ON5ZO ~ OQ5M

Got bored with the blue after almost 2 years… Hope you like it. Activity on 30m was so huge this morning (04.00 utc) that I found the time to fiddle with the looks of these pages.

Rounding up the holidays, finishing the construction projects, cleaning up the mess and get the low band antennas up again. That’s what ON5ZO does the coming weeks.

In the mean time I’ve downloaded and installed a demo of nGenLog. I haven’t done much with it but it looks OK. Will it satisfy my logging needs? More on that later.

Yesterday I had a spare PC running the Windows 7 RC installer. That went pretty smooth and on first impression I like it better than Vista. With a medium-spec AMD ‘monocore’ CPU and only 1 gig of RAM, it works reasonably fast. Heck, for this setup it runs very good. I managed to install N1MMLogger and the microHAM USB Device Router but I haven’t tested these ‘live’. Something for Fall when the days are too short to sit on the terrace… Anyway the ancient VB6 N1MM code runs on the futuristic Windows 7. I wonder how long this will still be the case.

I made some changes for the UBA Low Band contest too in the N1MM-code. There were some errors last year (remember?). I made a test build for the contest sponsor / log checker but haven’t heard from him. I think it’s working OK now. I don’t really like doing this. The code is written by REAL programmers and it’s a very complex project. On the other hand, I have learned a lot by analyzing the code. Knowledge that I have applied to my own software projects. Those have also been put ‘on hold’ for the summer.

There was a request to add the Belgian Mill Award contest (BMA) to the N1MMLogger code. I hate turning people down but I will have to this time. I think this is one silly contest with way too many parameters and categories and almost no participants. And I simply don’t have the time.

Yes I hate paper QSL. I made that clear in my previous post. More precise: I hate tons of QSL cards coming in that need to be processed, confirmed and answered. It’s not even the cost, it’s the time for such a boring job. Anyway, sometimes a card can be nice. Like getting a QSL card for a new state on a rather difficult band…

On December 24, 2003 I worked K6NA who is in California, on 80m. I don’t work into W6 on 3.5MHz on a regular base. I’ve got the proof here: MP3. That was a pretty good QSO for a Christmas present. I used a barefoot (100W) TS-850 and a 80-20-15-10 parallel (fan) dipole antenna, with the feedpoint only 10m high and the ends only 3m above the ground. Yes, the early days @ ON5ZO. It was a clear case of grey line propagation at my sunrise and I was so glad to work him. California on 80m with my small setup! I sent my QSL card with the appropriate bribe green stamps but no card was ever seen. I wrote him an email with the MP3 attached and his reply was that he was behind in direct QSL but that he could not remember having seen my card. K6NA is esteemed pretty low since then.

Today there was a direct card in the mail. The address said ‘CA’. Yet another 20m QSO with California. Yet another fellow contester in need for ON. I open the envelope and look at the card. It says “3.5 MHz”. Huh??? Yes, an 80m CW QSO with California finally confirmed with a good old paper QSL card. It was a QSO made in WAE CW only 8 days ago. I never suspected a W6 QTH behind a K0 call… But there you go. Our hobby is full of surprises. Thanks to the OM for the QSO and the QSL.

I love LotW for WAS/DXCC and I also upload to eQSL to minimize the paper QSL. I hate having to process all those paper QSL cards. Last week I went through a dozen direct cards and email QSL requests, today I handled a box of paper cards. The box stood here untouched since January. And there is another box waiting for me… I remember when I started on HF. I QSL’ed every QSO and was eager to get a stack of cards. When I became more active it was fun to see the growing pile of ON5ZO QSL cards when they were being sorted at the weekly club night. But the more contacts you log, the more cards that come in. Apart from the budget, it takes a lot of time to process the cards and answer them. Time that can not be spent doing something more worthwhile. Some say it’s a part of the hobby, but this part has become a boring burden for me. That’s why I keep postponing the job. Nevertheless, although it takes (quite a long) time before I get to it, I finally reply all those who send a card. Luckily there is GlobalQSL now which saves on printing and sticking labels.

The box was full of the usual suspects: DL, W, JA – nothing spectacular. Except for one card: BD3BSV for a 80m QSO. I don’t have many cards from China, but this certainly is a new 80m DXCC confirmation!

