer than usual. I got on PJ and did a lot of 6M
MSK144 to add more grids but shied away from 2M unless they were in the honey
500-800 mile high angle range that that put the low 2M up for in the first
place. I was really amazed to hear and work W5ZN 450 miles away on 2M FT8 on
that low antenna, and we later had to struggle to get a Q on 6M MSK144 usually a
slam dunk. As was an Ms session with K5TR that took absurdly long for no
particular good reason but he hung in there with me. I had to go outside to
check if the antennas were still there pointed in the right direction it was so
bad! Of course I heard him on Sunday 20 over when the band finally opened to
Texas. I stayed up way too late after 0800Z and went to bed for less than 3
hours with barely 50K in the log, a total reminiscent of a January contest.
6AM or 1100Z I was on for a sked with KZ9O, a new Wisconsin multi that set up in
relatively rare EN46. FT8 worked for 6 and 2M and I probably could have worked
them higher had I been able to move those antennas. Worked more MSK144 and blew
off my usual morning 4 band JT65B sked with K0AWU at 400 miles after working on
2M FT8 and failing on 6M the day before. By 1500Z 6M was showing some life and
the FN and FM grids were in and out intermittenlty most of the rest of the day.
Hourly rates were between 25 and 75 but that was WAY better than the day before!
Worked a lot of FT8-FT4 when the computer wasn’t crashing or the DAX
corrupted and even had a few off point band runs and a couple rovers like W9FZ
and KA9VVQ who called me. I got lucky and ran 4 bands with N4QWZ at 400 miles
since it just happened to be pointed his way! The 2M and above totals are way
thinner than usual and NOBODY I worked on a band run even had 2 or 3 Gig so I
worked none. Very few even on 902 and 1.2G. Glad I spent all that time and
energy getting that power supply working LOL!
6M had completely died around 2100Z and all I saw on FT8 was locals I’d worked
already. I was falling asleep in my chair I was so groggy and decided it was
safer to lay down for a while. Around 2300Z after an hour nap I finally got some
short runs to TX interspersed with the Mid Atlantic coast and W1/2. The band was
hopping to the NE again and I got about a half hour of intermittent FL and the
SE too. My tower would move intermittently and I used that to my advantage
since it was open in multiple directions at once. Not a lot of rate but way
better than digital with lots of new mults so it was worth milking along with
some digital mult sniping.
Some 2M and up from time and a few rovers off point like K9PW. When 6M got
really slow in the last half hour I returned W9GA’s phone call and coaxed the
tower within 10 degrees of his heading to work him on 5 bands. That put me just
over 200K which I only I found out after I rescored and it corrected some
errors. I had 10 minutes and tried SSB but there was only a few diehards back
in and I had worked just about all of them already. I went to FT8-F4 but that
computer was hopelessly locked up again. Nobody on 2M FT8 so I tried to
reconfigure Computer 1 for 6M on the fly but it was too late and the bell rang.
I was lamenting that the cause was all but lost Saturday afternoon, but was
reminded of the June contest I won even after I woke up Sunday to a 6 hour power
failure and my old generator gave up the ghost shortly afterward. It all goes
to show you that despite handicaps and setbacks, keep on trying. No clue if
it’s good enough yet but 200K is nothing to be ashamed of even when things go
well. In the words of another immortal New Yorker, It ain’t over till it’s
over!
73 de Bob2 K2DRH
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