WQ6X Triple-OPs the All Asia DX Contest via Maritime Mobile

As June ROARS on in the direction of Field Day, a lot of interesting things are quickly coming
into being.  For 2019 Field Day a major goal is to operate Ssb from a sailboat at Aeolian yacht harbor in Alameda.  This weekend allowed me the opportunity to operate from W7AYT to open the weekend, remote operate from NX6T in Fallbrook and most importantly, explore the viability of operating from
a boat installation in the harbor.

In years passed, I have run a portable setup for the All Asia Cw contest as a prep exercise for
the FD GiG.  In preparation for next weekend, the goal is to test a "hybrid" ICOM transceiver on WB6RCU's sailboat moored in the Oakland Yacht harbor.  At the same time, NX6T is running a
Multi-Multi operation from Fallbrook, with a mixture of B-I-C (Butt-in-Chair) and remote operators.

Arriving @W7AYT's QTH, the Space-WX report indicated a solar event had occurred moving the K-Index up to 4.  Checking in with VNC Viewer it would seem that NX6T was not much affected by
the storm.  Unfortunately, @W7AYT 20-Meters was all but worthless; all I heard was WH6R working Asia, yet I couldn't hear anything but silence. 

While waiting for 40-meters to "lengthen across the pond", I took the opportunity to test-run the old West Mountain Radio Plug-in-Play Cw keyer and the Touch Keyer units to use during the sailboat operation; both units had been languishing on the shelf for over a year and needed to be verified
as still functional.

To be different, I decided to operate as W7AYT from Dennis' Concord QTH but using my FT-1000mp transceiver, allowing me to operate using the WQ6X callsign from Tom's sailboat.  Around 07:00z, 5 W7AYT QSOs were made on 20 meters.  Then, after a brief midnight sleep N6KI rousted me for the 1am shift (08:00z) @ NX6T.

Dennis had me run 40-meters while he mopped-up 20 and then hit the Sleep-QRT button, leaving
me to run 40 & check for 80.  40 was HoT while 80 was NoT.  Other than LoTs of quick-fading, on
40 meters most signals (except the 5-watt JA's) were relatively quite strong.  5.5 hours later WQ5X had facilitated 200+ QSOs into NX6T's 40-meter log. 

On the letter-beacon front, only the "M" Beacon was heard, which is essentially due-North of Japan in Russia.  Amazingly, the "F" & "K" beacons were not to be heard.

Approximately every hour I switched audio lines back to the FT-1000mp to run S&P as W7AYT, eventually putting 11 more QSOs into that log.  At first I thought the poor/slow response to my calls was due to a weak signal. 

A more logical guess is that they were not used to the W7AYT call because it was not found in any callsign history list.


I called it quits at 13:15z, needing several hours sleep before heading to the sailboat in Oakland. 
For NX6T, other than a handful of JA QSOs on 20-m around noon, things didn't really fire up until 00:00 when a handful of 15-meter QSOs made it into the log; the rest being on 20.

During this time I made it to the boat and began the process of cobbling together the equipment and cables to make a maritime mobile operation possible. 

I brought to the sailboat a classic
25-yrold ICOM R-71 receiver for comparison evaluation.  At the very
least it would serve to put the hybrid ICOM-7000 at eye-level. 

This hybrid 7000 came about by combining the control head from
my defunct ICOM 7000 transceiver
to replace the defunct head on Tom's otherwise working ICOM 7000.  This created a fully functional unit.   The
other unit is headed to ICOM service.

The WMR Cw keyer came back to life on the COM2 port, just like it used to
5 years ago.

The hybrid-Icom's 100 watts out ran through an external SGC-257 auto-tuner at the base of a 55-foot "Marconi Sloper", favoring the N-E - perfect for FD; not so perfect for All Asia.  Remoting in to NX6T Saturday evening, I noticed a strong 20-meter JA presence in Fallbrook - having a 13mh C-31 yagi certainly helps.

With assistance of the ICOM 7000 manual and the Nifty reference guide, all the unique PBT & DSP features came back to me.  Thanks to the unique menu features of the 7000, triggering the SGC-257 to properly tune the Marconi sloper took less than 10 seconds.  Although the antenna more-or-less matched the radio on 80-m Cw, no signals were initially heard.  On Ssb, above 3800 signals were strong and WQ6X was easily heard throughout California and the Northwest.

Having a reasonable signal from Oakland harbor could not makeup for the lousy internet connection on board.  Attempting to run NX6T remotely, calling stations resulted in internet transmit dropouts.  With nothing to resolve the problem, N6KI ended up doing double-duty to cover my non-operation.

With operating time on my hands, it was time to give WQ6X/MM a whirl on 40 meters.  Because the sloper was clearly favoring the Northeast, working Asia turned out to be quite a challenge.  Only 3 out of the ten 40-meter QSOs came about as a reply to my CQ A A calls.  On most of the other QSOs, the /MM suffix evidently confused stations as WQ6X has never signed as Maritime Mobile before.

Because a major goal of the /MM operation was to check signal levels, I took the opportunity to Call CQ on different frequencies of both 80 & 40 meters, giving the RBN network an opportunity to record the signals.  Not surprisingly the antenna was shown to favor the N-E - perfect for radio amateur's Field Day next weekend.

While the All Asia contest is largely a JA-station fest, a number of wonderfully uncommon callsigns made it to the NX6T log including:TA1T, 3W1T, VR2EH, XU7AMG, XV1X, UD8A, UC8U, RU0LL, 9M2ZAK, 9M4DXX & 6K2IXF.  While the 7K, 7L, 7M , HL, HS, and 9V1 callsigns are not necessarily rare, at least they counted as prefix-multipliers.

On Sunday, while I was wrapping things up on the boat, NX6T ops managed to put a dozen JA contacts into the 15-meter log; unfortunately, with an SFI of 68, 10 meters did not exist beyond
500 miles or so, sputtering out of oomph in the D-Layer over the Southwestern Pacific.

While we put in a GooD showing, GooD was only good enough for 3rd-place as a Multi-Multi operation.  The K3EST crew (@N6RO) put in an outstanding performance (with mostly B-I-C operators); reading their 3830 Score report, it is clear that they had a Clear Band Plan devised
before the All Asia event.

While NX6T didn't take a 1st place this year (as we have running Multiple-Single operations in previous years), we did amazingly well considering the horrible noise levels and smaller group
of operators.

For WQ6X, operating maritime mobile was quite a revealing operating experience.

Did YOU work the 2019 All Asia contest?

Is NX6T, W7AYT or WQ6X in YOUR Asian LoG?