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

[N0HJZ at aol.com]

Hi All -
 
First, I need to thank the op's who spent the weekend on the hill making the 
station work.  What an experience.  I've multi-op'd before but never had 
Murphy as a partner.
 
* My 222 set-up blew up at the start of the contest (never have I blown a rig 
on a contest).
* We have several runs of feedline that are better suited to HF than VHF/UHF 
work.
* We didn't have enough feedlines.
* Two of the rotors were 'radio shack" variety.  After a while you really 
don't know which way they are pointing.
* No one brought a 223 FM antenna.
* I set my alarm clock for 3 am (Brent and I would get three hours sleep).  I 
woke up at 5:30 am and my alarm clock hadn't gone off.
 
I also heard other stories of Murphy from rovers and other stations.  Maybe 
this year will be called Murphy Mania.  Let's hope it is the last!
 
Well, after all the dust settled, we have a new Upper Midwest, Dakota 
Division Multi-Op record!  Here are the stats:
 
222 MHz - 59 x 28
432 MHz - 84 x 32
902 MHz - 16 x 11
1.2 GHz - 21 x 14
2.3 GHz - 6 x 4
3.4 GHz - 4 x 2
5.7 GHz - 3 x 1
10 GHz - 7 x 5
TOTAL - 200 x 97 = 86,427 points
 
Thanks again to the op's who went up the hill.  Also, a huge THANKS to the 
rovers who went out to activate all the grids.  Great job guys!
 
73  Rich N0HJZ
 
-----Original Message-----
From: John P. Toscano <tosca005 at tc.umn.edu>
To: nlrs at mailman.qth.net; badgercontesters at mailman.qth.net
Sent: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 23:43:13 -0500
Subject: [NLRS] N0HJZ multi-op August 2005 UHF - L O N G


 
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 
 
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