Other than that, I sent my WAE log in, uploaded to LotW and eQSL and sorted my stock of coaxial plugs and connectors. I’ve run out of chassis PL, so I need to make up a shopping list for Belgium’s biggest ham fest end of September. I booked my seat to go with ON3DSJ and ON4BHQ. Waiting for a confirmation…

It has been quite a while since I did a serious full time effort to put down a good score. I wasn’t planning on doing so either this year. Face it: WAE has everything to be a stupid contest:

• Yet another contest? Again?
• Summer propagation: lots of QRN on the bands.
• Summer season: why not go to the beach?
• Only DX to be worked. With these conditions?
• Low rates and not too many DX active, only the usual suspects.
• QTC? What QTC?

However I like WAE CW a lot.

• Yet another contest? Hooray!
• Still plenty of DX to be worked. I worked PY and LU on 80m, as well as W/VE and numerous others on 40.
• I hate the beach.
• Copying CW QTC makes up for the lower rates and is a fun thing to do.

I set myself a modest target: 300 QSO, 500 QTC and try to be Country Winner for Belgium. I needed to regain the fun in contesting, especially after what happened in EUHFC the week before. Still finding myself without an antenna for 80m and 160m, and still no control cable for the 2el 40m switched array, I wasn’t sure what to do.

I woke up on Saturday and looked at the online DX cluster. I didn’t have the feeling I was missing too much. The XYL and I left for a day trip and we returned by 15.00 UTC which is 17.00 local. I had made up my mind. Crank up the tower, put up only one vertical dipole for 40m, make the 80m wire from the week before a little longer. No 160 in this contest so I didn’t need to worry about Top Band. At 16.11 UTC I was in the shack and ready to roll. I missed out more than 12 hours already so no need to plan any breaks, just rock ‘n roll away.

Less than 9 minutes later I was already copying QTC. Luckily NY4A was willing to hand ‘m out this early in the contest. I stayed on 20 and much to my surprise a lot of DX stations were already giving QTC. The years before you got a standard ‘LTR’ or ‘QRU’ before Sunday. I tried 15m but it wasn’t a big hit.

I can be brief about the rest of the contest. I slept a few hours at night. Later on I tried 80m which was very disappointing. It wasn’t the antenna this time. It was a noisy summer 80m band with lots of static and QRN and not too many stations QRV on 3.5 MHz. At night it was 40m that provided the contacts and during the day it was 20m. I tried 15m off and on and on 10m it was even worse than last year. It was good to work a VU2 there, and being called by P43JB was the cherry on top. I managed to work K1LZ on 10m with the beam slightly off bearing (260° i.s.o. about 300°). N3RD was very weak but we managed. NN3W called too but the QSB drowned the weak signal completely. JH3PRR was V.E.R.Y. loud on 40m. I think I heard him on 80m and a VK3 there too (after seeing both spotted), but nothing workable so I didn’t waste any time there.

I dug it out to the end on 20m, the band that was open to the very end. Some stations kept coming back to get rid of their QTC. Bring it on boys! I appreciated N4YDU’s effort to get some more QSO’s and then return to give me a series of 10 QTC. I guess Nate wanted to make up his “SRI – QRU” some moments before. Not shooting the messenger here but he sent me a QTC with OP4K who handed out QSO #678. I hope Joe didn’t work too many QTC, otherwise my Country Winner target is not met…

I had a great time and I’m totally relaxed after an enjoyable contest. I topped my targets. Fingers crossed for OP4K…

Throughout the contest, or at least the part I was active, I was thinking of The Simpson’s Comic Book Guy’s quote: “Worst episode ever”. This one was indeed my own worst episode ever!

A little history

I really should stop benchmarking my contesting to 2007. That was my best year. Everything worked out, many many QSO, high rates, good scores. And WX seemed to like contests. In EUHFC 2007 I made over 1200 QSO, starting with an 120 hr on 10m. Go figure. Then I sucked 15m dry etc etc – the callers kept calling and the rate meter got stuck at 100/hr.

Then came 2008. WX throughout the whole year was crap for my field day setup. Even so in EUHFC, read it here and here. I had a slow start then and I was thinking that it was bad for everyone. Later on 3830 I read that some guys easily got over 1100 QSO. I must have done something wrong?

