Construction Project 4 New aerial at GM4UYZ 8 Special points of interest: New Charges 2 Contest Calendar creases for licences VY2ZM doing it the Events Column 7 10 Pin Bowling 2 Club Competition 3 Report on CQ160 CW 11 IOTA 2004 starts hard way 9 Inside this issue:
Cockenzie & Port Seton Amateur Radio Club MARCH 2004 VOLUME 12, ISSUE 3 Club Newsletter Lastly we had planned to do something for National Sci- ence Week by running some- thing at one of the local schools, basically to try and introduce Amateur Radio to them. I sent a letter (3 weeks ago) to the schools Headmis- tress to ask whether they would be interested in taking part, but as I write this there is still no reply, so it looks like they are not interested but it would have been nice if they had replied. We are still looking for arti- cles for our newsletter, yes I know it is a standard com- mon plea but us regular writ- ers do ―dry up‖ trying to find something to write about. Now each of us have all tried different aspects in this hobby i.e. PSK31 operating, SSTV, etc, etc, so why not write about them. Tell us about the highs and the lows in what you done. Basically why not pass on your knowl- edge to others. Go on then take the plunge and do some- thing no matter how small or large it is it will be appreci- ated. I think that is about it for this month and also I feel I have forgotten something but if it is really important I will get it posted to the CPSARC group via Email. Enjoy the newsletter and please make an effort to come along to this months talk. Bob GM4UYZ Onto another month and another editorial, already this is the third one for this year, my how time flies by!!!! One thing is noticeable—the evenings are now beginning to stretch out and heading away from what I call the ―winter doldrums‖. This of- fers the chance to start look- ing at your aerials and see what repairs that are needing done or even the erection of new aerials with the extra light in the evening. At this QTH I am hoping to get an aerial up so that I can have better 40M and 80M cover- age and hope to get my Ten- namast erected soon so I can get my VHF aerials back up again as I fancy doing some 4M and 2M work. Ok then what have we been up to this month? first of all our Club Competition has now kicked off and I have managed to get some con- tacts in. I was wondering how the obtaining of the Worldwide Locator/Grid Square/Maidenhead Locator would go but so far I have just asked for it and I have got it. I wonder how many of you are giving this Competi- tion a go? Go on give it a go and have some fun playing radio. Next we will have had our annual radio check night run by John MM0JXI but as I write this it still is to hap- pen. Any way I am sure it will have been its usual resound- ing success. We will also have completed the second night on the club construction project so by now those tak- ing part will be well into what they have chosen to do. To the future I hope you will all make an effort and come and listen to the talk by Alan Thomson British Geological Society, Edinburgh on ―Space Weather and how it affects Radios‖ at our normal location in the Port Seton Community Centre Re- sources Room 2. I really hope you will support this one as Alan is not a Radio Amateur and it will be so disappoint- ing for him to have done a lot of work preparing to give us a talk and few turn up. So come in your droves for this one.! There is also the Norbreck Rally at Blackpool and a few club members are intending to go. I am also running an- other Foundation Course, which will be in its second week tomorrow with the candidates sitting their exam, as always I wish them all success. On the Foundation Courses next month April will be my last until August or maybe later depending on whether I decide to start of with a Intermediate Course or not. This last one in April is from Tiree with 8 candi- dates taking the course so looking forward to going and doing this one. Editorial Special points of interest: Report on CQ160 CW IOTA 2004 starts here! News about price in- creases for licences VY2ZM doing it the hard way New Charges 2 10 Pin Bowling 2 Club Competition 3 Construction Project 4 VY2ZM 5 Events Column 7 New aerial at GM4UYZ 8 CQ160 CW Report 9 IOTA 2004 10 Contest Calendar 11
Transcript
Cockenzie & Port Seton Amateur Radio Club
MARCH 2004 VOLUME 12, ISSUE 3
Club Newsletter
Lastly we had planned to do something for National Sci-ence Week by running some-thing at one of the local schools, basically to try and introduce Amateur Radio to them. I sent a letter (3 weeks ago) to the schools Headmis-tress to ask whether they would be interested in taking part, but as I write this there is still no reply, so it looks like they are not interested but it would have been nice if they had replied.
