Code-a-rific CQWW

Between October and March, my XYL Connie KL1BE will often ask, "Is there a contest this weekend?"  My answer is usually yes, and she responds, "Of course."  The query is merely perfunctory, and after all these years of gaining momentum, KL2R occupies my off-time a lot.  Having recently moved from engineer to paper-pusher at the office, I find ham radio more rewarding these days.  I can still get my brain engaged and hands dirty solving technical and method problems.

The weeks in and around November, of course, are filled with Sweepstakes, CQWW, and a number of other on-air sporting events proving to be quite popular.  I had mixed feelings about entering solo in CQWW CW this year.  I am always excited to do a CW contest like this, but how would I fare over the 48 hours?  I had been up since 2 AM Friday.  Never mind, though.  I got a late start after helping KL1JP configure some new equipment and software for the KL7FWX special event.  Twenty was alive with JAs and UA0s, then it tanked quickly.  15m was slightly promising to Asia for a while. I tried 40 with only a little success.  I was soon exhausted and had to sleep, but not before I set an end-goal of 1000 Qs and/or 500k points. 

I apparently missed a good 40m opening, but I started Saturday right with some good runs on 15 and 20, plus a few contacts on 10m.  I trudged on most of the day and night looking for good multipliers with the grayline.  The Middle East opened nicely on 20m late in the evening, and I worked Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Qatar.  Europe was steady later on.  Around midnight into early Sunday morning, 40m was just a blast.  I have never seen so many strong signals in 13 years working from Alaska.  I could snag many East Coast stations with one call, a rarity.  I worked into Japan, the US, and Europe simultaneously.  I had one anomalous contact on 15m with an S5 in the middle of the night on 15.  Weird.

At 0330 Sunday, I had to sleep again.  I had planned a three-hour nap, but I failed to set the alarm clock correctly.  I didn't get started again for nearly six hours.  I missed catching the early run of US on 20 and some more action 15.  I pressed on with S&P after only a handful of weak runs.  I found I could keep a rate between 45 and 60 per hour this way.  I had a 240/hour run the day before. along with several periods of 180.  In the end, I made only 3/4 toward my goal.  But with 761 contacts in the log and several new countries, I'm pleased with the results.  I worked ZL8X on five bands, a real highlight.  Africa, the UK, and Spain could have been better represented, but I think this time the path to that general direction seemed lacking.  Check out the Google Earth plots at the akradio.net website.  It was Worldwide fun, though!

No Clean Sweep, but Good, Clean Fun

The phone portion of ARRL Sweepstakes using low power from interior Alaska often generates a combination of great excitement intertwined with abject frustration.  Each year, we hope against all past evidence, that this will be the weekend for a clean sweep, working all 80 ARRL and RAC sections.  The strategy is tricky to execute with very limited openings to some of the New England states and eastern Canadian provinces.  Then the stars must align to actually find the odd station in, say, Newfoundland or Rhode Island.  Even if these factors are favorable, chances are their antennas are not pointed to Alaska.  And to overcome the drone of Stateside stations pummeling the rare ones' receivers with desperate calls, our measly 100 watts has to be timed exactly right.  Odds are overwhelmingly against us.  We persevere, though.  The magic of Sweepstakes is just too powerful to resist.

Carl WL7BDO (above), Elaine KL6C, and Dan KL1JP were undaunted.  I turned over the KL2R reigns to them for the SSB Sweepstakes weekend and stood by to bring hot coffee, liaise with KL1BE in the kitchen, and to offer some technical advice as needed.  I was soooo impressed by their teamwork and perseverance.  On top of it all, the weather was bad with heavy, wet snow falling and icy road conditions.  Carl came all the way from Nenana, about a 70-mile drive, only to get stuck in the driveway a few minutes before the start.  Fifteen minutes later, though, we had him parked at the mic on the way to collecting valuable contacts.  Elaine's 6-dB signal booster (her YL voice) drew in stations from all over North America.  Here she smiles having just snagged Iowa:

The method was mostly S&P, but a handful of brief runs boosted the rate and final score to best 2008 and 2009 results.  I discovered donuts were powerful motivators.  Coffee was the  lubricant of choice, and KL1BE's tasty meals provided the necessary calories to keep reaching for the elusive clean sweep against all probability.

