Four weeks without a single QSO – it’s hard. Especially when ON4BHQ reports daily what he worked which is what I missed. And with a few DXpeditions on the air (HK0NA, VP6T and TN2T), it was itching. Especially TN2T since I know many of the operators in person. So on Friday up went the tower and along the low band wires and the WARC antenna. Then off to the shack. Propagation seemed not too good. But what really disgusted me was the behaviour of the DXers in the pile ups. And if not in the pile up, it’s on the DX QRG. The same shit over and over again. The TN2T boys seem to be plagued by carriers and tuners on their QRG.

I admit: at least two times I was the monkey keying simplex. I find the K3 very vague about being split mode or not. I blame the 2^nd RX. You hear the pile up and the DX in each one ear, but sometimes the rig is reset to simplex (after a keyboard triggered QSY). Then I feel bad adding to the mayhem. But it’s an accident. What can’t be said about tuning right on the DX or deliberate jamming.

At one point there was one guy constantly sending ‘NW MORE QRM NW MORE QRM’ (on top of VP6T I believe). I can understand the frustration. We all have lost a QSO or missed a confirmation because some idiot was keying or talking right when you THINK the DX calls you. ‘Abyssus abyssum invocat’ as we say, it’s only human and sometimes hard to resist to seek vengeance.

I gave myself the weekend to work the expeditions on 80 and 40 CW. I forgot that the contest was SSB so I had to adjust the 80m vertical for the SSB subband. So I had only one sunrise. On Friday night things were a ‘no go’ so I ended the day with an hour in the CQ 160 CW contest. Made 105 QSO in 1 hour but only EU. I think the DX days of 160 are numbered with the rising SFI. I set the alarm to 06.00 utc on Saturday. I heard VP6T on 80m. Weak but workable and he was working z14 EU. Then he quit. Chance missed. HK0NA was VERY loud which attracted a huge crowd as well. Didn’t work them either. Here’s what I did work:

• HK0NA: 10 CW, 30 CW, 40 CW
• VP6T: 20 CW, 40 CW
• TN2T: 10 CW + SSB, 15 CW + SSB, 20 CW + SSB, 40 CW + SSB, 17 CW

Then came the UBA DX SSB contest. I don’t like this one as opposed to CW but somehow I feel obliged to participate. The XYL doesn’t understand that. Why do something you don’t like? Yes why? It’s the timing (January, many other contests) and the mode that make it less appealing to me. Although it seems the contest had better ‘ation’ this year. Better propagation. Better participation. The operator on the contrary lacked concentration. My wife’s due to give birth to our second kid this very weekend so it could be that I had to quit the chair right in the middle of the contest…

It didn’t happen (still waiting!) but the contest result is only so-so. I took many breaks and a long nap. Before going to sleep on Sunday morning I spent another hour in the CQ 160 CW contest. This time I was able to cross the EU borders. VY2ZM (loudest), a couple of East Coasters and UP2L and P33W for Asia. I heard Nebraska covered under a loud EU. If not for the EU I might have worked a new state on 160. There were several weak Americans that I could hear in between CQ’s of loud EU’s on top of them. Useless to call them because the EU always thought I was calling him. I was thinking to drop 160 in the ARRL CW contest next month. But there you go: it’s still possible to work transatlantic DX on 160 with my poor Top Band antenna. And each QSO there is a possible multiplier! I must say these were the weakest USA signals I heard on 160 since 2009.

Saturday’s sunrise was a big zero on 80m SSB in the UBA contest. Suddenly HK0NA was spotted right beside me. Loud! He was listening ‘3801 and also 3798’. But I didn’t get through the packet spot’s induced pileup. It was useless to listen on 80 CW since the antenna was shortened for SSB.