We are still looking for arti-cles for our newsletter, yes I know it is a standard com-mon plea but us regular writ-ers do ―dry up‖ trying to find something to write about. Now each of us have all tried different aspects in this hobby i.e. PSK31 operating, SSTV, etc, etc, so why not write about them. Tell us about the highs and the lows in what you done. Basically why not pass on your knowl-edge to others. Go on then take the plunge and do some-thing no matter how small or large it is it will be appreci-ated.
I think that is about it for this month and also I feel I have forgotten something but if it is really important I will get it posted to the CPSARC group via Email. Enjoy the newsletter and please make an effort to come along to this months talk.
Bob GM4UYZ
Onto another month and another editorial, already this is the third one for this year, my how time flies by!!!!
One thing is noticeable—the evenings are now beginning to stretch out and heading away from what I call the ―winter doldrums‖. This of-fers the chance to start look-ing at your aerials and see what repairs that are needing done or even the erection of new aerials with the extra light in the evening. At this QTH I am hoping to get an aerial up so that I can have better 40M and 80M cover-age and hope to get my Ten-namast erected soon so I can get my VHF aerials back up again as I fancy doing some 4M and 2M work.
Ok then what have we been up to this month? first of all our Club Competition has now kicked off and I have managed to get some con-tacts in. I was wondering how the obtaining of the Worldwide Locator/Grid Square/Maidenhead Locator would go but so far I have just asked for it and I have got it. I wonder how many of you are giving this Competi-tion a go? Go on give it a go and have some fun playing radio. Next we will have had our annual radio check night run by John MM0JXI but as I write this it still is to hap-pen. Any way I am sure it will have been its usual resound-
ing success. We will also have completed the second night on the club construction project so by now those tak-ing part will be well into what they have chosen to do.
To the future I hope you will all make an effort and come and listen to the talk by Alan Thomson British Geological Society, Edinburgh on ―Space Weather and how it affects Radios‖ at our normal location in the Port Seton Community Centre Re-sources Room 2. I really hope you will support this one as Alan is not a Radio Amateur and it will be so disappoint-ing for him to have done a lot of work preparing to give us a talk and few turn up. So come in your droves for this one.!
There is also the Norbreck Rally at Blackpool and a few club members are intending to go. I am also running an-other Foundation Course, which will be in its second week tomorrow with the candidates sitting their exam, as always I wish them all success. On the Foundation Courses next month April will be my last until August or maybe later depending on whether I decide to start of with a Intermediate Course or not. This last one in April is from Tiree with 8 candi-dates taking the course so looking forward to going and doing this one.
Editorial
Special points of interest:
Report on CQ160 CW
IOTA 2004 starts
here!
News about price in-
creases for licences
VY2ZM doing it the
hard way
Inside th is issue:
New Charges 2
10 Pin Bowling 2
Club Competition 3
Construction Project
4
VY2ZM 5
Events Column 7
New aerial at GM4UYZ
8
CQ160 CW
Report
9
IOTA 2004 10
Contest
Calendar
11
With regard to an announcement in the March 2004 RADCOM (page 6), the cost of the administration for each of the licences has changed.
All the changes take place from the 1st April 2004.
Personally I think the increase of 200% is an extremely large rise and the new charges have put myself in a very embarrassing situation as I have already informed the prospective
LICENCE CURRENT NEW
Foundation £5 £15
Intermediate £10 £20
Advanced £25
PAGE 2 CLUB NEWSLETTER
candidates in Tiree of what the costs were and now I have to go and ask for another £10. I did phone the RSGB but I was told that the charges would apply; I also complained that they hadn’t personally informed the Tutors about the change plus the time between notification and actu-ally taking place was too short. Basi-cally with my RADCOM coming through the door it is 6 weeks away and if you consider as well that all the paperwork must be with them 4 weeks in advance it certainly didn’t give the tutors much time to organise a course. My other concern is the actual costs to each candidate as re-member it is not just the RSGB fees that need to be paid but the work-book is required and rooms need to
be booked. At the present the Com-munity Centre is £4.70 an hour and we use it for 14 hours to do the Foundation Course, you can see what I mean. If I were running an Intermediate Course then I would need 30 hours so in my opinion they haven’t taken that into account. Great if a radio club has clubrooms then there is no cost but for the likes of us well we aren’t so lucky.
