ARRL DX Contest, SSB - 2019
Call: C6ANM
Operator(s): N1GN NE1B K1VK K1EP
Station: C6ANM
Class: M/M HP
Cabrillo Category: Multi-Multi All-Band HP
QTH: Bahamas
Operating Time (hrs): 44
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 213 41
80: 991 57
40: 1704 58
20: 2054 59
15: 70 19
10: 0 0
-------------------
Total: 5032 234 Total Score = 3,531,060
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
First, thanks to N1GN (C6ANM) for hosting our operation and to W1BNC for lending
us his KPA500 for the week.
Operations started out early in the week with the antenna construction and
installation. First was the 160M inverted L with nine ground radials and then
the inverted V on 40M that was hung from the horizontal wire of the 160M L.
Next was the OCD that was mainly used for 80M. That took a while as we had to
clear a path through the jungle to thread the wire over the canopy. Last, a fan
dipole was installed on the roof for 10/15/20. Unfortunately, 10 never opened
and 15 was marginal at best, so it was used only on 20. When 15 was open, we
used the 40M inverted V. Station 1 was a K3/100 to a KPA500/KAT500, while
station 2 was an IC7610 to a TL922. Station 3 was a Kenwood TS430 barefoot.
All stations had ICE 419 bandpass filters and networked with N1MM+.
We had zero interstation interfere or RF in the shack. This year we installed
common mode chokes on the OCD and 40M antennas. This appeared to help
significantly as we had no problems and numerous reports of excellent audio.
Everything seemed to play well, but that didn't mean we didn't have any Murphy
visits. Things went downhill Thursday afternoon when we moved the TL922 to the
IC7610 from the K3, where it was before the KPA500 arrived After tuning up, the
7610 suffered the perennial Icom issue of a fused reed relay. I don't understand
why a modern radio doesn't have a beefy amp relay. It has a FET output option,
but they are wired or'd and both were rendered dead. What to do? After some
head scratching, we decided to build a solid state interface using the ACC SEND
output (separate output from the SEND RCA jack). But where can you get parts on
an island with virtually no electronics stores? Luckily, we had a DIN plug and
found a 4N25 opto and a 2N3904 transistor in the junk box. We built a high
voltage relay interface that we got working about an hour before the contest
began. An intermittent Heil headset had to be swapped out for the backup Bose
QC2 headset. No radio, amp or antenna issues popped up.
Propagation was not present this weekend, as we all know. Nothing on 10. We
could hear SA working NA on 15, but could never hear NA. Seems like it was only
TEP on 15 and we were not getting anything from NA. 20 ended up being the money
band, with 40 the runner up. Lots of QRN on 160 as usual.
We kept up with the competition on the scoreboard. We were usually ahead of HQ9X
for a good part of the contest. Paul and Charlotte had more sections than we
did, but we usually had more Qs. We didn't have 15M prop and they did. They
were always 20 to 30 sections ahead of us due to having one more band open than
we did. in the last 12 hours they pulled ahead to stay in the lead. Our third
station was barefoot and proved to not be too useful, especially in the light of
poor propagation. Many times only one or two bands were active at a time. We
wasted too much time getting it working for little return.
We found that we worked a lot of dupes. Unlike a CW contest, we didn't have
busted spots. We feel it was mostly like having multiple QSOs on the same freq,
as we probably shared the same freq as Eu and people were not aware of it or
paid attention to IDing. We IDed after every Q.
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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