[NLRS] N0HJZ multi-op August 2005 UHF - L O N G

[John P. Toscano]

First of all, let me stress that I do not purport to be the official 
spokesman for the N0HJZ multi-op group, I just happen to be the one of 
the four of us that is the most verbose with email postings, so here I 
go.  I certainly encourage the rest of the crew to chime in with their 
thoughts as well.

In case any of you didn't know, we set up in Burnsville, MN, on the top 
of Buck Hill, a local ski area.  It certainly isn't a mountain, but it's 
the closest thing to one in the nearby metro area.  At least the name is 
honest, Buck HILL, not Buck MOUNTAIN.  Anyway, with some tips from Fred 
(WA2HFI) who had operated there before, prior to his moving away to a 
warmer climate, and with a lot of footwork by Rich, N0HJZ, and with 
fantastic cooperation from the folks at Buck Hill, we got permission to 
operate from there.  Besides Rich (obviously, since we used his call!), 
there was Brent (KD5EMB), myself (W0JT), and Gary (WB0LJC).  Several 
others had expressed an interest, but as it turned out, they would not 
make it out for this event.  Gary was originally going to work with us, 
then when it looked like we'd have more than enough operators, he 
decided to do a solo mini-rove to provide another unique station to 
work, but when it became apparent that only Rich, Brent, and I were 
actually making it to the "party", he gave us an enormous amount of help 
with setup on Saturday, and eventually decided to throw his lot in with 
us as a fourth operator on Sunday.  Both of these decisions were of 
extreme benefit to us, and I can't thank him enough.

Buck Hill is an interesting place to work a contest from.  It is 
reasonably high (at least as this part of the country goes), and the 
view from up there is fantastic.  But it is definitely not a "perfect" 
place to operate from (if there even is such a place).  The top of the 
hill is relatively small, so it was a bit of a challenge to put up three 
antenna towers that were separated from one another to minimize harmful 
interactions.  But worse, there is no one spot that has a view in all 
directions.  There are two buildings (the ski jump ramp, and a building 
which I believe houses electromechanical equipment for the chair lift 
system), plus a large pedestal holding a giant horizontal steel pulley 
that the chair lift cable goes around.  You either need to get above 
these obstacles (which we managed for the "low" bands of 222 and 432), 
or put up with them (most other bands), or move your tripod-mounted 
system to one of three or four different spots depending on the bearing 
to your target (which we did on 10 GHz).

I spent a lot of time before the contest working on my 2304 system.  It 
had never been on the air since I bought it over a year ago, because I 
had to do some (seemingly simple) integration with the IF radio and 
antenna system to get it ready.  I basically needed to buffer the PTT 
from the IC-706 radio, because it's "VSEND" line cannot provide enough 
current to pull in the relays in the transverter, and I had to provide 
final T/R switching to the antenna, because the transverter was bought 
with split Rx/Tx on the 2304 MHz side, to make it simpler and more 
efficient to insert the 20-watt PA.  These should all have been simple 
tasks, but by the time I (thought that I) had it all working, it was 2 
AM on Saturday, so I only grabbed 4 hours of sleep before starting to 
pack up my SUV for the 5-mile trek from Apple Valley to the top of the 
hill.  I had chided the other members of the group that a 9 AM setup 
start time was too late, and that I planned to get started earlier, but 
guess who was the third man on the hill at 9 AM?  Yep, it was me.  The 
dismantling of much of my ham shack and loading of it into my vehicle 
was taking so long, that I decided to make two trips.  I'd bring out the 
ladders, antennas, AC extension cords, power strips, feedlines, mast 
sections, tools, and other critical items that would be needed to BEGIN 
setup, and then run home to grab the radios, transverters, and anything 
else that had been left behind either on purpose or accidentally.