Of course there was the traditional clash with the British rag chewers. Not the Germans this time. The Brit came whining that I totally devastated the American he was talking to ‘1kHz up’. I had asked 3x if the frequency was free, honestly I didn’t hear him nor the American so I fired a CQ. But apparently I was QRM’ing him. I left him whining on my QRG and QSY’d 1kHz up where he said he was before. There I asked 3x if the frequency was free (no reply of course) and started CQ’ing. He came back and was not amused when I told him again that here too no one replied to my triple fold question if the QRG was free. He concluded that “there is something wrong with your ear then”. He didn’t share my sense of humour when I replied my rear is working just fine. Oh well, ragchewers and their shoe size conversations…

It became clear that I needed to move up the bands for the UBA contest. I had a huge gap on 20m where nothing worked on Saturday. I filled the gap and then did the 10/15/20 shuffle for the remaining hours. I was glad when it was over. I went outside and took tower and antennas down again. Three weeks until ARRL CW. Three weeks that will be full of anything but ham radio…

I met him in person in Friedrichshafen 2005 or 2006. We both attended the BCC Contest Dinner. It was a hot evening and a lot of people went outside for some fresh air. There we met and started talking about who knows what. Contesting, DX and antennas for sure. I remember him as a warm, open friendly guy. While we were chatting, his wife was taking pictures left and right.

A couple of weeks later, there was an envelope in my mailbox. He had a picture of us both printed and mailed it to me. I didn’t ask for the picture to be taken, I never asked for the picture to be sent to me. He just did it. The picture has been on the shack’s wall ever since. In fact, it’s even the only picture that is there (don’t have any other ‘famous ham shots’). I always was glad to work him and say a quick hello. That’s what our hobby is all about.

Thanks a lot P43JB for the 45 CW QSO in the last ten years. RIP OM Joop!

Sometimes you discover nice QSL cards in a big stack, cards that bring back memories. Sometimes you discover a lot of bad QSL cards in a big stack. Not in log, bad date, bad mode.

Sometimes ON4BHQ links to a bargain. This time he points out that the ALS-1300 seems to have dropped in price as quoted on a German distributor’s site. Less than 2600 Euro for 1200W solid state / no tune is a good price-to-power ratio. Too bad quite a few reviews on eHAM say it stinks. No sign of the ACOM 800W SS amp so far either… Speaking of which: maybe it’s not good to be an early adopter. Let the masses discover the design flaws and buy a revised model later on.

Sometimes you just got to have patience and process another few hundred QSL cards.

I did a final inspection of the tower and rotator on Friday and got a kind helping hand (in fact a pair of them) to put it back on track on Saturday. It was pretty cold but sunny and dry. I had to climb up two times and put on gloves the second time. The aluminium was so cold! And I really don’t like climbing towers.

I also collected three years worth of ‘buro QSL’. Three shoe boxes. Not for infant beach slippers, no: adult boots size 45. I’ve already done 2/3^rd of one box. That’s almost 700 confirmed QSO that need to be QSL’ed. For 2/3^rd of the smallest box so in the end it’ll be a few thousand *sigh*.

I loved QSL when I started in the hobby. Everyone remembers the first DX cards.  Over the years I’ve come to hate it. It costs money and even worse: a lot of time. Face it: almost all of our QSL cards are stored away in boxes, cases, cabinets etc. And what do we do with it? With LotW no sane person still sends actual cards to the ARRL, does he? If I ever need to retrieve a card for say Nebraska on 10m CW, I’ll need to go through ALL cards to find it. Knowing Murphy a few thousand cards will pass through my hands then.

I admit that it is a part of our hobby. Another legacy from a previous century, just like the antique CW that I love so much. So now I’m filling up the second plastic box (yup, this one) to put it back into the storage room. I remember the day that Scott W4PA (the world’s most read contest blog before he quit the scene out of the blue) wrote about throwing away thousands of QSL cards. All his cards into the bin, all at once. Good riddance! He coined the term ‘blasphemy’ and I felt like that when I read it so I will never throw away all those cards – for now. Gosh, it’s more than three years already that W4PA’s contesting log burned out. How time flies!

Back to the pile of QSL. The plan was to use GlobalQSL: upload ADIF, click here and click there – done. And pay over 100 US$ per 1000 cards. That will cost me a few hundred Dollars for this QSL-batch. Alternative is buy the cheapest of the cheap cards from UX5UO (who offers very good price/quality). Why buy full cover glossy cards when they end up in boxes never to see the light again? The price of the QSL cards is in favour of UX5UO, but then I need to buy labels, print them and stick then on the cards. More work! As if they smelled it, ON5UR QSL Print Service sent out a promo-mail today announcing even nicer cards. Max ON5UR’s cards are VERY nice and ultra high quality  but too expensive for me to buy them – on principle. My card only ends up in your box never to be seen again, right?

