WQ6X RAC's one up for Canada + 160 Meters

Unless you reside in Europe, technically, this last weekend marked the "official" end of North American radiosport contest GiGs. Because the weekend was littered w/different short-spurt contest activities, a lot of "juggling" was required throughout; especially when you factor in the various jumps in the Solar Flux Index (SFI), with its attendant geomagnetic storms/

The Canadian Winter contest began promptly at 00:00 (4pm PST); with all the necessary audio
re-routing, my operations actually began much later than I would have liked.  

Altho the RAC contest is a Canadian GiG, we are allowed to work anyone around the world for 2-points per contest exchange.  If the station happens to be Canadian, those contacts are worth
10-points; if they are an RAC HQ station (VE7RAC, VE6RAC, VE2RAC, etc.) those contacts are worth a whopping 20-points for that single contact alone.  My only real beef w/the RAC GiG is that
24 hours is not long enough; at least give us another 6+ hours (like we have with the California QSO Party) - that way I could play around more; my attendant SP-160 duties cost me some significant RAC GiG operating time.

The GooD news this last weekend was the SFI skyrocketing to as high as 132.  The BaD news is that there were several short (but intense) solar storms throughout the weekend and even afterwards.  At times, while the Space-WX ratings were poor, we managed to keep a frequency going for upwards of 2-hours before the frequency bullies showed up (we simply found a new run frequency).

The SP-160 GiG begins at 15:00z (which is 7am in California).  A brief power failure during the
night delayed my 7am wake-up call; nevertheless, by 7:30 I was in the remote-OP chair, looking
for remnants of the morning sunrise greyline.  By 8:45 (PST) 160 was ionized out of existence for approx. 6 hours.  After a short morning nap, the RAC GiG was FULL of activity on 15-meters and even a couple of (brief) openings were had on 10-meters.

Last-minute operator shift changes found me remotely CQ'ing by 22:15z (2:15pm).  Interlacing searching and pouncing allow me to observe the slow (but inevitable) 160-meter opening in Anza. 
As the minutes wore on, the reachable Km distance continued to expand out until just before my shift-end at 23:40z, turning it over to N6KI and putting a final dozen QSOs in WQ6X's RAC contest log.

Due to a Rockville mixer internal audio amp problem, manual device switching was used all weekend, with no actual "mixing" happening; meaning that I couldn't listen to Latin Jazz on SW in the background while running a frequency - Bummer DewD!

Because a replacement amplifier board is in the build process on the Alameda workbench, I am being patient and thankful to still have available an old Radio Shaft A/V switch unit.  

This unit allows me to switch between the ICOM 7000 (for SWL'ing), the K3/0 remote access unit, FT-1000mp audio
thru the analog MFJ-752 filters or the QF-1a + DSP filter combinations.  This meant that the Stereo CW facility was not available with the K3/0 during the SP-160 contest - Bummer DewD!.  Luckily, the SP-160 operation survived without it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the WQ6X (East Bay) end of things, a whopping 18 QSOs were put into the SP-160 log. 
While I had reasonable signals throughout the western 1/3 of USA, Colorado, Arizona and
New Mexico were as far out as the WQ6X 8JK Cobra array could be heard on 160-meters. 
That copy was possible at all is to me the REAL miracle during the weekend.

When it was all over, it would seem that NX6T took 5th-place overall and 1st-place
for California, the Southwest division and Western USA overall.

DiD YOU work the SP-160 GiG and/or the RAC Winter Contest?

Is NX6T or WQ6X in YOUR LoG?

WQ6X Fenagles another 10-meter contest WeeKend

As it turned out, this weekend became another WQ6X ad-HOC 10-meter contest operation. 
Testing the audio configuration on Thursday evening resulted in a PLUME of smoke coming from the Rockville mixing box.  It would seem that the LM-386 I replaced in the left channel of the add-in stereo amp was COOKED into a black block of carbon silicon.  Luckily, I had a better amp board languishing in Alameda that could be quickly brought into service for this weekend's operation.  The Radio Shaft switch box retired from operation last month found new life as a temporary replacement for the Rockville mixer.

For all kinds of reasons out of our control, NX6T access to the WA6TQT Super Station was NoT available this last weekend.  Instead, N6KI put in quite a respectable operation from SDG section running 1.5kw into a modified MONST-IR yagi, while I ran another 10-meter operation from W7AYT's QTH, taking advantage of the 3-el 10-meter Long John yagi that has been languishing atop the 30-ft mast for some years awaiting a sufficient Solar-Flux (SFI) increase to really Gopher-it in December.

The weekend began with a weird JOLT.  Work commitments kept me in Alameda later than expected, finally arriving in Concord @7pm (03:00z 3-hours past the event starting time; if there was an initial band-opening, I missed it.  It took nearly 30 precious minutes to setup an operation under N1MM+.  Being a multi-mode contest event, there were two .MC macro files and a set of .Wav files for Ssb
to be checked out and finalized.  While overall the antenna setup @W7AYT is overall a huge compromise, the Long John yagi JUST happens to be at the optimum (1/2 wavelength) height
for proper 10-meter operation.