By around 9 AM when I reached the top of the hill, Rich already had our 
shelter set up, and we had finalized the locations of our three 
stations.  The 222 antenna would be mounted on Brent's multi-jointed 
ladder which would be strapped to the ski jump, and Rich's TE Systems 
brick would be mounted at the base of the "tower".  Ultraflex hardline 
would run from there to the tent about 50 feet away.  My 20 foot 
extension ladder would hold the 432 antenna, and it would be strapped to 
the side of the small building on the more southerly part of the 
hilltop.  Rich would put his TE systems brick at the base of that 
"tower", and we'd run the feedline about 30 or 40 feet to the operating 
tent.  Gary had loaned us a 10 foot tower top section, to which Rich 
would mount his Yaesu rotator, and that would hold the antennas for the 
higher bands.  I unloaded the stuff I had brought, and helped with the 
assembly of the 222 and 432 stations.  I decided that I had better let 
Rich and Brent finish up some of that without me, so that I could run 
home for the gear that I hadn't brought up on the first trip.

By the time I had left the hill, driven home, continued to dismantle 
much of my home shack and load it into my SUV, and driven it back up the 
hill, it was, incredibly, right around 1 PM, the start time of the 
contest.  Well, I have almost never started a contest on time, so I 
figured that this was not an insurmountable problem, since the initial 
setup had seemed to go well.  I parked and opened up the doors and 
hatchback of my SUV in order to begin unloading the gear I had brought 
for 432 and up. (Other than Brent's ladder and rotator, the rest of the 
222 gear was Rich's.)  Two more "guests" had arrived while I was gone, 
one of them welcome (WB0LJC), and one of them very UNwelcome (Murphy).  
Rich and Brent gave me a lot of bad news:  They had the whole 222 system 
set up, and when Rich powered up his FT-736, something caused it to 
self-destruct.  No receive, no transmit, nonsense on the digital 
frequency display, and no prodding or resetting would bring it back to 
life.  We now had no 222 station.  So they moved the long feedline from 
the 222 brick over to the 432 brick, and temporarily hooked up Brent's 
IC-706MkIIg.  Strike two:  only about 5 watts of power was making it to 
the input of the brick at the base of the ladder, so at best, we had 
only about 30 watts or so instead of 100.  It appeared that our feedline 
was no good.  Rich and Brent tried a few other runs of coax that Brent 
had brought, but with the same results.  So, here it was a bit after the 
"opening gun", and we had zero watts on 222 and only 30 watts on 432, 
and none of the higher bands were set up yet.  This is definitely NOT 
good!  We seriously entertained the option of calling it quits right 
then and there, and packing it all up for the trip home.  However, after 
some further discussion, and after changing some jumpers on the 432 
feedline and substituting my FT-847 as the radio for 432 (which was the 
original plan anyway), we found that we could get at least 30 of the 
FT-847's 50 watts through the feedline to the brick, and the brick was 
happy to make full power with that amount of drive.  So 432 was 
rescued.  With this obstacle overcome, I volunteered to make yet another 
trip home to bring back my 222 transverter and all related paraphenalia 
to allow us to get 222 on the air.  So I made trip #3 back home, 
dismantled the remainder of my shack, and packed up my 222 system plus 
all the LMR-400 and LMR-600 I had in storage, because it now appeared 
that we were seriously deficient in working feedlines.  I didn't relish 
the thought of attaching N connectors to coax AFTER the start of the 
contest to get on the air, but it's better than having no coax at all.

