Many thanks to Jim, Gabor, and Alan for participating in the IARU HF Contest. Here are their results as shown on 3830 Scores.
Running CW for 23-24 hours is certainly for the brave, which obviously includes Jim VE7ZO and Gabor VE7JH. Jim had the 3rd highest score in Canada; Gabor, the 5th. The two highest score were in the province of Ontario. Go figure.
Congratulations to Jim, Gabor and Alan VE7UBA.
I had planned on making an effort to participate in this year’s CQ WPX CW contest, as I enjoyed entering last year’s event, and logged a decent score (for me) . But then there was the WEATHER – both Space weather and Terrestrial Weather! Band conditions were poor a week ago, but had been slowly improving over the past few days, so I was optimistic. Terrestrial weather had also been slowly improving, and the forecast for Saturday was sunny, warm, and light winds – perfect for boating! My XYL said that it would be a great weekend to go out on the boat, and I was agreeable, as long as I could bring along some radio gear and “dabble” in the contest. I knew that the setup would be less than ideal for contesting, but at least I would be on the air, and the terrestrial weather did indeed look ideal for a nautical excursion!
On Friday afternoon we moved on to the boat at the marina in Cadboro Bay where we moor it. I had my laptop, IC-705 radio, AH-705 autotuner, and a 15 foot whip antenna screwed in to a base mount that I fastened to one of the railings. We planned to sleep on board and leave in the morning. Here is the setup:
On Saturday, we were anchored near Sidney Spit, and had a nice clear takeoff angle in most directions. Noise level was lower, and there were no other nearby boats. I ran a wire from the base of the antenna mount straight down to the water level, where I attached several feet of submerged 4 inch wide copper strip. I am not sure if this direct ground connection to the salt water made much difference, but it made me feel better about the installation. I operated for 2 hours with only moderate success. Some of the strongest signals were coming from Hawaii, and I could hear several Japanese, Argentinian, UK, Brazilian, and Japanese stations, but my QRP signal and low gain antenna were not able to make much of an impression in the pileups! Brian (VE7JKZ) had a good signal, but I didn’t work any other IHF members.
Overall tally for the weekend was 2.5 hours of operating, 51 QSOs logged, 4,364 points. Score is posted on 3830.
73,
Roger, VE7AP
Like many other IHF members, I live in a condo, thereby limiting my ability to erect large antenna arrays. I live on the top floor of the building, and have managed to install a low-visibility short (14 foot) non-resonant vertical on the building’s roof, with a few radials spread out on the flat surface. I have an AH-730 automatic antenna tuner located at the base of the vertical, and run the cables down to my shack through one of the building’s air ducts. The radio is an IC-7300, putting out 100 watts. I had never entered a contest before 2024, and assumed that my “little pistol” station wouldn’t stand a chance against the “big gun” stations with their tall towers, stacked beams, kilowatts of power, and highly-skilled CW operators. However, when I joined IHF in early 2024, I noticed that many other club members were entering contests “just for the fun of it”, so I thought that I would give it a try. (For the whole story in Downloads, click here.)
