ARRL DX CW contest - QRP

A had a few pleasant surprises yesterday. Due to the saltmine interfering with my contesting I only arrived home late Saturday afternoon.

I was monitoring the solar numbers for the last few days and it certainly did not seem very promising. I was therefore very pleased and surprized to see that 10m was fairly open with many good workable signals from Europe and a while later from Canada, North America and the Caribbean.

Due to the nature of the ARRL DX CW rules much of the “juicy DX” was off limits….

However I was very pleased to make a few QSOs with North American and one station in Canada. I was using my Elecraft K3, running 5 watts and a simple dipole mounted at 8 metres agl.

It was very obvious from the responses that there was a certain amazement/disbelief from most of the stations. In most cases they copied my call on the first try without requiring any retries, but in most cases I had to repeat my exchange “5W” a few times. I suppose they were so used to receiving “KW”, so what is this “5W” business….

I am very impressed with some of the big gun stations, not only do most have good signals, they also have incredibly sharp operators with good receiving abilities to work my weak signal.

I worked the following stations: 

K9CT, VB3E, KE9I, W0AIH, K1KP, N8AA, K2AX, N0NI, W2CG, W2JU, W3LPL

And some say QRP is for the birds…..

CQ Magazine's Annual DX Marathon

After reading John AE5X blog did I become aware of the interesting activity refered to in the link below.

 http://www.dxmarathon.com/

This looks like an interesting activity, almost like contesting from the slow lane.

Every year one starts off fresh with a clean slate and a new set of goals.

The “formula class” might appeal to many radio amateurs with limited resources (basic antennas and without power amplifiers).

I fail to understand why a rotatable dipole is grouped with gain antennas: Yagi, Quads and the like. A dipole is dipole and it has no gain. In fact it serves as the base reference when comparing antennas. I think that restriction is daft.

  

would love to participate as formula 1, but I do not have gain antennas. Plan-B would be to participate as formula 2, but a rotatable dipole is not permissible. Just goes to prove it is impossible to please everyone.

ZS6A "One Echo – Golf Papa”

My daypack is packed and I ready for the SARL Field Day event.

I have decided to participate in the new ultra-light portable class - E
I will thus be using "1E GP" as the exchange: One tranceiver, Ultra-light portable from Gauteng province.

Class E – Ultra Light Portable:

Light weight self-contained stations, operating QRP or low power such as RaDAR, Summits on the Air, Parks on the Air (game and nature reserves), Islands on the Air, Heritage sites, etc. The entire station, antenna included, must be carried by the operator to the operating site. The distance carried must not be less than 1 km.

It is rather amazing how quickly the weight adds up:

The K2 transceiver, 3 AH SLA battery, short run of RG58au feed line, link dipole, paddle (Much too heavy), a few tools, Log book, High density foam chassis support (otherwise known as a seat cushion), snacks and 1 litre of ice water.

Total weight 8 kg

I plan to give further feedback a bit later.

Feedback:

I have just returned from my SARL field day excursion to Rynfield dam. The walk from home to the park was around 20 minutes. Once again, I used a tree as the antenna support and the shade for my creature comfort.

Heck, I am unfit. Maybe if I participate in all the local contests as an ultra-light portable station, I might end up becoming fit.

Erecting the 40/15m link dipole took less than 10 minutes and worked very well. Conditions over the short distances were excellent no short skip evident. The longer distances were a problem and only ZS2PE (Port Elizabeth club station) was heard no stations further south were heard or worked.

I logged using pen and paper and in parallel I used the iPhone app HAMLOG. The program worked like a charm and I have my log available as CSV or in ADIF format.

Finding CW QSOs was a problem today, not sure why.......

 I operated using < 5 watt (QRP) for all the QSOs. I was planning to use CW only, but it was evident from early in the event that this would have been a mistake. After all the effort of operating as a ultra-light portable station one needs to have at least a few QSOs to prove the effectiveness and performance of the station.

It is rather sad to see that in South Africa it appears as if there are very few newcomers to the mojo mode CW. Using the muggle modes (SSB) just doesn’t do it for me…..

I only managed to work 23 stations including 6 CW QSOs.

Had fun all the same.

ZS6A SARL FD Feb 2013 QRP