CQWW WPX Contest, SSB
Call: OP4K
Operator(s): ON4JW, ON4JZ, ON5TN, ON5UM
Station: OP4K
Class: M/S HP
QTH: Antwerp
Operating Time (hrs):
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 25
80: 362
40: 201
20: 1034
15: 228
10: 23
------------
Total: 1873 Prefixes = 835 Total Score = 3,605,530
Club:
Comments:
CQ WPX SSB 2008 @ OP4K the home of Joe ON4JZ in ANTWERP - BELGIUM
*****************************************************************
After deciding to take part this time not from OT5A in the M/M but from OP4K in
a small M/S setup we had to review some of the low band antennas.As the space on
the roof is rather restricted and only high point available is the 10 m high
tower holding the big OPTIbeam 40/20/15 and 10 m antenna we had put up
an inverted Vee for 80 m .
As the towers guywires are kevlar types we could easily stretch out the legs
close to the guys.A small insulated teflon strip now serves as the jumper
platform to switch between CW or SSB passband. Middle 100 kHz was omited so
either 3500 to 3600 or 3700 to 3800 are available .
For 160 m the only possible solution for the time being is an inverted 1/4 wave
vertical stretched from the top of the 10 m high tower to a street light down
the 10 stories building .Tower serves as the counterpoise .This solution is not
so efficient but enough to be on topband during the contest.
Other and better solutions are on the drawing table and need to be
implemented.
As the station is situated in the middle of Antwerp city and very close to a
noisy banking environment it is obviouos that the noise floor is very high and
puts a lot of strain on the operators to pull the weaker sigs out of the noise
. Probably we have to live with this as even loop type RX antennas are not
going to be efficient . But testing can be done and one never knows what comes
out of this.....
*********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
The station uses only one FT 2000 into an ACOM 2000 and has no second (Mult)
transceiver as we have no other antennas to use it with.
The main antenna OPTIBEAM sits @ approx. 45 m ASL (See www.on4jz.be)
Software used was the N1MM Contest Logger and also for the 1 st time we had the
interaction with the Getscores website .
*********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Team of 4 Operators were ON4JZ Joe owner of OP4K , ON4JW/OR4U Jean , ON5TN
Karel and ON5UM/OP5T Jim .
*********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
After the magnetic sun storm earlier this week we had rather poor propagation
to start of with but gradually improving by sunday afternoon .
40 m was a total disaster with only very few VE/W qso's in the log and also a
seldom deep in actual points on that band.
160 m was very hard to get running and was soon abandoned first night . Did not
improve second night or by the end .
80 m was good and proved that even with a rather modest but high up antenna we
managed some good runs and some decent DX qso's.
20 m was our best band and gave us a lot of satisfaction in running pile ups .
15 m was surprisingly good on sunday afternoon but with only a few North
American qso's over a south western skewed path .
10 m nearly dead but good friend Oms was there and that makes a good day . Tnx
PY5EG !!
All in all we had a great time in this little team and thankfull for the fact
that we had a lot of intresting ideas and talks during restperiods . Nice to
see Jean back in business .
Thanks to all that made it through OP4K's noise floor.....
Sorry for those we missed but there is allways a next time.
Thanks to Joe for his hospitality again .
Kind regards and 73
Jim - ON5UM/OP5T
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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