Doing wrong isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Not drawing conclusions on the other hand, is. I did not check last year’s scores to see what I did wrong. The reason for that is simply a blatant lack of time. I’ve been working on a construction project outside for over 7 weeks now, and I simply didn’t have the time to play radio or prepare. Even worse: all my low band antennas were completely removed and put in a box because the garden became a construction site. I wasn’t around the shack since WPX CW. After missing IARU, RRTC and IOTA, I wanted to get on the air. I was am tired and not 100% motivated.

The day before

Mission statement: Put all ‘civilian’ jobs on hold and make sure the antennas work. I soldered a ‘remote tuning device’ for the MFJ automatic tuner that is now outside in a cabinet. It’s just a relay actuated from the shack, that shorts the terminals of the tune button in the tuner. So the tuner sees the closing relay as someone pushing the button. Modified the shack’s end of this interface. Put plugs on cables. All with instant success. I’m not new to soldering small circuits. But it all takes time.

I put the 2 elevated radials of the 40m vertical back in the trees. They were removed after tweaking the trees early in April. Go figure!

How to be QRV on 160/80 for a domestic EU contest? I have a 80m dipole in stock but I remember that the MFJ doesn’t tune it on 160m. Being desperate and in a hurry I fed the dipole with homebrew ladder line and a THE infamous current choke. No go on either band. Replaced ladder line with coax: OK on 80m, no go on 160m.

I cannot put up two dipoles on the tower, they interact. I need to go ‘cross polarized’. If I use my 160m dipole, I need to go vertical on 80m. But all the elevated radials for 160/80 are gone and still need to be replaced… It’s late in the evening already and I need to go and pick up my brother in law at the airport. So I just put up 2 elevated radials and hung up a wire from the tower. This got tuned on 80m but not on 160m. As expected: radials and wire too short. The MFJ-998 is a lazy SOB, it only tunes what’s easy.

The nice thing is that the WX cooperates. No snow, no wind, no rain. Warm, dry, sunny. It’s 21.30 local, I need to QRT / QSY and still haven’t got anything in the air for 40 and 160. Got home and in bed at 01.00 am.

The day of the contest

You could say that I have the Saturday morning to finish the antennas. But my neighbor asked me to give him a hand. It seems that everybody is into DIY construction these days. He has helped me out a couple of times so I didn’t want to let him down. So I got up at 07.00 and put up the 160m dipole and 40m vertical (radials already done on Friday). I was QRV @ neighbor at 08.30 and we made it a quickie. I was back home at 11.15. Plenty of time, and QRV with the OB11-3 @ 16m high, a vertical for 40m, something ‘verticallish’ for 80m and a coil loaded 160m dipole. I comforted myself that this is OK to make 1000 QSO in the UBA CW contest in 12h so it’ll be good for a EU-only contest.

The Contest itself

At 1200utc, 10m was dead. So I started on 15m. Twenty minutes later I was running 14017. Nuff said? How I hate this scenario. It’s been like that for what seems forever. Forget about 10, try 15, end up on 20… Last year it was the same story but then I reckoned it was bad for everyone. Later on that seemed not true.

After one hour and a half, the trend became clear. I took a break – motivation = zero. Put myself together and tried 10m which yielded 4 QSO and 15m for about 15 QSO then on the 20m again. After a ‘reasonable’ hour on 20 (86 QSO?), I tried 10m again with some more success. Then back to 15m for another round. Signals were VERY weak, except the Balkan guys. Then the obligatory round on 20m which was quite ok.

I took a second break, I had already given up being competitive and 45 minutes later I returned to 15m which was a little better than before. Then a dozen contacts on 10m and again to 15m. I skipped 20m because I had plenty of contacts there.

By 1900 utc it was time to hit 40m. I hoped for the rate to explode. It didn’t. After 46 QSO in 40 minutes, and a short S&P on 20m I tried my luck on 80m. That band was very noisy. No rate there either and poor signals. Maybe the antenna wasn’t what I needed for this contest? I worked 47 stations in 35 minutes. Around 20.20 utc I hit rock bottom. I was tired, didn’t have fun, it was hot in the shack and the forecast was “chances of thunderstorms over central Belgium”. I quit the contest and disconnected all antennas. I had a tremendous feeling of defeat because of the bad numbers on 10m and 15m, which I could not make up with these rates on the low bands.

