CQ 160-Meter Contest, CW - 2021
Call: K5ZD
Operator(s): K5ZD
Station: K5ZD
Class: Single Op HP
QTH: W1
Operating Time (hrs): 11
Summary:
Total: QSOs = 1054 State/Prov = 57 Countries = 43 Total Score = 366,400
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
Part time effort. Great fun.
Missed best times for DX on first night. Hit the jackpot on second night with 140 Europeans between 0600 and 0815z. That really helped the multiplier.
Local line noise most of the weekend. Some combination of power line buzz and electronic power supply growl. When it was gone, I could hear well. When it was on, the weak guys had to get lucky with QSB. I know there were a number of stations that called that I just couldn’t hear.
In December 2019 I started experimenting with a new open source software for doing FT8/FT4 called DigiRite. It uses the WSJT decoder, but with a completely different user interface optimized for contesting. It is also well integrated with Writelog.
I spent the first few months of 2020 doing lots of operation and beta testing. The dev team was very responsive and the app kept improving. There was also the fun of learning the FT modes. FT is like having a contesting going 24/7. The QSOs are short and there is plenty of activity on all bands all the time. I had a separate Writelog log going just for my digi QSOs and could see the number of contacts and DXCC on each band.
I was always pushing to see how to make rate on the FT modes. The only SO2R operation that I did was during the WW Digi DX Contest in August where I did about 16 hours trying to run with two radios. The rest of the year was a single radio. I did use my amp most of the time (except 30m).
My operation was sporadic through the year. There would be periods where I operated a lot and then weeks with nothing. I became unemployed in September and started operating more and at different times during the day. The country counts started to build. I focused on trying to see how many bands I could achieve DXCC. It was fun checking the bands, seeing new “multipliers”, and trying to figure out how to get their attention. With the whole world in quarantine, the digi frequencies were crowded!
I had not worked the WARC bands much before this year so one objective was to try to get my DXCC on those bands. I used my Cushcraft 40m beam on 17M. I couldn’t find an antenna that would work very well on 12M. I finished WAS on 30 meters and only need ME and NJ to finish it on 17M.
I made over 1500 QSOs in December. In part because I could see the country counts getting close to 6BDXCC. 80 meters was the last band to make it on the evening of Dec 30 when I worked VU, UK8, and HP to get to 100 (while missing ZF and FG).
You may be interested in what is possible chasing DX on the digi modes for a year.
According the Writelog, I had 228.5 hours of digi operation. (Rate 31.5/hour)
One of my resolutions for 2021 is to help repopulate the CW bands. While FT8 is teeming with activity, and you can always see when the band is open and who is on, it is sad to tune across the CW segment and find no activity at all. FT is great for working DX, but it removes much of the human-to-human contact that helps build friendships and the shared experience that makes ham radio great.
Onward to a new year with less pandemic quarantine and more sunspots!
CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW - 2020
Call: K5ZD
Operator(s): K5ZD
Station: K5ZD
Class: SO(A)AB HP
QTH: MA
Operating Time (hrs): 43
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
160: 127 15 48
80: 676 24 81
40: 1617 32 110
20: 1249 34 112
15: 1181 29 108
10: 79 20 40
Total: 4929 154 498 Total Score = 9,245,174
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
This is always the best contest of the year. It has DX, activity, great ops, and usually some interesting conditions. This year was no exception.
Full SO2R effort with the cluster. Best motivational tool was the contestonlinescore.com online scoreboard. Kept me pushing to keep up all the way through.
Bands were open but not very deep. Worked zone 18 on 40 and 80, but not 20! Few JAs or UA9/0. Nice to see high bands open, although 10m was just marginal. I called a bunch of mults on 10 and 160 without success. Definitely need to work on the 10m stack as I am not sure it is playing very well.
Never heard zones 23, 26, 27, 34, and 39.
Country totals would have been great if not for Covid limiting expedition travels.