I’ll just plough my way through the three boxes and see how many cards I need. Then decide what to do. Some people knit a sweater next to the fireplace, I just process the QSL you sent me. No, I don’t throw them in the fireplace.  :)

Clearly the Create (type RC5-B3, the heavy duty model) rotator’s mounting flanges got somewhat loose so they lost grip on the 50 mm aluminum tube (10 mm wall thickness). I climbed the tower yesterday afternoon when storm #1 was gone. You can see the ‘skid marks’ of the mast’s tube wrubbing the clamps. Still the clamps have enough grip to rotate the antennas even in the wind. I’m kinda lucky the mast slipped in the rotator. If not the motor’s gears might have been destroyed. The problem is that to tighten the flanges again, the inner section of the tower needs to be cranked up. You cannot put a wrench on the bolts when the inner section is nested into the two outer sections.

As per OptiBeam’s directions, I have always turned the antenna’s elements into the wind so it’s the yagi’s boom that takes the wind load. This has never been a problem in the past. Until now. I draw two conclusions. First: this is one helluva storm with the strongest winds I have ever witnessed since moving in here in 2003. Second thought: once or twice a year when the tower is tilted over, I check and tighten all the bolts. But since installing the tower and antennas in October 2004, I have never touched the rotator clamp’s bolts (because they’re hard to reach, as mentioned above). So these bolts will now also be tightened when I do a checkup. I might as well buy a tube wrench for this.

ON7RU said that sometimes people put a bolt through the mast and the clamps to join them. This way the two can’t move relative to each other and the tube can’t slip on the rotator. I wonder if this is a good idea since the torque on the rotator might become very high.

Another thing that crossed my mind is that it would be handy if the rotator’s controller had an offset adjustment. That way I could readjust the bearing and calibrate north regardless of the potmeter’s position. The Green Heron controller has this function. But it’s an expensive piece of hardware while the original Create controller is working fine. And it doesn’t tighten the bolts either.

If 80-100 km/h wind gusts can do this (and other damage all over Belgium), I do not want to see what a real hurricaine or a tornado would do to our house and the antennas… The horror!

The dipole is still parallel to the 20m driver. So it isn’t that one antenna moved away from the other. And what are the odds of both antennas slipping over the mast exactly the same amount? It’s not that the rotator is broken: it still holds the antennas still when powered off and still moves the antennas when I move the controller to turn the antennas. Only: it’s 90° shifted. So it seems that the mast / tube turned inside the rotator clamps / flanges when twisted by the wind. But the clamps still hold the tube to turn the antennas. Strange.

No real damage but it’ll be a pain to fix this. I don’t think I can do this when the tower is tilted over. Not in a hurry either because a second similar storm is announced for tomorrow night / Thursday. Great! Real damage is reported on Twitter by ON7RU whose Hex Beam took a fatal beating. I hope all other amateurs in Belgium got away? But this storm must have taken out some more antennas, it’s hardly impossible that no one else has lost something. I knew this was bound to happen: we got away without a real storm for too long. And since this ‘winter’ is far too warm (+10° on average), all we get from over the Atlantic is rain and heavy winds and the occasional storm.

Breakdown by band

As you can see 2011 easily tops 2007, the previous record I didn’t expect to break at all. But look at the numbers on 12m and 10m and especially the evolution over the years. Clearly in correlation with sunspots and SFI. The following image clearly shows I am still a CW lover. The boost in SSB numbers is due to serious efforts in WPX SSB and WW SSB.

Breakdown by mode

Clearly not into digital. I made 154 QSO in CQ WW RTTY SB10 – the start of the 10m resurrection, and worked ST0R on 3 bands RTTY. Still no interest in PSK or other PC modes which all seem utterly boring. It ain’t CW folks. I don’t know where that 13 for AM comes from. Now, the question is: with much more QSO in the log, did I spend much more time in the shack?

