For the last 15 years I have almost always operated CQWW SSB from M4A in the multi-single or multi-two categories. It’s one of the highlights of my year. However, with the current coronavirus situation limiting our ability to meet up, I found myself limited to a single operator entry this year.

I decided to go for the SOSB(A) on 20m category, both since I can fit a 20m dipole into my garden and also the fact that 20m is closed overnight, thereby allowing me the chance of at least a bit of sleep! And (controversial opinion follows…) of course I went for the assisted category, because I don’t see why you’d want to make life hard for yourself by denying the existence of the DX Cluster!

Running just 100W into a dipole hastily constructed the day before the contest, I set myself a modest target of 200 QSOs for the weekend. That wouldn’t be enough to win anything but I could at least feel that I had made a meaningful contribution.

Equipment

• Elecraft K3
• 20m dipole at about 7m AGL
• DXLog.NET for logging
• Waterfall Bandmap, fed from a FunCube Dongle Pro+, taking the K3’s IF feed, for panadapter (My set up instructions)

The entry

I was actually very surprised! Although it was certainly hard going with relatively low power, I had made my target of 200 QSOs by Saturday late afternoon. This was entirely search-and-pounce, and I spent a lot of time chasing multipliers. That said, by the end of the day, I was still missing entities and zones that should have been fairly easy, like Asiatic Russia.

I didn’t expect to get very many more QSOs on the Sunday as I suspected I had worked all the easy ones, but to my surprise there were plenty of Europeans still to work. I quickly decided to adopt a strategy of trying to get as much of a rate as I could S&P, so that I could optimise my score after focusing on DX the day before. This strategy paid off, and by the afternoon I even found a clear frequency where I could try running. I could only hold a frequency for about 15 minutes at a time, but it was enough for a few countries I might otherwise not have got (such as 9H and GI) to call me.

I was somewhat surprised how late after sunset the band stayed open on Sunday evening (I didn’t declare the band dead until 21:30 UTC) and this allowed me to get several more US stations and even to get my best DX of the contest, PX2A. Thanks to all the stations who struggled to pull my weak signal out.

As for the dipole’s performance, I was very impressed. Although I didn’t manage to work them, I heard VK3, YB and 9G, so it certainly worked well. I didn’t manage to hear any JAs, even though I was aware from the cluster of a good opening to them on Sunday morning. I suspect this was because I’d deliberately orientated the dipole to fire to the North-West and South-East to optimise paths into Europe and the US. As you’d expect for my low power setup, 82.2% of my QSOs were in Europe, with Italy and Germany the main countries.

Results

Contest : CQ World Wide
Callsign : M0BLF
Mode : SSB
Category : Single operator
Overlay : ---
Band(s) : 20
Class : Low
Grid square : JO02BG
Operating time : 29h 10m

 BAND QSO  Z  C DUP POINTS  AVG
-------------------------------
  160   0  0  0   0      0 0.00
   80   0  0  0   0      0 0.00
   40   0  0  0   0      0 0.00
   20 493 14 62   2    667 1.35
   15   0  0  0   0      0 0.00
   10   0  0  0   0      0 0.00
-------------------------------
TOTAL 493 14 62   2    667 1.35
===============================
      FINAL SCORE: 50 692

Operators : M0BLF
Soapbox :
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This weekend saw the annual SSB Field Day event and once again I took part with the Camb-Hams at G3PYE/P.

For the past couple of years, we’ve entered with a checklog because frankly life is too short for QRP and we got a lot more enjoyment from the contest by using an amp. This time, however, we decided to stick to the rules and use 100W only, so we could put in an entry.

On the Thursday evening before the contest, we got some bad news: our normal operating location wouldn’t be available and so massive thanks need to go to M0VFC, M0ZXA and many others who spent Friday trying to secure an alternative field at one day’s notice. Amazingly, they found a location to the north of Cambridge, only 4m ASL, but surrounded by flat fen land. On the Friday evening, we gathered at our newly-found location to start setting up some of the equipment.

Most of the set-up, however, was done on Saturday morning. We actually weren’t only operating in SSB Field Day but also in the 144MHz Trophy contest (although given our low location and the fact we only had a single 17-ele beam, we knew we wouldn’t win on 2m). We soon had the 2m beam mounted on the Camb-Hams van, Flossie. Shortly afterwards, Flossie’s sister, Amy, arrived courtesy of G4CWH, and we installed an A3S beam for 20m-10m and dipoles for 40m and 80m on Amy’s more substantial mast.

I didn’t operate on 2m, but our setup there was an Elecraft K3 with XV144 transverter and a Beko amplifier.