I have sent an email to Peter Kirby the RSGB manager complaining about the above so I wonder what will be said.
Bob GM4UYZ
New Charges for Amateur Licences
Well I have found a neat free proggy
called Quickmix which saves the
various settings and you can change
them with one click. So now you can
have a psk31 setting, a music setting,
a normal setting etc. Perhaps some
of the guys may be interested.
You know that I am addicted to digi-
tal stuff with the sound card. Well
one of the long term problems is that
it takes a bit of fiddling to setup the
audio on the sound card. Then when
you want to play music or whatever,
you need to fiddle with the audio
controls again. And so it goes on.
www.msaxon.com/quickmix/
Have fun
Wallace MM0AMV
Can you let me know ASAP whether you want to go or not so I can get the final numbers.
I must have numbers and final pay-ments by the 3rd April so your help would be greatly appreciated.
The best time to all give me your money is on club nights 5th March & 2nd April or at our talk event on the 19th March or if you cannot see me then you can send a cheque made payable to me to
7 Castle Terrace, Port Seton, Prestonpans, East Lothian EH32 0EE,
Like all things it takes time and effort to organize these events so can I ask that you all do the honorable thing and let me know if you are going or not, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE that is all I ask.
Bob GM4UYZ
Date: Saturday 24th April 2004
Time: 20:00
Cost: Adult - £10:00
Child: 16 years and younger - £8
Package: Winter Bowling Pack-age (Note: actual cost is £8.99 & £6.99 but the extra asked is to get some prizes)
2 Games of Bowling including shoe hire
£3 drinks voucher
Winner and Loser certificates
Party Camera for each group
Digital Stuff
10 Pin Bowling Night—Last Reminder
PAGE 3 CLUB NEWSLETTER
Below is the original email I sent out so I am submitting it once again into this month’s newsletter to give every-one another chance to read about it. I have made a start myself and as I write this I have one full entry in already from Kent SM0ELV who visited the club a few years back. So come on folks give this a try.
**********************************
If you didn't know, then this year the club celebrates its 20th Anniversary; yes it has been running that long. So to help celebrate this I have gener-ated a competition around the 20 number and as we are a radio club, which does mean using our radios, then it is based around on the air operating. We all say that we never do enough operating so now is your chance to get on that microphone and start making contacts. Have some fun please with this and don't let the normal apathy prevail. Go on have a go at it as it is designed to be done at your leisure.
Some rough information on the rules.
Runs for: 20 weeks (Starts 00:00 on the 14th February and ends at 23:59 on the 3rd July 2004)
Each Entry contains 20 QSO's (Can submit as many entries as you want over the time period. Note if by the end of the time period you have less than 20 entries then still submit your log)
Band of Operation is 20M (Note all license holders are eligible to use this band)
There is a multiplier system to help the low powered, single antenna station.
It is a SINGLE - OPERATOR competition, no Multi Operator en-tries.
Using the Maidenhead Locator system for logging (Sometimes this is known as the WWL (World Wide Locator) or Grid system). This should be easily extracted from the station being worked as over 80% of QSL Cards that I receive has the information on it.
Open to everyone who has at-tended the club since November 1992 (when I started taking statistics) plus any new club members from now till the end of the competition.
Prize of £20 for the leading en-try.
The email system I know doesn't reach everyone who has been and it would cost too much to print off all the rules, etc and post out to those that are not on Email so if you know of any one that is not on the list and is in the Club Attendance list (held within the main rules) could you please pass this on I would very much appreciate it. Any one who has any difficulties with the attachments, I think Hotmail accounts have, then there is a link on the club's WEB page, www.cpsarc.com to the rules and entry paperwork. If you still have problems please get in touch and I will sort something out. This also applies to any queries that you may have.
Ok then PLEASE TAKE PART, have some fun and enjoy the operat-ing. I am now looking for many, many entries..............................
*********************************
Bob GM4UYZ
Club Competition
PAGE 4 VOLUME 12, ISSUE 3
This is the outcome of what was discussed and agreed at the meeting on Tuesday 3rd February. Many thanks to those who came along and showed some interest and apologies accepted to those who notified me in advance that they could not make it.