The consensus is, as usual, we need an amplifier.  Santa, can you hear us through the pileup?

The Fall Guy Discovers 12 Meters

This being fall, we Interior Alaskans find a chill in the air, leaves long gone from the trees, and a few inches of snow on the ground.  October and November bring the fall CQWW and ARRL Sweepstakes contests wafting through the air with a tiny hint of better propagation, and the combination is potent.  Adrenaline starts to pump most weekends.

This is a slow weekend, contest-wise.  I got up early and knocked off a few OK and OM stations in their DX contest using a rough path over the pole on 20 meters.  I called CQ high in the band and had a lot of fun working QRP station N7LWF, who blew me a way with 1.5 watts thanks to grayline enhancement as the sun rose here.  When the European nighttime fell and signals faded, I tuned around after a hearty breakfast and found some DX activity (including the YJ0HA Vanuatu DXpedition) on 15 meters.

Except for a lot of past CW action on 30 meters, I'm a relative newcomer to the WARC bands, so I decided to move on up to 12m to see what the propagation may be like.  The station is limited on 17 and 12, because I have to use a tuner with the C3 tri-banders to punch out a signal.  Just before lunch, I dropped a CQ, and pretty soon I had a decent pileup.  Ten has been largely dead from KL for a long time, so this was downright exciting.  I seemed to work stations in regular increments of distance; i.e., W6/W7, Texas, and Florida, all at the same time with nothing in between.  Allen N5XZ/KL5DX came on frequency from his Texas QTH and convinced me to try 10m CW.  It was tough going, but the path was there enough to complete the exchange.  Afterward, I went back to 12m and tried SSB for a bit more fun.  Let me say that I'm impressed.  Another band has life in it when the usual haunts fail to get the heart pumping.

Mini Stack Match Arrives

A box from Array Solutions perched on my desk one morning a few months ago.  I was excited.  KL2R had just taken delivery of a Mini Stack Match:

The Stack Match principle allows you to phase two, three, or more antennas while maintaining a constant 50 ohms.  A number of configuration options are available, including both-in-phase (BIP) and both-out-of-phase switching for ultimate stack flexibility.  Being on a tight budget, I opted to purchase a two-antenna Mini Stack Match (BIP only) and use 2x1 coaxial switches to switch it in and out of line.

Although I've had limited time to test it, its value became immediately obvious.  I had begun to notice the 20 and 15m paths to East Coast stations were, at times, slightly skewed to the north instead of the normal due east, thus making it difficult to work those stations using the usual NA C3 at 55 feet.  This was particularly true in the early morning and evening. The European C3 pointed north was somewhat better, but I found it frustrating to have to toggle back and forth between the tri-banders to get them to hear me.  When I hooked up the MiniStack Match, voila!  The combination of using both antennas in the stack saved time and trouble of switching, and I could work across the entire US and Canada much more easily.  Another advantage I have found is that I no longer miss those brief openings to EU and AF when I happen to be running US/VE stations on 20m.  It's the best money I have spent in a long while.

All Those JARL Awards

I happened to mention to Ken W6HF on Saturday morning that I was kind of interested in seeing which JARL awards KL2R qualified for.  After over 22k contacts in four years, I had quite a few cards from JA stations.  I had read some information previously about the various Japanese awards.  They were a bit of an enigma, and I had already started to comb out the JAs from the boxes of KL2R QSL cards.  Before you knew it, we were sorting and entering JA QSL information from 350 cards.  Saturday became a blur of on-air action as well as (mostly) playing CSI to figure out JCC, JCG, and other codes.  Ken and I became far more enlightened than we ever thought about Japanese administrative districts, from prefectures to -kus. 

In the end, KL2R remains two prefectures short of worked all.  I have a QSL in the mail to hopefully close one gap in Kyoto.  JCC is a slam-dunk.  Many challenges lie ahead.