WAE DX Contest, RTTY - 2020
Call: K5ZD
Operator(s): K5ZD
Class: Single Op HP
QTH: W1
Operating Time (hrs): 21
Summary:
Band QSOs QTCs Mults
80: 212 184 184
40: 412 589 231
20: 302 555 166
15: 265 515 130
10: 5 0 6
Total: 1196 1709 717 Total Score = 2,082,885
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
This was a very entertaining contest! I forgot the contest started Friday evening so missed the first few hours. Was just going to play around, but found the low bands to be very good. Then 15m was very good Sat morning. Started watching the scoreboard and found myself returning to the radio to work more stations and receive more QTCs!
I thought 15m was not open very well on Sunday. I even saw several spots and could not hear them. Then realized the 15m beam was still pointing west. Argh! It was great to see 10m open on Sunday afternoon. Would have missed that completely if not for the cluster.
I tried to receive QTCs as much as possible since I only have the opportunity to send them for CW and SSB. Some QTCs come through perfectly and others get messed up for one QTC and seem to take several more before clear copy resumes. The low bands were so good I was able to exchange QTC with Europe on 40 and 80.
Only used one radio. Didn’t feel like warming up the room with the second amp. And with QTC activity, plus use of the cluster, didn’t feel like I needed it that much.
JH4UYB was very loud on 40m Sunday morning at sunrise. He was the only JA I heard on 40. VK3JA had a great signal on 40m LP on Sunday evening.
Excellent activity from Germany and other Western EU. Worked very few UA/UA9 stations.
Not sure the scoring is correct. Writelog seemed to count 11 QTC for every 10 received. Otherwise, it worked perfectly.
Thanks to everyone who made the weekend so much fun.
ARRL Sweepstakes Contest, CW - 2020
Call: K5ZD
Operator(s): K5ZD
Station: K5ZD
Class: SO Unlimited HP
QTH: MA
Operating Time (hrs): 24
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 0
80: 522
40: 424
20: 363
15: 44
10: 0
------------
Total: 1353 Sections = 84 Total Score = 227,304
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
First 20 hours were fun. The rest was work.
40m went really long early on Sat evening so went to 80 very early. Ended with with a 6 hour run on one frequency!
Worked multiple stations in every section except PEI (thanks VY2ZM) and YT. I had given up on finding a VE8 when VY1KX called in late on 20m. Always nice to get the sweep.
Seemed to be relatively easy to find a frequency. There was lots of activity, but maybe not as many CQing?
Thanks to everyone for helping me achieve the 1000 QSO mark for the 44th consecutive year.
I put the Cushcraft 40-2CD 2-element 40 meter beam at the top of my tower in 1993. There are so many trees around the tower that we had to assemble the elements to the boom at the top of the tower. Actually it is at the top of the mast 10′ above the top of the tower! It lasted a long time before it started to be intermittent on receive.
John W2GD came up around 2016 and was able to climb the mast, get the beam in his hands, and rotate it so I could replace the feedline and feedpoint. It was less than a month later and the antenna started being intermittent on receive again. It mostly happened when the wind was blowing.
Just about the time John got the antenna reattached to the mast, I had noticed one of the loading coils looked mangled. It had a strange look like a bunch of birds had been pecking at the plastic. Since we had the antenna reinstalled, we didn’t pursue it.
The antenna kept getting worse and I would complain about it after every contest. In June 2020, Mark K1RX suggested that he had a fix that would solve the feedpoint problem and he was willing to help do the work. Mark does a lot of tower work for local hams and he is very good.
The feedpoint fix was to bypass the small through hole screws that Cushcraft used and replace it with some aluminum strap that went from the feedpoint, past the insulator, and out to the element. Mark came up with all the pieces from his junkbox. See photo below.
40-2CD Feedpoint “repair kit”
Mark climbed the mast and maneuvered the antenna so I could reach the feedpoint. I added the straps, reattached the coax, and then weatherproofed everything.
Fixing the 40m antenna feed point. (K1IR photo)
That mangled loading coil had also been bothering me for a few years. All attempts to get a photograph or better visual to diagnose were unhelpful. Since we had the antenna off the mast, Mark was able to get the coil to where I could reach it. Wow! Lighting damage. The coil had been vaporized on one end and the wire had unspooled. I had effectively been using a dipole in contests for 3+ years!