During the entire contest weekend the SFI was a dismal 77, altho that was quite an improvement
over last year's SFI of 68-69 ([CLICK HERE] to read about that).  Two weekends prior, the CQ W.W. Cw contest enjoyed an SFI spike to 108, altho of course it DiD NoT remain that high for the entire contest event.  Because the sun rotates every ~27 days, there is (for me anyway) always a hope that last month's SFI will more-or-less repeat itself and become THIS month's SFI; albeit a bit delayed.

For the 2021 10-meter contest, either the previous SFI dropped too fast, or, it was slow to
come back (after having already dropped).  As I write this on Tuesday, the SFI JUST came up
to 80 - by Wednesday as you can see, the SFI JUMPED to 104.  As I am always fond of saying
"maybe next year".  Because the SFI has yet to AVERAGE over 100, the spotty band conditions
were NoT a surprise.

Calling CQ (on Cw) elicited far fewer RBN spots than I would have expected; and yet, during
the periods of time there WERE wide-open openings, the [non-RBN] spots for WQ6X were
rampant - YES!  Based on Soapbox comments from other California stations it is clear that there
was (what I will call) "atmospheric ducting" happening several times throughout the contest weekend.

The best operating periods for me were ironically Saturday evening (03:00z to 07:30z).  I'm used to 10-meter openings until midnight (and beyond) during an SFI of 180+, but NoT with an SFI of only 77.  This further validates my declaratives about the importance of calling CQ.  ([CLICK HERE] to read about this.)  I guess this condition is not all that dissimilar to "Sporadic-E" propagation on 6-meters (altho amazingly, I've never operated on 6-meters before).

I enjoyed the challenge of sweeping the Long John yagi around calling CQ and hearing stations
pop-right-in for a quick exchange, only to fade out just as quickly.  While the Reverse Beacon (RBN) Network may not have spotted me much, DX-Maps certainly showed that WQ6X was being heard; altho as you can see the E. Coasters had incredible propagation by comparison to our modest offerings.  I certainly was expecting more accessible stations (especially DX-related); then again,
this year's 10-meter contest offered up an excellent trial-run of the band for the RTTY RU contest coming up in January.

DiD YOU work the ARRL 10-meter contest?

Is WQ6X in YOUR LoG?

WQ6X Walks a Weird ARRL 160 Contest

 

If I had to choose one word to summarize the ARRL  weekend, it be "Weirdly-Odd". 
To begin with, the contest start-time (22:00z - 14:00 PST) is unlike any other contest. 
It would seem that the starting time was chosen to favor East-coast USA amateur operators
(it's 5pm there).

As it turns out, we were DOOMed from the start (as I shall explain later).  That minor detail aside,
the weekend afforded me the opportunity to play on 160-meters from WA6TQT's Anza location (mostly in the middle of the night) while troubleshooting the degenerating morass of audio cabling behind the scenes of my operations from W7AYT's Concord location.

The antenna setup at WA6TQT is a "modest" Tri-Square
vertical array with an exceptionally low radiation-angle,
while at the same time possessing incredibly low-noise characteristics; Beverage antennas could hardly do any
better (receive-wise).  

Being a Tri-Square, each switch position possesses
a more-or-less 120-degree signal beam-width.  

At WA6TQT, the 3 switch positions encompassed:

1. 330-Degrees to 90-Degrees - for NA and EU.
   
2. 90-Degrees to 210-Degrees - for Caribbean & SA.
   
3. 210-Degrees to 330-Degrees - for JA/KH6/VK/ZL.

Antennas and propagation being the variable commodities
that they are, the degree descriptions (above) are hardly exact.  To quote the auto manufacturers "Your mileage
may vary".  Nevertheless, (with the exception of K7DA),
we probably had the most potent 1.3kw signal throughout
the Southwest.  By contrast, while my setup at the Concord location allows for 160-meter operation, it's likely an NVIS signal, finding only : CA, OR, UT, CO AZ & NM.

A number of geomagnetic storms were littered throughout the weekend "complemented" by an
actual form of Quick-Fading unlike slow-fading which can occur over a more-or-less 10-second period.  With quick-fading signals are there, then gone 2-seconds later and back 2-seconds
after that.

Propagationally, the 160-meter band is a world unto itself.  With 160 contests intentional
after-midnight QRM rarely occurs.  As such it's easy to doze-off when the rate drops;
at least, the 40-meter intentional QRM-Idiots kept me awake - for better or worse.

The only thing we missed were Europe and Africa in the log. Oh, and one final comment,
as happened several weekends back, NX6T [incorrectly] repeated the blunder of reporting our
QTH as being in SDG section, rather than the ORG section  (where Anza is actually located). 
By the time I OP'd on, it was too late to change the exchange.

As I learned from the 2011 Ssb Sweepstakes, once you make a single-QSO from a given location you are ethics-bound to operate that callsign from that location in that way.  ([CLICK HERE] to read about that.)   Our blunder aside, the ARRL 160-meter contest was an excellent low-band training exercise.  The final Stew Perry (SP-160) GiG is coming up and we will be ready for this one as well; instead of
a section, we will be sending a GRID-Square number.

Before during and after the contest weekend, the WQ6X audio filter layout was thoroughly
tested, from which I discovered a distorting LM-386 chip in the left channel.  Hopefully I will
have a replacement by the upcoming 10-meter contest weekend.

DiD YOU play in the 2021 ARRL 160-Meter contest?

Is WQ6X or NX6T in YOUR LoG?