A handout of all the 11 suggestions was given to those that attended. It consisted off, where available, all the instructions about the selected items which includes a circuit diagram and components list. Some items show an etching layout others don't so will have to designed as part of the pro-ject. Also a sheet, see attached, was given so that I could keep a tally of who is doing what.
Points Decided:
LOCATION --- Port Seton Community Centre. Cost of the room hire is £9.00 with the nor-mal £1.00 charge, if 9 people don't turn up then the cost will be split between those that do.
NIGHT OF THE PROJECT --- By election it has been decided that it will be held on a Thursday Night between 19:30 and 21:30
REGULARITY --- No longer than 2 weeks between project nights. The next required night
will be booked after the previous one.
DATE AND ROOM FOR NEXT NIGHT --- 4th MARCH 2004 in Resources Room 1 (Resources Room 2 is not avail-able)
PROJECT CHOICE --- To be decided by each individual from the list.
PARTS FOR PROJECT --- It is up to each individual to obtain all the parts for his/her project.
TOOLS FOR PROJECT --- It is up to each individual to bring along any required tools i.e. sol-dering bolt, cutters, screwdrivers, etc. but I am sure if someone hasn't a specific tool and some-one else has then I am sure it can borrowed.
ETCHING --- This has to car-ried out in one area so it will be Group Etching Area. Will look at say Maplins to see what is available if I get chance.
Suggestion put forward was to investigate the possibility of a talk being delivered or even a site visit to a company based in Mus-selburgh who make PCB's. I will
try and get that organised even if it is not for the 4th March.
For those who made it to the meet-ing and for those who didn't could you please complete the attached form and return it to me, basically so I can tabulate what every one has decided to build.
For those who didn't come along for what ever reason but still want to take part in the project and you would like to get all the information that I have on the selected project item that you fancy doing then please Email me and I will scan it in and send it to you.
I think that is everything and if I have forgotten something and I re-member I will send out an update.
All the best and see you at club night this Friday 6th February.
Name:………………………
Construction Project
Project Choices Comments Tick Your
Choice
CB to 4M Transverter No information on this one as yet.
Infrared Transmitter and Receiver Headphones to Device (TV, Stereo, Radio)
Attenuator Useful for DF Night
Dummy Load Able to handle 100W.
Band Pass Filter for Radio Pagers Still to receive information on this, suppose to get on February Club Night.
20M Receiver Full Kit was produced by Cirkit (They are not around now). But have the information for this though. Could maybe get a different kit or band from Howes
HF Absorption Wave Meter Every one should have one
Voice Recorder If you are interested in contesting, saves the voice. Kit available from Quasar Electronics
Voltage Monitor for a 12V PSU Good idea for keeping an eye on what your PSU is up to.
Morse Oscillator. For CW practice
Resistive SWR Indicator Any SWR indicator is a must for the shack.
PAGE 5 CLUB NEWSLETTER
You may have heard of the ―3830‖ Contest Reflector, which is used by many teams and individuals to post their claimed scores in various con-tests, to other interested Radio Ama-teurs who also subscribe. I believe the name ―3830‖ given to reflector refers to the 80/75m frequency that many of the USA ―Big Guns‖ down the Eastern Seaboard used to (and still probably do) congregate on after closedown, to compare scores and stories of what went good and bad during the respective contest.
As well as score postings, some ops will also do a write up on their ex-ploits before, during, and after the contest. Below is one such write up, by Jeff, K1ZM, which I hope you will enjoy.
Jeff lives in New York State, but also has a contest station on Prince Ed-ward Island (PEI) Canada, working under the callsign VY2ZM. Often the only active station from PEI in contests, whether multi/multi, or signal op, VY2ZM is always a crush-ing signal over here, especially on the LF bands, and a welcome multiplier in ARRL (SSB & CW) and CQ160 (SSB & CW).
My thanks to Jeff for allowing his article to be reprinted here, and also for the photographs he has sent, which give some idea of the weather conditions he and Krassy, K1LZ, had to endure, in order for the PEI multiplier to be handed out last weekend in ARRL CW.
73, John MM0CCC.
