[NLRS] W9FZ/R CQWW VHF report

[Zack Widup]

Nice little writeup Bruce.

I have been operating as a Single-Op Portable for a long time. Up until
about 5 years ago I would set up the antenna mast(s) out in a field with a
tilt-over base. About 5 years ago I got a roof rack for the car I had until
June of 2019, which I was able to use to support an antenna mast alongside
the car. A cross arm on the roof rack supported the mast. But my new car
has a lot of plastic trim and none of the major roof rack manufacturers
supply one for it. So I'm back to setting up antennas out in a field.

Which brings me to last weekend's contest. The hilltop in EN50rl that I
like to use alternates corn and soybeans every other year. This year it is
corn. I can't set up the antennas in 7 foot tall corn. Plus, the weather
was a little worse here than "a bit warm and muggy." The heat index was 105
on Saturday afternoon, as predicted. I don't think I could've tolerated
sitting in an un-airconditioned vehicle in direct sunlight during that
period. Also, I have typically logged on paper during the contest and
transferred the log to a computer at home later. I have not been taking a
computer with me. And I've been trying to get something that would power my
HP laptop with 12 volts DC. I got one of those Chinese DC-DC power inverter
modules that can supply the laptop with what it wants (19 volts @ 4 amps)
but it is so RF-noisy that it is useless to try to operate a radio anywhere
near it. The 110 VAC to 19 VDC power supply for the laptop is very quiet.
But I don't want to run a 12 to 110 volt inverter to run that. It's not
very efficient. So until I find some sort of quiet power supply that runs
from 12 volts, I won't be taking the computer with me.

Hopefully I can get all these issues worked out. I may have to just stick
with microwave contests for 2020.

73, Zack W9SZ


On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 11:19 AM Bruce Richardson <w9fz at w9fz.com> wrote:

> I must admit that, prior to the event, I had pretty high expectations for
> the ham radio portion of the rove.
>
> So the only negatives for the weekend were:
> 1. My irrational expectations for 2M band conditions and activity levels
> 2. Bit warm and muggy on Saturday
> 3. Quiet 6M band conditions on Sunday
> 4. A laptop charger ruined our receive on 2M for about 20 minutes on
> Sunday--until we figured it out.
>
> There were many plusses for the weekend which made it all a success:
> 1. Working our friends W0ZQ, W0GHZ, W0VTT, K0SIX, WA0VPJ, K0AWU, KA0PQW and
> KG0VL many times from many grids.
> 2. First outing with FT8 for 6M.  We were feeding about 100 watts to a
> dipole at 18'.  We seemed to hear better than we were heard.
> 3. We enjoyed the drive in the countryside in the Eyota, Altura, and St
> Charles area.
> 4. We enjoyed the drive to a new grid corner for us near Pierz, MN (NW of
> Milaca).  Speaking of this, it is a FINE grid corner that we hope to return
> to.
> 5. Working N9TTX/R many times around the St Charles grid corner gave us
> needed Qpts and mults.  We took a rover meet-up picture.
> 6. Working KA0RYT/R all possible Q's at the Pierz grid corner. It was great
> to see Ron and the activity was fun.
> 7. Weather on Sunday was very pleasant.
> 8. We like that the contest ends at 4pm on Sunday.
> 9. Ok, so 6M was a little "open" on Saturday and that made finding anyone
> on
> 2M even tougher.
>
> 2M Activity levels were so low, we gave up on our 144.240 freq and hung out
> on .200. Seemed ok on our end--I'll check with some fixed stations to see
> how that worked on their end.  We were not set up for FT8 on 2M .
>
> With the new reality of FT8, CQ'ing on voice is gonna get fewer and fewer
> responses.  Some of the alerting methods allowed in ARRL rules would have
> helped us in this contest.
>
> We are pretty happy with our score. The two rovers (N9TTX/R and KA0RYT/R)
> made a HUGE difference.  Without them, our score would have been much
> lower.
>
> Band    QSOs    Qpts
> 6m      131     130      (1 dupe)
> 2m      73      146
> Total   204     276    140 Mults   38,640 total score
>
> With no CSVHFS conference, this was a fun focus for our July.
> 73
> Bruce W9FZ and Janice KA9VVQ
>
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