The Day After

Anxiously reading 3830. I look at the scores in CW Only HP. How do they do that? Better stations? Better location? Better operators? Or better tactical insights in the EUHFC game? I did very well in my magic year 2007. Why can’t I do it again in ‘08 and ‘09? What has changed?

I need to see if I can get hold of some logs to see on what band those super scorers were and to compare that with my ‘strategy’. Still early for new year’s resolutions but here’s my primary goal for this winter and 2010: don’t start big projects, relax, prepare for contests, operate them. Full time.

BTW: There were no thunderstorms last night.

Or “The horror of QRO and extreme antenna impedances”. Last year I started dabbling with an MFJ-998 auto tuner for a 80/160m antenna. Loyal readers might remember I spent numerous hours (days!) changing everything to get it right. As it turned out the MFJ automatic antenna tuner doesn’t like currents on the coax shield. That drives the device nuts. Which in turn drives the operator nuts.

I tried adding coax choke baluns everywhere but to no avail. I finally added a homebrew monster current choke. Refresh memory here. The link shows a picture of the inside.

Today I opened up this balun to replace the M4 bolts with a sturdier M6 size bolt. The horror! I used pieces of glue gun sticks to keep the stack of ferrite cores in place. Where the wires touch this glue, it was molten. The wire is kept tightly wound around the cores by means of white cable ties. Where it touches the wires, they’re turning slightly brown. Conclusion: things must have gotten pretty hot in there.

Now what? I really do not want the mayhem to start all over again. That bloody antenna with the MFJ needs to work and stay working like it did after I added this choking balun. There are several options from here.

1. See no evil, hear no evil. Just close the box, put it up and play at maximum volume. Will it work with the new radial arrangement? Will it stay in business? Will the wire insulation melt and short out the whole shebang? The question is whether the heating came from a “one time only” failure or do the wires become too hot when using the antenna for too long?
2. Replace the homebrew unit with a commercial one that is rated 2 kW or more. DX Engineering sells one (link) and Balundesigns has one too (link). The price is right when you consider the parts. My home made choke uses a stack of 5 cores costing 10 Euro (14 US $) each. The problem is that shipping costs 35-40 US$ with the chance of a zealous customs officer picking out my parcel and charge me import duties. On top of the the added cost, this procedure will then delay the delivery of my order. Hence this option is not really attractive.
3. Replace the 1.5mm² wire pair with thin high quality Teflon coax. I’ve seen some examples that use this coax rather than simple copper wire. The copper wire’s insulation is rated x Volt, with x being a number I don’t know by heart but it certainly isn’t rated for extreme voltages that might occur with the extreme impedances the antenna exhibits under a kW load.
4. Redo the whole thing myself using a combination of more ferrite cores (100?) over the coax and use the QRO rated Teflon coax. Then add the reengineered balun with the copper wire replaced by this same Teflon coax. Approximate cost with DX-Wire stuff is 78 Euro ex S/H. Better safe than sorry and knowing this antenna / MFJ thing combo needing A LOT of choking impedance, this overkill scenario seems the way to go. Especially since I had quite some fun on 160m last winter. Presumably the coming winter will be Low Band Time again, so the bloody thing needs to work and keep working.

Stuff to think about…

• Coax switching mess almost cleared around the microHAM relay box.
• Yesterday the Big Yearly Total Thoroughly Cleansing of the shack. Found a few stacks of QSL cards which I’m not certain that I’ve processed yet. Plus a BIG box I definitely still need to process.
• Let amp run dry and have XP install yet another bunch of updates.
• Just tested all bands on the tower: 30m to 10m = all systems go!
• Bought bits and pieces plus odds and ends to connect coax in outdoors cabinet.

So I finally could actually make a QSO soon. I’ve been reading the new G3SXW book. Fun reading, I might reread his other books one of these days.

I’m contemplating to get rid of the shack’s USB mouse and PS/2 keyboard. Replace with QRO-proof 2.4 GHz stuff? People recommend Logitec products. The problem is all the ferrite and shielding around the cables that are on the desk. Apart from the looks, it limits the operating comfort. I really took a lot of necessary RFI measures. I tamed that beast so I’m a bit reluctant to change things. Each new antenna makes me cross my fingers because you never know how its radiation pattern affects the PC. Here’s a copy of a post I did two years ago. It tells how I solved my RFI issues.