For ARRL DX CW, Krassy Pet-kov (K1LZ) and I travelled to my station in VY2 to participate - an operation that had been in the works for some time. Krassy wanted to try a mono 80m as VY2LZ to see what he could do and the plan was for me to sign VY2ZM down on 160M in a companion sin-gle-band effort. This was intended to be a simple, no hassle, low pressure operation but it turned out to be ANYTHING BUT! Ah yes! As often happens, the hand
of GOD (in this case Mother Na-ture) intervened and a 100 year bliz-zard of epic proportions hit the Mari-times on Wednesday night/Thursday morning making a rather simple ef-fort a true **classic** that I will not soon forget! I think it is safe to say I will NEVER forget this opera-tion.......!! Our plan was easy - I would drive up to Boston from NY on Thursday morning (leaving 1AM) - hook up with Krassy at Logan airport - and we would take an 0855AM flight to Halifax. There we would change planes to fly into Charlottetown, drive out to the house - walk in and have all day Thurs afternoon and Friday to get ready for the test. Disaster struck early - Halifax airport was closed late Wed - so we rerouted to Montreal from Logan - arriving there around 11AM Thursday morn-ing. We then learned Charlottetown airport was now closed. And Monc-ton was closed and St. John was also closed. In fact, the only thing that was *open* was Fredericton, NB and even that was "iffy". The plane took off and we were advised by the pilot that if he could not see the runway in Fredericton when we got there, we would return to Montreal as nothing further East was open in the Mari-times. About 4PM we arrived in Frederic-ton where it actually was only lightly snowing and rented the BIGGEST
SUV we could find (I would have rented a HUMMER if they had had one!). We set out for Moncton (two hours away to the East) and encountered deep snow covering the road within 30 mins. As it got dark, it was clear we would not get very far that night as in places the road was all but closed with abandoned cars every-where. There is a spot along the Trans Can-ada I know well at MAGNETIC HILL and I kept on hoping we could make it there - (we were then about 40KM away at that point). About 7PM we reached the Magnetic Hill exit and the ramps were all but snow clogged. We were lucky to get off the highway.....We put up in a nice spot - had a great dinner of salmon and several pitchers of beer - and even got to see Donald Trump's new reality TV show before crashing for the night! Friday morning was sunny and clear in Moncton - and we made an early start for the hour (or so) drive up to the PEI bridge. DISASTER! The bridge was closed as PEI had de-clared a state of emergency. No one was being allowed on the island. The airport was closed, MOST of the roads were closed - and it was expected that secondary roads would be closed until Saturday.
(Continued on page 6)
VY2ZM in the ARRL CW Contest
PAGE 6 VOLUME 12, ISSUE 3
At that point - 0930AM Friday - it was NOT looking good for us... There was an update at 1200 hours - still no bridge opening - and another update was promised at 1500 hours. So we stopped for lunch at a place called the BRIGGS Homestead (probably run by one of my distant relatives as that is my last name). Around 2PM a group of other travel-lers sitting near us in the diner yelled "The BRIDGE is OPEN again...!! and about 50 people cleared out of that diner in about 90 seconds..... We did too and upon reaching the island, it was clear that things were in a near state of disaster. Only one lane was open on most of the Tran-sCanada, so it was single file travel-ling to the capital and my next thought was "What about my road from St Peters to my home on the North Shore?" I kept thinking "We might make it to the Bay - but that is still more than 15km away from my home - then what? Perhaps rent a snowmobile?" Doubtful at best because the drifts were blowing across the road all the way there - and some of them were 4-6 feet high...Lucky for us, we had a BIG truck! I kept calling my local neighbors "Have you seen a snow plow? Do you know anyone who HAS ONE?" About 5PM on the way out, I got a return call - a plow had made an at-tempt to clear the Northside Road - but had broken down.... I asked "WHERE DID IT BREAK DOWN?" I was told the plow made it to about 300 yards PAST my driveway and if I HURRIED, we might make it to my driveway - but the winds (100kph) and blowing snow were already clos-ing the road again. So we crossed our fingers and kept going... We made it out to the north shore around 5:30PM - with the contest starting at 8PM. After parking in my neighbor's driveway (two of the fin-est folks you will ever want to meet by the way) - we found they had
(Continued from page 5) made a special effort to clear a spot where we could park OFF THE ROAD. What a break! Emma and Levrett (who have lived on the North shore for more than 50 years) suggested we really ought not to try walking in - as they knew from their time on the island that the blowing snow would have made some drifts of epic proportions. They were RIGHT! But we had to try - we had come so far and we really did want to OPERATE the contest!! We promised to call on our cell-phone if we got into trouble and also that we would call when we reached the house - just so they would know we were okay. Then we set out for the shore. BIG MISTAKE!
