[Corkradioclub] An important lesson... never give up

[Cormac Gebruers]

I just thought I'd share...

It's good to have goals, they keep life interesting. Each year in radio I
try and set myself a few goals. They're usually very modest and only for my
own benefit but I find them a good way to keep focussed and they help to
get more out of the hobby.

One goal I set myself for 2012 was was to put in a good showing in the Stew
Perry Tobpand Challenge. This is a really fun event held on topband CW in
December of each year. It's organised by a fantastic group of hams in the
Boring Amateur Radio Club (N7RAT) in Boring Oregon (near Salem, made famous
by the witch trials), USA. It's a 14 hour contest with a strong American
flavour and participation but it also attracts a great many topband
afficianados from all over the World. It's all about working distance; the
further away the station you work, the more points you get. The banter
around the event is great fun, including the (in)famous Stew Perry plaques
sponsored by various particpants. I've sponsored a plaque for the past few
years and even managed to win one last year for the "top score using a base
loaded vertical less than 60' high". It all adds to the fun. You can read
all about the Stew here: http://www.kkn.net/stew/ . I also wanted to use
the Stew as the last hurrah for the Titanic Commemoration call EI100T. It
seemed fitting to end the call's time on air (it was licensed only for
2012) by giving it a good airing on topband, the closest band we have to
the MF frequencies used by shipping.

Anyway, as this year's Stew approached, I set about improving my topband
antenna. While I'm luckier than most in being able to put up a topband
antenna at all, what I had used - the "award winning" 60' base loaded
vertical ;-) in truth wasn't a good antenna and I had other options.
Previously I'd had a quite good inverted L for topband and 80m and I
thought I'd revert to that approach as it seemed to have done the business
in the past.

So, once Xmas holidays rolled around, out came the antenna engineering
toolbox and over 3 days, up went an inverted L for topband. As I wanted to
maximise the vertical portion of the antenna, the entire exercise was
tricky and time consuming. The result however was very satisfying - an
inverted L with a 62' vertical section and a horizontal wire that at the
far end was still 60' high. At the antenna feedpoint I matched the antenna
using a coax cable capacitor, something I'd never done before - it works
really well.

I finished the antenna on December 28th, the contest was on December 29th.
Overnight on December 28th/29th some windy weather hit. I woke on the
morning of the event to wreckage. The antenna was destroyed :-( Basically I
was back to square one, in fact it was worse because I now had no antenna
at all for topband. Gloomily I resigned myself to missing my favourite
event of the year. That was, until my 8 year old daughter came out to see
what was wrong with Daddy. She looked at me, looked at the wreckage and
then, as she nonchalantly wandered away quoted a line from one of her
favourite movies Galaxy Quest (she has a quirky sense of humour this kid)
"Never give up, never surrender!"... I stared after her as she wandered
off. A voice inside my head began echoing here words "Never give up..." I
spent the bulk of the 4 remaining hours before the contest rebuilding the
antenna and finished it with about 40 minutes to go. I'd made it.

And then the tree branch supporting the horizontal end broke... I couldn't
believe it. By then however I was in such a bloody-minded state of being
that I set about fixing it again. By sheer force of will and lots of luck I
did and just in time...

I went straight from yard to shack and put in a 14 hour effort. It was
tough going (it always is on topband) but I was just happy to have been
able to take part at all. Amazingly, the jury rigged version 3 of the
antenna worked... it really worked.

The preliminary results for the Stew are now rolling in (you can see them
on the site mentioned above). Out of the 700+ logs submitted so far, EI100T
is currently the highest scoring low power station worldwide outside US/VE!
It's early days yet but if that remains the case, what a reward it'll be
for having stuck at it :-)

The lesson? "Never give up, never surrender!"

-- 
Regards
Cormac, EI4HQ
[Cobh / UTC] NNNN++++
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