Breakdown by days

The answer is: yes but not much. I know there were days, especially in autumn, that I really wanted to get a taste of the improved conditions. In years before I might have supressed the urge to go to the shack by telling myself that there is nothing to be worked because of the absence of sunspots. That does not work anymore. Over the last weeks I have noticed that the higher bands are open most of the time. Some days better than others, sometimes a solar phenomenon works with us or against us. BTW: one ‘QRV day’ means a unique date on which at least one QSO is made. So this can be anything between a 24h contest period with 1500 QSO or just one or two QSO in a few minutes that day.

The bad thing with seeing these numbers (the curious ON5ZO) and knowing myself (the competitive ON5ZO) is that I will want to try to do better this year (the never satisfied ON5ZO). That said, I already know now that 2012 will have some ‘occurences’ that will severely may slightly limit my operating time, and maybe even temper my eagerness to be on the air.

The past year 2011 once again was a busy but fun year. ON4CCP and I managed to synchronize our agendas for another CW fieldday. The addition of the 40m rotary dipole in February (tnx agn ON4BHQ for the helping hand) proved to be a good thing, and the homebrew WARC inverted V compensated the loss of the trapped rotary dipole. My UBA software version 2 took a lot of lunch time and burning midnight oil to get it done but I’m glad I rewrote it. Checking the logs is also time consuming but much less with version 2. Almost ready for 2012. The ramp up of Cycle 24 after summer was what we’ve all been waiting for. More fun, more activity and the resusciation of 10/12m. And for myself I’ll remember my personal bests in both CQ WW contests. The only thing I regret not having done is the processing of almost 3 years of ‘buro QSL’. That is n° 1 on my to do list of HAM side projects (making QSO has absolute priority): collect my boxes full of incoming from the club’s manager and answer all the QSL cards.

To those reading and following this: all the best in the new year. Good health, love and friendship and a steady income is what I wish for all of us with excellent HF conditions to boot. Let’s enjoy the Greatest Hobby on the World in 2012. 73!

I added a piece of solid state electronics to the shack. Not a solid state amp but a solid state disk. I replaced the SATA hard disk in the Win7/64 machine with a SSD (solid state drive). People tell me it boots lightning fast. Well, I don’t notice any difference. I must admit that with the SATA drive Win7 was a fast booter already compared to the old XP machine or theVista laptop. With the SSD I think it boots just as fast. Probably the mother board is too old and does not support the fast data rates of the SSD which is SATA3 and I’m pretty sure the MB is not SATA3. The Win7 Performance Index took a leap from 4.9 (conventional SATA disk) to 7 (SDD) so the OS itself does notice a faster disk. I used the freeware XXClone to make an image of the C-drive to the SSD and made it bootable which saved me the trouble of reinstalling OS, drivers and all the software. With the Win7 install DVD in recovery mode, I was able to fix a MBR issue which is another thumbs up for Win7. I never pulled that off with XP.

Another ‘end of year tradition’ is the RAEM contest, or at least show up for a couple of QSO. Unfortunately this year it was on Christmas Day. That made it a bit of a pain to participate but I managed to play for a few  hours (250 QSO or so). I think this is the most fun you can get next to the CW QTC in WAE CW. I like the long alphanumeric exchange, preferably sent not too slow. Distance based scoring adds to the fun: a JA or ZL boosts the score as well as an ice cold Siberian UA0. Next year it’s on December 23, I might as well go for a full time effort then.

Another classic ON5ZO end of year activity is trying to work DX on 30m at my sunset. Usually I work a bunch of W6/W7 a little after their sunrise, which is my sunset in winter. Today was the first day I actually tried but it was a bust. I worked Nevada, Washington and Oregon and if I recall well also one Californian. Hmm, as I type this I am thinking it’s not too bad and certainly better than nothing. But I seem to remember working much more of these every day the past years. I hope to be QRV the coming days to check if the sunspots also ruin 30m. Or does the better propagation on the higher bands draw the people away from 40/30m? I also got called by a JA and regular VU2PTT called me too with a nice signal. Hey, it wasn’t so bad then: about 10 real DX in just over 100 QSO 

************************* Not In Log *************************

7035 CW 2011-05-28 1413 OQ5M           494 F8IDR         0030
7018 CW 2011-05-28 1905 OQ5M           639 F8IDR         0026

What the @$^%#??? You should know that my LCR/UBN is always very clean. I log very little errors and I only log when I’m 100% sure.  So F8IDR calls me twice, 5 hours in between, with only a handful of contacts judging by the numbers – and the first QSO has a higher number than the second.