I should note that Krassy had made two requests for the contest: 1) He wanted to bring his IC 781 radio 2) He wanted to bring his ACOM I remember he had not really be-lieved me when I told him that carry-ing anything down to the house was probably out of the question - but having been through this before, I know you can only carry a change of clothes in a small bag when you at-tempt a "walk-in" such as this in mid-Winter and maybe a small milk
and a bag of English muffins and some cold cuts. Anything more in terms of weight is totally unmanage-able - and he soon realized that his request for the 781 and the Acom were beyond the pale! So off we went, him with his clothes in one bag in one hand and a small bag of groceries on the other hand - me with a dozen eggs & some butter and a few other things in a single bag. Now normally, it takes about 45 min-utes to an hour to make this trek - in snows of from 1-3 feet deep. I fig-ured perhaps a little more than an hour and we might get there - but THEN I SAW THE SNOW. My GOD! We rounded the first turn in the laneway and here was a 15 foot high drift over 100 yards long. We were already pretty well spent
and not even 1/4 of the way there yet.
[this article will be continued next month—ed.]
VY2ZM cont...
Date Time Event Contact Tel./E-Mail
19-Mar-04 7.30pm—
9.30pm
Talk by Alan Thomson BGS Edinburgh
―Space Weather and How It Affects Radio‖
Port Seton Community Centre Resources Room 2
Bob GM4UYZ 01875 811723
02-APR-04 7pm till late CPSARC Club Night in the Thorntree Inn Port Seton Bob GM4UYZ 01875 811723
17 –APR-04 7pm 10 Pin Bowling night Bob GM4UYZ 01875 811723
MAY TBA Special Event Museum of Flight East Fortune
(To Be Confirmed)
Bob GM4UYZ 01875 811723
07-May-04 7pm till late CPSARC Normal Club Night Thorntree Inn Port Seton Bob GM4UYZ 01875 811723
14-May -04 6.30pm First DF Hunt
Meet in the OLD SHIP INN car Park
Ron GM4IKU 01875 811000
04 June 04 7pm till late CPSARC Normal club night in the Thorntree Inn Port
Seton
Bob GM4UYZ 01875 811723
19/20 June 04 TBA Museums on the Air Weekend
Museum of Flight East Fortune
Note in Your Diary, An Excellent Weekend!
Bob GM4UYZ 01875 811723
20 June 04 TBA Practical Wireless 144 Mhz QRP Contest Bob GM4UYZ 01875 811723
23 June 04 TBA CPSARC 20 Metre Contest Bob GM4UYZ 01875 811723
02 July 04 7pm till late CPSARC Club Night in the Thorntree Inn Port Seton Bob GM4UYZ 01875 811723
03 July 04 End of Club 20 Year Competion
03 July 04 RSGB Field Day Bob GM4UYZ 01875 811723
10 July 04 GB2MOF Museum of Flight Annual Air Show Bob GM4UYZ 01875 811723
25 July 04 13:00 local RSGB IOTA CONTEST from TIREE Bob GM4UYZ 01875 811723
06 Aug 04 7pm till late CPSARC Club Night in the Thorntree Inn Port Seton Bob GM4UYZ 01875 811723
13 Aug 04 6:30pm Annual Junk Night Bob GM4UYZ 01875 811723
ceive a 60 over 9 report. I have been successfully using it on 20M, as part of our club competition, with QSO’s into the Eastern USA states all with good signal reports. What I have noticed is the remarkable drop in noise from my vertical Cushcraft R5. On that I was getting 57 noise and on switching to the wire it was down to 51 with nice clear signals.
In summary so far I am ―chuffed to bits‖ but only time will tell on how good or bad it is but I have had fun just putting it up and trying it. At-tached are some pictures of the aerial showing its layout.
Bob GM4UYZ
The proof would be in the pudding as they say and how many bands could I get tuned.
[aerial looking East]
Starting off with 80M as a trial, no success but then I didn’t expect it to be but still worth trying. 40M right up through to 10M all tuned so I was
really happy to see that.
