Eric (VA7DZ), David (VA7VK) and Steve (VA7HK) worked as a team on the CQWW WPX Contest. Their shack was the station in the engineering lab at the University of Victoria. They achieved an excellent score of 1,427,820 points. Well done!
It was a busy few days prior to the contest getting the new antenna system operational and determining the matching network requirements for 160 through 10 metres. Then a few days before contest start the RF output on my transmitter dropped significantly. After several hours troubleshooting the problem was found to be a poor connection on the PA driver board. The board was built ten or more years ago and it has taken this long for the problem to manifest itself. Fortunately no component failure although I do have spares for the transistors if needed. I like to say that if you build it you can fix it and that’s still true even though it’s getting harder and harder to see some of the circuitry.
The contest started and my first couple of contacts made no sense. Turned out that I’d selected CQWWCW instead of CQWPXCW so scrap the first QSOs and start again. Glenn noted in a previous post that 20m on Friday evening was really hopping and I had no problem working pretty much everything I heard. I concluded that not having the beam was no major disadvantage.
One thing I found aggravating was so so many of the eastern EU stations were sending at 30wpm or more. With signals coming through the aurora zone the resulting distortion made copy incredibly difficult and in some cases I didn’t bother. If only they’d slow down we’d all make more Qs.
With such a good start I figured I would make 500Qs or more without too much trouble. Not so alas. Daytime on the high bands were very slow and to me there’s no satisfaction in CQ’ing and making one contact every few minutes. Night gives the S8 noise on 80m and maybe S6 on 40m. Even during the day noise on 20m can be S4 or 5 at times and not much different on 15m.
A lot of time was spent tidying up the L matching networks and I now have what by my standards is a nice looking ATU. One variable capacitor and one rotary inductor both of WW2 vintage, and one switch to move the capacitor from one side of the inductor to the other. The antenna comes into the radio room on 450 ohm balanced line so a current balun was made to go between it and the ATU, installed in the ATU enclosure.
I finished the contest with a little over 400 contacts for a score of 313,600 points. Results were posted on 3830 and I listed IslandHF Radio association as the club.
Brian VE7JKZ
The original VE7PT, Peter Thomas, was my teacher at Royal Oak High School in the 1950s and early 1960s. He encouraged the formation of a radio club at the school. He was also the CO of the local Naval Reserve, HMCS Malahat, on Wharf Street. One night he took me down there to see the reservists operating an HF net from the top floor of the building. I asked what the frequency was but he wouldn’t tell me, so when I got home I listened on my Heathkit short wave receiver and easily found them. After his death I was proud to obtain his call sign.