The relays were clapping to the rhythm of the CW being sent. The problem was worst on 40+30m. Double six, 2 band decoders, BPF-600 filter set and reduction interface. This was a severe problem that even damaged the decoder’s hardware! Tripping point was also far less than 100W, I couldn’t even use the amp.
I already had a good grounding system – or at least I thought so. There were TENS of ferrite clamps everywhere too. But it didn’t help.
The D6 switch is driven by the band decoder by means of two 10m long shielded (!!) cables. The shield was grounded in the shack and on the Double6 by means of the edge of the DB25 connector. That turned out not to be enough. On both ends of the control cable, I removed some of the outer insulation to expose the cable’s shield and clamped a grounding strap on the shield. This strap went straight to the grounding posts in the shack and at the antenna side.
Better grounding of the control cable was the answer here and solved 90% or more of the relay "clapping" problems up to 1kW. So make sure that every DB25 has its edge connected to one of the ground pins, and that all shields are properly grounded. For  grounding wire, I use the shield of RG-213 leftovers to keep the inductance low or at least lower than a 2.5mm² wire.
Other RFI issue:
I had some problems not affecting microHAM devices but the PC. If I launched a CQ on 15m, I would lose mouse and keyboard control, which is quite painful in a contest. Or the kbd would send commands to the PC and thus the rig all by itself. On 10m exceeding 500W, WinXP was so kind as to tell me that "the computer is now shutting down". Here’s how I solved it and cured the remaining 10% of the problems.

• I took the shield of RG-217 (thick) coax and routed all mouse and keyboard cables with extensions cables through this. This makes a grounded shield for the PC control cables. A Faraday cage if you will. It was not easy to get the PS/2 or USB plugs through the lengthy shield but with some fiddling and harsh words, I managed to squeeze it through.
• I bought self adhesive aluminum tape. Where PS/2 and USB extension cables get together, I taped this connection RF tight. I also used this aluminum tape to tape all connections to the PC’s main board, to close all RFI holes. The backside of the keyboard too was covered with this tape, which was then used to connect this shield to the grounding wire (coax shield) slipped over the cable.
• The shielded mouse and kbd cables are then coiled up 2 to 3 times and I made a "binocular" core by means of ferrite clamp on cores. Where possible, I put ferrite clamps over all control cables. I use lots of ferrite chokes on the coax ( http://www.dx-wire.de/ ). The PC’s case is also grounded to the RF ground. Most if not all of my RFI problems are now gone.

Hope this helps?
73 de Franki ON5ZO

Yesterday my copy arrived after almost two weeks. UPS can ship a complete rig in under 48 hours from W6 to ON5ZO but regular mail takes 14 days to ship a small book from the UK to here. The stamp says June 30, it arrived July 15. I’m talking about “DX Delights”, the new book by Roger G3SXW. I really enjoyed reading his other two books published by Idiom Press so I’m looking forward to reading it. I made a deal with myself I will not read it before the construction job is done.

In fact, the job itself is done. In short we removed about 90m² of concrete and paving to replace it with new stones. Every drain pipe and inspection hole underneath was changed too. Along the way we changed the shape of the terrace so there was a huge gap to be filled with ground. I’m now leveling that and hope to throw some seeds on it so it’ll turn into a lawn soon. There is other fall out too. The garage door needed adjusting, the whole garage needs repainting, all my coaxes were removed and I will have to adjust the position of the cables and the microHAM relay box. Yesterday we (XYL + me) put a big wooden pole up that will suspend the low band vertical feed point and its elevated radials. Yes, this one. I poured a concrete base that will support a huge outdoor cabinet I picked up as surplus. The plan is to put the MFJ tuner in there so it sits as close to the low band antenna as possible.

All in all there is light at the end of the tunnel here, but it’s still very faint. I hope to make some QSO in the IOTA contest to see if all still works. Probably no activity before that…

As it turns out, I finished #8 in the 2009 ARRL DX CW contest (SOAB Assisted), which is #6 EU I believe. This link tells how it went. Results will be out soon.

The closest I came to enjoying the hobby was letting the amp run idle for a few hours this morning, launch the shack PC so XP can get its dose of updates after 6 weeks and reorder the coaxes in the garage. Reorder that is, not ‘connect to relay box’…