[aerial looking West]
I tried making a QSO so I called GB1PSH, a special event station that was to the west of Aberdeen, to re-
At long last I managed to get round to erecting my new wire aerial, some-thing that has been in the to-do list for absolutely ages, I must thank Cambell MM0DXC for helping me from start to finish it certainly made the job a lot easier to complete. The antenna that I decided to erect was the same one that Rom GM4IKU, thanks as well to you Ron for your help and guidance in the construc-tion stages, was raving about as being the best aerial that he has every used at his QTH. Now as Ron and I live less than 0.5 mile from each other I thought I would give it a try. It turns out the design is for the Classic Mul-tiband Dipole Antenna, strange how after all the time the aerial has been used by Ron, then myself erecting one that an article appears in March 2004 QST all about the aerial design.
The only variation from this on Ron’s design that instead of 450R ladder line going direct to his tuner it actually goes to a BALUN, then from that a short length of coax is used to connect it to the tuner.
[feeder detail]
My design started off being 33’ either side of the feed point and a 12’ length of 450R ladder feed but just couldn’t get a low SWR on 40M with or without the BALUN fitted. In the end we removed the BALUN and cut the aerial until we got a SWR of 1.5:1 across the whole of 40M. Hav-ing said that at the bottom of the ladder feed we wound about 5 turns of coax to make a coax BALUN. The end sizes were 27’ both side and a 10’ length of 450R for the aerial at this QTH. The aerial lies from east to west so basically radiating in a north south path.
PAGE 8 VOLUME 12, ISSUE 3
New Aerial at GM4UYZ’s QTH
I had a go at this contest from my previous QTH two years ago, and despite the problems associated with getting any form of effective antenna for top-band from a small garden, and the lowish number of QSO’s that I made, I recall thoroughly en-joying just getting on 160m and mak-ing a few contacts, including one or two more ―DX’y‖ ones.
The antenna I used in 2002 was an 80m Inverted-L, with a rather crude loading added to lower the reso-nance. Time constraints at the time dictated that I would not get the ―Inv-L‖ resonant exactly on 160m in time for the contest, so I had to rely on the internal tuner on my 1000MP to get me a match that weekend. Inspired with the knowledge I’d managed 2 QSO’s ―over the pond‖ with this compromise antenna (Prince Edward Island, and New York State), I decided to have a go again this year.
I’ve been using a Butternut HF6VX from home, with mixed results. Re-cently, I added a 160m loading coil (tnx Colin GM0RLZ) and was sur-prised how little adjustment was re-quired to the antenna once the 160m coil was connected. The covering literature states that the 80m & 40m resonant frequencies would rise by 300-400KHz. Not a problem, as these are simply readjusted by small movments to their respective coil clamps. The user is also warned to also expect a slight decrease in band-width on 80m & 40m but to be hon-est, this was barely noticeable, if at all. 40m has remained more or less 1.2:1 over the entire band, and as most Butternut owners will testify, bandwidth on 80m is very narrow anyway, so what’s an extra 1KHz or so to sacrifice? On 160m, a band-width of approximately 10KHz or so at 2:1 SWR (or lower) can be ex-pected, provided you have a decent ground/radial system. Ironically, with a compromise ground/radial system (like mine), you can expect a slightly increased bandwidth, and again the comments in the instruc-tion manual were spot-on about this. So, with a physically short antenna,
some serious loading to reach reso-nance, and a fairly inefficient radial system, I knew I’d be hearing many ―QRZ‖ ―?‖ and ―AGN‖ replies.