Lightning damage to 40-2CD loading coil.
I have collected a few 40-2CD elements over the years just in case something like this happened. We were able to find a good one in the junk pile and replace the fried one. I was excited to have that mystery solved.
A recent wind storm had caused the truss wire on the Hygain 205-CA 5-element 20 meter beam to fail. Since we were up there, we took on the job to replace the truss on both sides with new stainless cable. A 205-CA is a big antenna and the truss wires go out near the end of the boom. Mark had to remove one of the elements to get the antenna to lean over far enough so I could reach it. It took all of Mark’s strength to wrangle the antenna.
Mark K1RX removing the element.
The end result has both good news and bad news. The 40 meter beam now feels and sounds like a beam again. I.e., it has front-to-back and I have had a bit more success on 40 in the past few contests. The SWR curve is back to looking like it did when I first put it up.
The bad news is that the antenna is still intermittent at times on receive. Signals will fall about 20-30db when the antenna is not working. Sometimes transmitting with 100W is not enough to clear it. But, so far, a quick blast with the amplifier on always brings the SWR back in line and the signals up.
I climbed the tower one evening with a long pole hoping I could bang on things and find where the intermittent might be. With the antenna analyzer connected, I could see the high SWR. Banging and prodding did no good. I could not quite reach the loading coils. Only when I violently pumped the antenna up and down would the SWR intermittently come down.
This 40-2CD has the W6NL mods so it has been extremely durable at resisting wind and weather. Given the lightning damage on the reflector trap, there is no telling where the failure point is on the driven element. As long as transmitting will clear it, I will live with it. But, sometime next summer it will be time to make another try at finding the problem or replacing the element.
Thanks to Jim K1IR for serving as ground crew during the climb.
(l-r) Randy K5ZD, Mark K1RX, Jim K1IR (K1IR photo)
CQ Worldwide DX Contest, SSB - 2020
Call: K5ZD
Operator(s): K5ZD
Station: K5ZD
Class: SOAB HP
Operating Time (hrs): 34
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
160: 54 9 24
80: 318 13 57
40: 355 21 71
20: 1671 29 104
15: 1409 25 98
10: 172 11 36
Total: 3979 108 390 Total Score = 5,609,472
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
Conditions were so bad 28 days earlier for CQ WW RTTY, I did not have high expectations for this one. Wow, was I wrong. Conditions exceeded my wildest hopes.
Operated in Classic mode for the whole contest. One radio. No cluster.
Since I was focused on a Classic entry I took 2 hours off to watch a movie Friday night. When the rates exploded on Sunday morning, I went from #50 on the scoreboard to closing in on the top ten. That changed my attitude and I shifted from managing off times to trying to make the best score.
The contest was obviously different with fewer multi-ops and no expeditions. It was a bit easier to find a frequency on 20 and 40. (Just a little, those bands were still crowded!) But, it really hurt the multiplier. Decided I would just focus on QSOs. Was still fun to have to make operating decisions about when to run and when to tune for mults – the way contesting was before the cluster connected everyone to everything. Missed some mults as a result, but figured if I could keep close the assisted guys on the scoreboard I would be ok.
The rates on Sat morning were amazing. It matched what I did from the Caribbean last year. Thanks to all the Italians, Germans, and Netherlanders that filled the log. Not many Russians or JAs as the band just didn’t open that deep.
Was running so much I didn’t even check 10m on Sat morning. I did happen to go there on Sun morning and was amazed to find some Eu signals. VO1CH was pinning the s-meter so it must have been sporadic E. It sure sounded like a VHF contest for awhile with lots of QSB and spotlight openings. Sure helped the score and was fun to run without splatter.
Managed to get a frequency around 7132 during the last 30 minutes of the contest. It produced a bunch of new multipliers. Why does no one listen split on 40m any more?
CQ WW is always amazing and fun. Thanks to everyone who helped fill the bands with excitement.