I got back to the top of the hill, and hooked up the 222 system.  To 
minimize Murphy's chances of making more trouble, we decided to use my 
whole system instead of any of the pieces of Rich's system, since it was 
a "known working" collection of parts, and it is a bit of a Rube 
Goldberg setup besides.  We got it hooked up and running, but had to 
make a tough decision at that point.  Due to the unexpected problems 
with feedlines, we decided that instead of making new long runs of 
feedline from the three antenna locations to the tent so we could all 
work side-by-side, we would set up Brent on the platform of the ski 
jump, right at the base of the ladder supporting the 222 antenna, and we 
would set up the higher bands' equipment in my SUV in a manner similar 
to the setup I had inside for my last rover attempt in RoverMania I 
(which was fatally doomed by a broken ignition switch as I attempted to 
pull out of my driveway last year).  I'd drive my vehicle up to the base 
of the tower section and park with one tire on top of one of the legs of 
the tower to stabilize it, and run the feedlines in through a side 
window to hook them up to all the transverters and amplifiers and so 
on.  Once we got the feedlines attached to antennas, the antennas 
mounted to the H-frame, the H-frame attached to the rotator, and the 
tower section set upright and guyed down with ropes, I told Brent and 
Rich to get started on the two working bands (222 and 432), while Gary 
and I hooked up all the gear for 902, 1296, and 2304.  Murphy was 
reeling from our battle to overcome his inital few major obstacles, but 
he had some fight left in him.  When I thought I had everything ready to 
go on 902 & up, I discovered I was missing one power cable (because I 
had purloined it earlier to get 222 on the air).  So I lost a little 
more time attaching spade lugs and Anderson Power Poles to a piece of 
8-gauge zip cord so I could get +13.8 VDC to all the gear.  Time for a 
quick check.  Murphy strikes again.  The 902 and 1296 systems would not 
transmit.  It turns out that I had failed to bring along one more vital 
cable that gets the PTT signal from the IC-251a IF radio to my homebrew 
interface box that performs T/R switching for both bands, plus TxIF and 
RxIF switching between the radio and the two transverters.  This was not 
a cable I could fabricate on the fly, since I needed an 8-pin DIN 
connector on one end, and some RCA phono plugs on the other end, and I 
didn't even remember the pinout.  No, this was going to require one more 
trip home to retrieve the forgotton cable, and to make matters worse, I 
no longer had any transportation.  My vehicle was bracing the tower and 
a whole bunch of feedlines and rotor control cables were running in from 
the outside!  Gary was gracious enough to drive me home and back (trip 
#4) to get the critical missing cable.  By the time we did all that, and 
I made the final connection to activate 902 & 1296, it was almost 6 
hours into the contest!  Yikes.  Well, those two bands were working, so 
let's turn on the new 2304 system and give it the first dose of RF.  
Murphy slapped me one more time.  A problem of some sort had developed 
in the interface box I had constructed to tie it all together (IF radio, 
transverter, power amp, T/R switching, etc.), and the transverter would 
begin transmitting as soon and as long as the power was applied.  No way 
to receive on it except by pulling the PTT plug, but that wouldn't cause 
the T/R relays to change back to the receive position, so even that was 
no help.  All that aggravation and lost sleep, and my equipment for that 
band was not usable.  And we were going to use the same interface and IF 
radio with a 3456 system loaned to us by KF0Q, so that band was flushed 
down the drain also.

So here it was, the contest 1/4 over, we have 4 bands working, but only 
2 of them have been available to make QSO's on at this point.  Time to 
settle into the back seat of my SUV and go to work with what I had.  
Gary decided to go home for the night and do his mini-rove on Sunday 
instead of Saturday.  As I mentioned in the beginning, his help was 
invaluable in getting us on the air at all, and we all greatly 
appreciate his assistance.