Onto the contest itself, which runs, like CQWW, for 48 hours, from mid-night Friday to midnight Sunday. I managed 3 ½ hours in the early hours of Saturday, and 6 hours on Saturday night/Sunday morning. Most of the time I spent tuning the band, working some of the stations I could hear CQ’ing. I say ―some‖ as my aforementioned antenna system was clearly a compromise. Add in the ―Alligator‖ description of many Top-Band EU stations (All teeth (QRO) and no ears (RX)) and hope-fully you’ll get the picture. It was amazing how some of the closer sta-tions struggled to copy my callsign or exchange, yet some others would get everything first time. I suppose I should also consider how high the QRN levels are on top-band, and how much real-estate is needed to put up beveridge antennas to get round this problem. Respect to those that do work on their RX an-tennas though, as their hard graft is usually rewarded by more juicy DX stations in their log. On the Saturday evening I did spend a brief period CQ’ing, and at one point I thought I’d been spotted on the DX Cluster (GM was probably a mult for many this year, as GM3POI didn’t seem to be on) as a huge DL pile up ensued. Sadly the pile up didn’t last long and it was therefore back to tuning up and down the band. This involved a trip with the torch out to the Butter-nut every time I ventured outwith the part of the band the antenna was resonant on. Moving resonance is simply a case of raising or lowering the 160 coil on its insulated mount. Sounds easy but try doing this at 4am and hoping your neighbours aren’t watching, thinking you’re either mad, or a burglar!
After 9 ½ hours or so on air I called it quits. Unlike my entry 2 years ago, I didn’t manage to work the USA or Canada this, in fact the only stateside station I heard all weekend was W4MYA. VY2ZM on Prince Ed-
ward Island is usually a good signal in this contest, and given that many Europe – Stateside QSO’s that were made over the weekend, I guess I just missed him (and others).
Final score was 112 QSO’s, with 33 DXCC entities. If nothing else, this illustrates how easily you can increase your countries worked total, even on a band like 160. More interesting countries worked were LX, OH0, GD, EI, EA8, T9, ER, and I have to say kudos to the many DL’s and OK’s that were active on top band. An example to others I’d say, and even if they don’t give you that new multiplier, at least they help fill your log. Between them, they made up 34% of my log!
73
John, MM0CCC.
CQ160 CW Contest
PAGE 9 CLUB NEWSLETTER
In the last week of February the north of Scotland and other regions in England and Wales suffered severe snowstorms. I certainly know about the Wednesday 25th February, when it all started, as I got caught up in it whilst I was on a job at Fraserburgh. Personally I have never ever driven in such severe conditions as I experi-enced that day, at times I could only see about a foot in front of me. What made everything worse were the strong winds blowing the snow of the fields creating massive drifts on the roads.
Anyway as a few of you know I re-ceive Weather Satellite pictures using
my WX Receiver (RX2) and an APT aerial with the audio from the re-ceiver feeding into a computer. The program that I use for decoding is WXtoIMG and it is absolutely fan-tastic. The reason for this short arti-cle is to show a couple of pictures from NOAA-17 WX Satellite on its Southward pass at 10:23 am on Mon-day 1st March. One picture is in false colour and the other is in black and white with each showing the snow lying on the ground in the North of Scotland, from Berwickshire down the east coast to Northern Yorkshire plus the snow lying across Wales. I certainly thought it fascinating to
actually see the well-defined areas where the snow fell, so I hope you do as well.
I must admit it great to see the pic-tures being received and being built on the computer screen as the satel-lite makes its pass overhead. Ok I’ll never be good at forecasting weather but it helps to understand better what the weather people say when they deliver their forecasts on the TV.
Bob GM4UYZ
After the Snow
PAGE 10 CLUB NEWSLETTER
The time has now come to let every-one know the plans for the 2004 IOTA contest. The Cockenzie & Port Seton Amateur Radio Club IOTA team will be taking part form once again from Gott Bay on the Island of Tiree. The Contest will take place on the weekend of the 24 July.
As usual, the opportunity to take part in this work hard / play hard week-end is extended to all. We will be leaving on the Thursday 22nd in the late evening and returning Monday the 26th in the early evening.
The contest itself runs from 13:00
local on the Saturday to 13:00 local on the Sunday.
There is the usual fun stuff before and after the actual contest and dur-ing these times we are on holiday as long as the station is assembled or dismantled.
The cost of the trip is £125 which covers any travel costs and also cov-ers some of the investments made to continually improve our station. The contribution is uniform across the team as we have found historically that it is the fairest way to do things. We are all Team members, no matter
what part we are playing.
Our team—however motley have managed to come 17th in the world section of this contest, not bad for a wee team from near Edinburgh.
If you fancy being part of the team, just let me know and I will be happy to discuss the ins and outs with you. I’m contactable via email [email protected] or on my mobile 07747 604016 in the evenings and weekends.
