[Milsurplus] CX CW Contest Report

[B. Smith]

    This years CX CW  event was great and the activity really did  pick up 
in the late afternoon and evening. Much better than last year. Many thanks 
to WQ8U, N5AIT,W8KGI and AA4RW for keeping the event going all these years. 
A great event  and I quote from the CX web site:



    The CX is a great no pressure contest. “The object is to encourage 
restoration, operation and enjoyment of this older "Classic" equipment”

    I especially enjoy putting some of the military equipment on the air.

My goal this year was to get sets on the air and not try to make large 
numbers of contacts. My CW skills are rusty ask K2TOP he will tell you.



The Phone portion of the CX contest is Next Sunday February 10th!



    Since the CX allows me to use a  lot of the military radio projects I 
have been working on during the year I have posted some

brag photos of equipment and the link is below.



Early in the event I worked a couple of AWA stations as they were having 
their contest at the same time.I started off on 40 CW with my Wireless Set 
No. 19  and milked  several  contacts   with non CX stations and a few AWA 
stations.  I later received an email from KZ8G one of the NON CX stations 
who worked me on the Wireless Set and  stated: Thanks for the great QSO! 
“It was fun  tuning your "yooping" CW signal up  and down using the RIT on 
my TS  830S!” Well I guess the WS No.19 does indeed yoop just a little tiny 
bit. I then  fired up the GRC-109 with my latest vfo project a compact 
external solid state VFO. The little VFO ran off of internal  batteries and 
it had been through several meets this last year  and  the voltage was 
getting a little on the low side ,so as I keyed the transmitter but had to 
tune the VFO to keep it on frequency.  Those dag gone dollar store batteries 
only lasted 6 or 7  months.   My internal antenna relay modification on the 
GRC-109 worked great.

Then I switched over and plugged in the HV supply on the Navy GO-9 and 
immediately blew a fuse. I wondered what the loud hum was and then the fuse 
let go with a nice  snap sound.  I did not know that those 4 prong plugs 
( the ones with two big pins and the two small pins) would fit into 4 pin 
socket  upside down. The diodes (K2AW’s) on the HV supply  did survive, they 
are great  diode packs.  After the HV crisis  I got on  with the Navy GO-9 
and RBJ setup and qualified it on 40 , this was the first time I had tested 
the new power supplies and had the HV for the 803 final set to “medium” on 
the  Variac. Prior to the CW CX contest I had covered up the power supplies 
with a red milk crate as the power supplies   were  still in the testing 
phase and not mounted in the G0-9 rectifier cabinet.  I stole the idea of 
the milk crate from somewhere but can’t remember who it was.   Following 
K2WI’s and KA3EKH’s advice I was keying the screen voltages with a relay, it 
interesting listening to the relay   clicking and klacking while I was using 
a special home brew key which also was making a nice clanking sound.  The 
evening  before the contest  I was testing the  GO-9 and noticed that the 40 
meter second harmonic on  20 meter was only about 20 db down so I am sure 
someone heard me on 20 while I was on 40 but there is no CX rule that say 
you can not transmit on two bands at once. Oh well probably get some sort of 
FCC violation but what can they do, they can’t send me back overseas. 
FCC Violation number 1?

 I then gang banged NS3E on 40 CW and changed equipment several times for 
some easy contacts.

Question: Why is it that on 40 meters everyone has to stay around 7040 when 
we have the whole band? And no one will dare tune up 10-15 Kcs  above 7040.

        Then I  went over to the  “Flight Deck” (note 1) , the Collins 
18S-4 dynamotor was having start up  problems getting up to speed,  I 
quickly checked  my power supply combination of a   parallel  50 amp Lambda 
and a 20 Amp Solo, both lights were “on” but the dyno was slow, oh so slow, 
so managed to get the dyno up to speed by clicking several times but only 
made a single contact. It would take about 5 seconds to click the dyno up to 
speed. Later found that one of the “On” lights was the “blown fuse” light on 
the Solo. duhh I then fired up the 32RS-1 that I modified for CW and worked 
with it for a while. (Note 1: the term “Flight Deck” and the  use aircraft 
style equipment bays to house and display WWII  aircraft radios was coined 
by Mike Hanz at AAFRADIO.org.)

Early in the evening I  turned on my Fitzgeralds Junk Yard KWM-2A (salvaged 
from an Aluminum scrap pile from Dover AFB) and listened and listened and 
listened  on 80 meters  but did not hear anything, so thought it was 
strange. So sent out several CX CQ’s, still nothing. Then while tuning 
around  what I thought was “3585” I heard  New York VOLMET transmitting 
weather so then realized that  I was out of band and was one crystal 
position low. The new York frequency is 3485. duhh   Probably get another 
FCC violation.                              FCC Violation Number 2?

Finally got the right band switch selection on the 2A got on 80 CW and heard 
lots of stations  and worked W8TM with several of my stations including the 
PRC-47 and the Viking Ranger and the 32RS-1.

Then 80 meters got fairly busy with CX activity and it was easy finding  the 
K2TOP multi-operator station as I could hear it on every receiver in the 
shack, most of them were not connected to an antenna and just had the lead 
ins connected running to the CX equipment switches. Didn't try a crystal set 
but sure I would have heard them.

I then turned on the ART-13 and hooked up the new APN-4/ART AC supply, 
thought I would run it instead of the dynamotor as I was having 28 volt 
power supply problems.

My  ART-13 lost position 3 on the VFO so had to improvise and use Position 
4(3.6Mc) and crank it all the way down to the stops past 3.600 to about 
3.582 Kcs and thus managed to get it slightly below it design bottom 
frequency of  3.600. So then I had to go down to 3550 with the junk yard 
KWM-2A  and grab K2TOP and  drag him up to 3.580 so I could use  the 
ART-13/BC-348 combo. He remarked that he thought it was a little strange but 
followed me up anyway.

Question why do we all have to hang around 3550 when we have the whole band 
its just like that 40 meter thing.

          Later worked K2TOP again with the Russian R-104M using the N3FRQ 
"phantom voltage divider" power supply circuit  and then  switched over to 
the Navy GO-9 , seem eerie  as I sat using the goose neck lamp for light and 
working Rob’s TCK/RBB combination and  my using a  Navy GO-9 and RBJ, two 
Navy WWII combinations klacken away using skills and mode that just about 
completely  disappeared. Eerie.

         Then got Rob to listen for the Wireless Set on 80 and could hear 
him loud and clear over most of the band, I guess the WS-19 receiver is a 
just a little wide. But he could not hear me.  Next day I looked at the 
output of the WS-19 on 80 and it looked like a Christmas Tree so guess I had 
multiple spurs.   Oh well guess that is FCC violation 
Number 3?



Photos at :

http://solo11.abac.com/zorroab1/CX%202008/Page%201.htm



Overall a great event, and the phone contest is coming up in one week on 
February 10th !

73 breck k4che







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