On HF, we also used two Elecraft K3s straight into the antennas. With the K3’s clean signals, there was no need for bandpass filters. This was as well, because, in order to comply with the rule that you can only have one signal at a time, we needed to use the ACC port on the K3s for a hardware interlock (see the TX INH menu item in the K3 manual for details on how this works).

Although I’ve tried interlocked multi-station operation before, this was the first time M0VFC and I actually got it to work. The theory is straight-forward enough: each station interleaves their overs such that one station is hearing a reply while the other calls someone. It takes a lot of timing, and awareness of the stage of the other operator’s QSO, and above all competent operators on the other end of the QSO(!) but it can give some fantastic rates.

I don’t have a copy of the log to give a final summary (yet) but QSO total was in the region of 700 QSOs. We were very pleased with this, especially given the hastily found location.

Last summer, I spent a week at the UK Scout HQ, Gilwell Park near London, for the YOTA event.

This weekend, I had the opportunity to return to the shack to help operate GB2GP – the permanent special event station for the Scouts – in the ARRL DX Contest.

It was a really fun weekend, even if conditions were bad. It was so bad that at one point, once 40m closed on the morning, there was almost 2 hours with no QSO before 20m opened, during which I had just one QSO. There were very few times when more than one band once open to the US/Canada at once, but I did get a decent run on 15m on the Sunday lunchtime, which helped.

We were entering in the multi-two category, as a tactical measure, but we actually operated with only one radio. This was my first time using a Flex SDR in earnest and I seemed to get used to it quite well. Also new for me was N1MM+, which also seemed to perform once I had got used to it (though I’ll probably stick with Win-Test / DXLog.net for most of my own contesting).

The other novelty for me was this was my first contest using a Beverage antenna for the lower bands, and particularly 80m. This seemed to work really well, particularly given the amount of noise the transmitting antenna was subjected to, emanating from the nearby Brookmans Park broadcast transmitters.

Final QSO total was just over 1000 QSOs. While that might not sound fantastic, being a training station, a large part of the focus was on having a mix of skills there, from a couple of us who were relatively experienced contesters, through to one person who hadn’t been on HF in years.

Most importantly, I had a good time and it was great to work with a different group of enthusiastic people. Thanks to the GB2GP team for having me!

We always aim to have at least five stations on from the Camb-Hams for any of the AFS events, because it’s the top four scores in the team that are counted for the Super-league, and you never know when failure might befall one of the stations.

Today, it was our turn to suffer from equipment problems.. I was operating from Gavin M1BXF’s QTH near Newmarket with Mark M0MJH. All was going well before the start of the contest but just two minutes before the beginning, while checking signals with G3PYE/P, our receiver suddenly became deaf.

The fault was quickly diagnosed as a failure of the masthead pre-amp, which meant that the mast had to come down as the contest was starting. While Gavin concentrated on fault-fixing, Mark and I carried on the contest using a mixture of an X-Quad 9-element satellite antenna (the first time I’ve used right-hand circular polarisation in a contest) and the 2×21 ele stacked yagis, once the pre-amp was off the mast. As you would expect, the lack of pre-amp in the stacked yagis meant that we really struggled to hear the most distant stations. Sorry if you tried to contact us and we couldn’t hear you.

Despite the handicap, however, we finished with an OK score of 57 QSOs. Best DX was MM0CEZ on CW, with only one French station worked, even with the overlap in the British and French contest times.

And with this contest, we’ve reached the end of the AFS Super-league season, which started back in October. So far, it’s looking good overall for the Camb-Hams, but we’ll see what happens in the final results.

Update: Results have now been published and, as expected, we were put in the Camb-Hams B team, which came in 13th place overall. Camb-Hams A came in 2nd place, which was sufficient for Camb-Hams to come first in the AFS Super League for the 2017-18 season.

I had a bit of spare time over the weekend, so gave away a few points in the French REF-CW contest.

Equipment was my Elecraft K3 with just 40W out (to prevent QRM to neighbours) to my 30m dipole, tuned onto 40m. I’m not entirely sure how effective this was. Many stations seemed to struggle with my callsign, so I suspect I wasn’t very strong to them. Having said that, conditions on 40m did also seem genuinely rubbish with deep QSB. On a number of occasions, someone who was S9 when CQing was S0 and unreadable by the time they were giving my report – very frustrating!

I did try 5 QSOs on 80m but it was clear I was very weak there and everyone was struggling to copy me. That wasn’t a surprise, as my 30m dipole required several attempts by the K3s ATU to make it semi-happy, so I quickly abandoned.

My log will be published automatically on 1st February.