Suddenly, I find myself a it obsessed with paper collecting.  DXCC mixed and DXCC 20m are awarded, and various certificates roll in for the usual contests.  Now I am looking at various bits of glitter to be added to the shack walls.  In part, building and operating KL2R has been a Herculean effort by N1TX and KL1JP, and the results speak for themselves.  Those CQ certificates and ARRL plaques on the wall demonstrate the payoff in a well-rounded combination of technology and teamwork.  Now I wonder what other achievements we have made, so I dig, as a paper-chaser does.

NCDXF Beacons: 17 Meters Shows Promise

I have heard Lower 48 hams extol the fun of the 18 MHz band, and I must confess being a bit intrigued.  Several weeks ago I heard a brief European opening in the middle of local night, and I worked a JA at the same time.  Twenty meters was essentially lifeless, and 15m was DOA.  During the solar upset earlier in the month, I was surprised to hear VK/ZL phone transmissions on 17 meters when little could be detected elsewhere.  I decided to download Faros by VE3NEA and spend a few days monitoring the high-band beacon network sponsored by the Northern California DX Foundation.  

The following 24-hour sample shows some surprising (to me) openings on 17 meters.  The vertical axis on each sub-graph represents frequency in MHz.  The horizontal axis shows time starting at 0000Z and major ticks every three hours.  The boxes represent time slots for each beacon, and colors range from dark blue to orange and red to indicate increasing signal strength.  paths are fairly weak.  (Some beacons, like 4U1UN, are off the air.)

(Almost) All Quiet on the Northern Front

This past week brought a C-class x-ray flare, and the sun sent a coronal mass ejection hurtling toward earth.  The HF prognosis for the first week of August was poor, indeed.  There would be a "solar tsunami" arriving around August 3rd, according to one local headline, while worldwide there were predictions of fantastic auroral displays.  The six-meter gang at the mid-latitudes must have been drooling with anticipation, but HF radio operators inferred a dismal time on the bands.  The HAARP riometer looked grim.  Kp was at 5 and headed upward, plus the aurora scale was pegged at 9.

I would have written off the radio and cleaned the cameras to prepare for the northern lights had it been a week or two later.  The skies at night are still too light to see aurora at 65 North, though.  Instead, I fired up the rig to see what, if anything, I could hear during the onslaught.

I chose to explore 20m around 0200Z, and I heard W1AW with code practice almost ESP-weak.  No other CW signals were audible.  I switched to the 85-foot C3 pointed to Europe, and I noticed  a surprising number of apparently European PSK31 signals.  Although the signals were moderately strong, I could see on the waterfall an unsettling dance of flutter and Doppler.  DM780 could just make out a few prefixes and other tantalizing details.  PSK31 on trans-polar paths is notoriously susceptible to corruption.  I switched to the North American C3 and could begin to see (and decode) several US stations, but copy was still rough. With the Kp index so high, I had little hope of them being able to hear me.  Years of experience have taught me that much.

I quickly scanned the higher bands up through six meters.  I was surprised to hear some weak but readable ZL/VK SSB on 17 meters, but otherwise, they were dead.  Back on 20, I watched the digital waterfall display and saw slightly improving conditions towards the States.  Two very clean PSK signals appeared, which turned out to belong to a VK and a 3D2, both 90-95% readable.  The north-south route was less impacted by the ionospheric turbulence overhead, and I believe grayline enhancement helped things along.  (A short time later I had a nice chat with Aisea 3D2AA and proved the reasonably good path was two-way.)

The signal ID function in DM780 then reported an Olivia 500/16 signal just up the band.  I could barely discern the smeared, faint tones on the waterfall, but I tuned up and changed modes to see what I could monitor.  Lo and behold, it was Peter VE7NBQ having a ragchew with a W5.  Peter had told me of the impressive performance of Olivia earlier in the week, and now I am convinced. As the tones faded from view on my screen, characters continued to print a clean QSO. Olivia's forward error correction makes it far superior to PSK31, and perhaps even CW under some circumstances.  I will have to explore more.