Open logs are a good thing. Here’s the F8IDR log. OQ5M is not in there so at least the log checking is OK. At 14.13 op F5XX was taking a 90 minute break. At 19.05 he was on 20m. The log is submitted as Single Op (F5XX) HP Assisted.

Question arises: WHO is F8IDR? Unknown to QRZ.

However, Google ‘F8IDR’ and I end up here: ‘WPX par F8IDR en photos!’ Clearly single op, no? There is a Picassa album entitled ‘2011-05-28 WPXparF8IDR‘ here that once again shows a Single Op activity.

Google also learns us that “L’IDRE participera avec l’indicatif F8IDR au contest WPX HF (http://www.cqwpx.com/), le week-end prochain au centre de vacances de GUCHEN qui se trouve dans la vallée de Saint Lary. Bernard F5XX et l’équipe du DX gang gère la partie technique avec F6KPH de Tarbes. Pour l’instant 18 inscrits à cette participation: F5PU, F5SAW, F6KPH, F5LEW, F5RVI, F5SZR, CHRISTINE, F5AUB, F1NHN et MCH , F6GXY et M, F5XX, F4ENH , F6BKB, F5BTH, F6HED et YL, C RIVAYRAN ……“.

Luckily French is my second language after Dutch so it’s easy to understand that Single Op in English means at least 18 people in French  :o)   Yes things are not always what they seem to be – or in contesting lingo: what they’re claimed to be. I’m curious to see if this log will indeed end up as SO. I recently made a posting about assumed unclaimed cluster assistance by Belgian operators (more than one). I decided to put it in the trash bin because I think ON’s just don’t care. Maybe the F’s don’t care either?

Now the time had come for the ARRL 10m contest. A forgotten contest, but propagation on 10m in CQ WW SSB reminded us! So I wanted to play in this one too. I also wanted to use a second antenna fixed to EU: the 3 element monobander that I dragged from under a thick layer of dust (literally). With CQ WW and being ill, the project hadn’t advanced so on Friday I took the opportunity to finish it. You know how it goes. I used a different design (wideband in stead of narrowband CW only) which in turn changed the feedpoint impedance. So I needed to make another hairpin. All things went quite well, I got the yagi assembled just when it became dark. Which means: “too late”. I still wanted to test it and put up the base for my push up mast, but without the counter weight. Since the yagi was only on a tube two meters high, it didn’t fall. The analyser showed resonance around 27 MHz. Ouch, wrong band! Pruning the hairpin shifted the SWR dip into the right direction. I wanted to make sure I was seeing things without coupling to the ground, so I added another tube. Bad idea without the counter weight. The feedline pulled the boom away from the center of gravity and dragged the yagi to the ground. Result: a bent reflector and a frustrated ON5ZO. I should have known that rushing things is a bad way of working, especially doing this work outside in the dark. I straightened the bent element, took away the feedline and called it a day. The contest will be done with the high tribander only… During the contest I wondered if a lower antenna would have helped for EU.

I started around 8 AM utc on Saturday, which seemed late. Yet the band was not really open and I had a slow start. It quickly became clear that propagation this weekend is not to be compared to the fantastic conditions in CQ WW SSB. Right after our local noon,USAcame through and the rate went up. I wanted to keep a balance between both modes. I tried to keep the number of contacts in SSB and CW equal, as well as the multipliers. I managed to do this, with some nice rates – but nothing shocking. Around 1600 utc signals started to fade and the band soon closed. No real W6/W7 openings. Maybe better luck on Sunday?

Not really. Same scenario. Slow morning, hope for JA that didn’t come. Only one or two for the multiplier. Chase mults. Wait forUSAto come through in the afternoon. Have a good hour or two withUSA. Feel the band closing. Sweep the band for the last contacts. Finished around 1730 utc.

Objectively spoken this was a great contest compared to what we’ve seen after 2002. But if you compare to the conditions in both CQ WW earlier this year… Oh well, good times were had. DX was worked. What else would we do on a weekend?