Always a fun contest and a great test of the station in advance of the Fall contest season.
I spent the first two hours of the contest working on the log submission page at cqwwrtty.com. Should have done it weeks earlier, but didn’t get to it.
Thought the bands were ok the first night. Band was very slow to open in the morning. The VK signals on 40M after sunrise were amazingly good.
20m was a bit slow, but once opened it produced a nice rate. Didn’t have many opportunities this weekend to run on two bands since 15m never really opened. Just a few states via some e-skip and then a few Eu when the band opened Sat afternoon.
Have some back pain that keeps me from doing long stints in the chair. Would operate a bit and then go out to enjoy a beautiful Fall day. Didn’t operate much at all on Saturday evening.
Good run on 20m again Sunday morning, but not much else. Packed it in to watch Formula One and then some football.
WriteLog worked great as always. Used 2Tone for decoding. I was having trouble printing some signals when I remembered I could set up a second clone decoder. Used the Writelog built in decoder and it often copied things 2Tone could not (and vice versa). Having a second decoder is a great tool.
The live scoreboard at https://contestonlinescore.com/ keeps things interesting. Fun to watch AA3B just crush the multipliers. And to race against other stations with scores around mine.
We now know what CQ WW will look like in Covid days. There will be lots of QSOs, but no expeditions so a low multiplier. I missed several states including VT, ND, and MT. Even though there were two big operations from ME, I didn’t find them until Sunday afternoon. A consequence of all of us calling CQ all the time on 20m.
Even though the bands seemed OK because of the activity, I did not work a JA and only a few Russians. Most QSOs were from southern Eu and USA.
I was proud to make a presentation about contesting for the virtual HamExpo arranged by 4Z1UG in August 2020. The presentation is now public on YouTube.
Tips for Being A Better Single Op Contester – Randy Thompson, K5ZD
https://youtu.be/zKl0Mi1N3e0?t=1
This was the last presentation of the Expo on Sunday afternoon and yet there were over 125 people who joined the Q&A afterwards. My sense from the Q&A (unfortunately not part of the YouTube recording) is that there is a wide ranging thirst for information about operating among hams today.
Hope you find the presentation interesting and educational. Please share it with your club and hams interested in contesting.
World Wide Digi DX Contest - 2020
Call: K5ZD
Operator(s): K5ZD
Station: K5ZD
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: W1
Operating Time (hrs): 16.2
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
160: 43 13
80: 136 28
40: 251 39
20: 386 56
15: 41 14
10: 0 0
Total: 857 150 Total Score = 262,350
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
An interesting learning experience. I now know that the most important trait of a successful digi contester is patience! Whether it is waiting for 3 retries to complete a QSO or wishing you could change the protocol to work all 5 callers that were copied at one time — there is simply no way to make things go faster…
20m was almost too good. So much QRM it was hard to make QSOs at times and very hard to work the deep Asia paths. The Digi contest does a great thing by suggesting use of different channels to spread activity out. Might be better with 3 Khz rather than 2 Khz so you know which channel a station is actually using.
Band conditions on 15m were poor. Only South America and few (very few) e-skip QSOs. Never even listened on 10m.
40 was open to Europe even at 2pm here in Boston, but could not make a QSO until almost 4pm.
80m was busy, but not many Eu in the log. Same for 160. Got tired and slept 4 hours.
Best hours were early when running FT4 on 2 bands. In the end, FT8 was the more reliable and productive mode. Slower, but seemed to have less failures to complete contacts.
I decided to run power because I wanted to chase DX QSOs. It definitely helped make more contacts on the low bands and on 20m when it was crowded.
The combination of WriteLog and DigiRite was fantastic. Did the first 8.5 hours of the contest at full tilt. Was transmitting almost 100% of the time by alternating odd/even cycles on two bands. Good test of the two amplifiers.
Was fun chasing AA3B and LZ8E on the scoreboard.
Thanks to everyone for creating so much activity in just the second year of this contest. Some of the DX contacts were amazing. It was fun!