One of the he main remaining problems was the fact that we had three 
operating positions that were each about 50 feet away from one another 
instead of side-by-side, so it was exceedingly difficult for us to pass 
a station from 222 to 432 to 902 & up.  Some of you may recall that for 
the high bands, I sometimes asked you to liason via Brent on 222, 
because at least I had a 200 mW 223.5 MHz FM handheld that I could use 
to talk with him.  But this was still very awkward, and Rich had no way 
to communicate with either Brent or me except by hiking over from the 
tent to our locations.  So much for rapid working on multiple bands.  
Also, I had been unable to find my compass at home on Saturday morning, 
so the 10 GHz contacts were quite a challenge.  The best I could do was 
peak up a station on 902 & 1296, then attempt to aim the 10 GHz dish in 
the same direction as the loop yagis were pointing!  Ouch!  I have to 
express a lot of gratitude to W9FZ who spent a lot of time in the wee 
hours of the morning with numerous 2-minute beacon cycles back and forth 
before we found one another in frequency and heading and made a 
long-distance 10 GHz QSO.  We had come very close to giving up, but 
Bruce said he thought he had heard a little something on the last 
transmit cycle, so we agreed to try two more cycles, and sure enough, I 
gave my dish just enough of a nudge in the right direction that I 
started hearing his beacon for the first time.  Boy was I excited to run 
over to the 902 MHz radio that I was using for liason with him at this 
point, to let him know the good news.  A little more tweaking of 
elevation and azimuth, and we had an armchair-quality QSO on 10 GHz.  I 
think he was somewhere around EN54 at the time, but I don't have the log 
with me to refer to now.  I also have to thank KM0T for asking Rich if 
we could try to make a 10 GHz contact on Sunday morning, and taking the 
time to allow me to find his proper bearing.  I had to move the dish to 
the other side of my vehicle due to obstructions (trees and a water 
tower), and although I didn't know it, at first my car was partly 
obstructing the path and I was not quite pointing in the right 
direction.  I moved the dish a bit further away from the car, adjusted 
the azimuth a bit more, and WOW what a signal we heard.  He was 40 over 
S9, and Rich was amazed to hear it.  Even I was impressed with the 
strength of that signal coming in from nearly 300 Km away!  If only they 
could all be that strong and clear!  (Oh well, what would be the 
challenge then?)

Another annoyance (for US and for YOU) was that we had only three 
operators for three stations most of the time, and with the extremely 
stressful setup experience, we could not keep ourselves awake to remain 
on the air all night.  After Rich and Brent decided to catch a few hours 
of sleep, it became obvious to me that I wasn't doing much good calling 
CQ at random on 902 and 1296, so I made a few passes through the 432 and 
222 stations to find someone to work, and then move them up to the 
microwave bands.  Not very efficient, but it got us a few more QSO's and 
a few more grids.  If we had a full complement of operators, we could 
have been on the air more consistently overnight.  I eventually 
succumbed to the need for sleep, and caught a few Zzzz's myself.

On Sunday morning, Gary ('LJC) decided that instead of his solo 
mini-rove, he'd join us on the hill and operate under the N0HJZ 
callsign.  This was terrific news for us, because he also brought along 
a WORKING 2304 system that we attached to our existing antenna, and a 
3456 system (for which we had also put up an antenna on Saturday.)  Gary 
also brought a dish-based system for 5.7 GHz, and his 10 GHz dish to 
complement mine, which was nice because we could set them up in two 
different locations to get around most of the hilltop obstructions and 
minimize the carrying around of tripods.

In spite of all the unwelcome input from Murphy, it appears that we 
might have set a new Dakota section record for a multi-op in the UHF 
contest, although you won't be surprised that our score will be lower 
than some of those already reported to the reflectors in the single-op 
or rover category.  Rich grabbed the logs to crunch the numbers, so I 
can't be more specific than that yet.  Of course, when I know more, I'll 
post a (much shorter) note with those results.

Well, it was certainly an experience!  Although we were disappointed at 
our inability to do the outstanding job we were hoping for, I hope that 
we contributed at least a little to the success of RoverMania II in 
general, and YOUR success in particular.  My personal thanks go out to 
the other stations who were there to work us, to the folks behind the 
scenes that helped us with planning and gear, the gracious folks at Buck 
Hill who allowed us access to the site, and my co-operators.  I wish I 
could blame all the problems on Murphy, but I feel compelled to 
apologize for my individual contributions to the problems we 
experienced, which were not insignificant.  Maybe someday I'll learn my 
lesson.  :(

73 de W0JT