Another dry spell

Well, last weekend I did not get to play in the TX QSO Party after all. Between work, church activities and spending time with the family, I had no time for radio. I did get in there for a few minutes on Sunday afternoon and turned the radio on long enough to hear the last few minutes of the QSO Party. I was in the process of downloading the program from the N3FJP website when I realized that time was running out. Right now, I am sitting in a class in High Point, NC. I have been here since Tuesday and I am going through "HF withdrawals". I will get home tonight, but I am not going to turn on the radio. I have got to spend time with my wife and kids. My daughter, Emma, told Allyson yesterday that she wanted her daddy to "come home right now". So, that is what I plan to do as quickly as possible!!!

A long, dry spell

I have been off the radio for a while, unfortunately. I had to go to Tennessee for my uncle James's funeral and I really did not feel like operating when I got back. That meant that I missed the Salmon Run that I was going to work with Larry. I was really looking forward to that. But, I will try to get with him and schedule another contest weekend with him soon. I did get on the radio yesterday for a few hours and had a good time. I found that I was last on the radio on the 11th. That was a whole 11 days off the radio!!! NOT GOOD for me! And then I have a trip to High Point, NC soon so I won't be on the radio then, but I will be able to have the weekend off to do a little radio. So, it was good to get back on the air. I did work a new one for me yesterday, Turkey. I worked my friend, Henry (TA9F). I have worked him before when he was in Miami using the call KA4UFT and had a long and fun QSO with him. I first thought he was at home and then I realized that he was in Turkey, so it was great to talk to an old friend and get a new one at the same time!!!

I also added France, Great Britain, Sweden, Iceland and Italy in the log. It was a nice afternoon radio-wise! I called one guy in Iceland and then he passed me over to his friend, so I got a two for one deal there.

I am hoping to work a little in the TX QSO Party this weekend, but I have our church's 50th anniversary dinner tonight and to work until 4pm, so I won't be able to work much, but I will work a few. I have never been in a TX QSO Party, so it will be interesting, I am sure.

Pictures of the tribander in place

Pictures of the proud dad, mentor, elmer, senior member of the build team, and friend. (W3MGL). As you can see, he looks excited to be there!!!! Just ask him! He has been there through building the antenna to its going up.

Well, here it is!!! The first pictures of the tribander in place. As you can see, it is not as beautiful as a tower, but it is doing the trick. I went ahead and soldered a connector on the coax and put the antenna to the test on 20 meters for the Worked All Europe contest for a few minutes. Of course, the rotor is not connected, so I was shooting over the Pole and got some good contacts. I did my test and put it to bed until today. After getting home from church, I was able to work another 20 to give me grand total of 26 contacts. I was switching back and forth between the beam and the G5RV just to see how it was working. I actually got a better signal on the beam pointed north for Iceland than I did from the G5RV pointing generally east and west.

Today, after church, my sons and I moved the south end of the G5RV over a few feet to move it farther away from the tribander in case of wind blowing the two of them towards each other. John was the spotter and Justin was the safety guy. I had to shoot the antenna twice because the first shot actually flew over the tribander......NOT GOOD. But, the second shot was perfect and actually the whole antenna now is a couple of feet higher than it was previously.

Tomorrow, I will be rotating the tribander for the first time. It will be interesting to see what happens when it moves for the first time. Let's just hope that aluminum stays in the air!!!

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

Well, the tribander went into the air today!!!!! Joe (WC4R) and Larry (W3MGL) came over to the house along with a couple of my friends from church Christian and Ron. Ron brought his wife, Lori, with him. Allyson and Lori really helped out a lot during the critical stage of raising the mast to the full height. Allyson steadied the ladder I was on and Lori kept the mast from moving while Ron and I put it up to full height. Joe and Christian manned the guy lines and the whole operation took less than an hour. Joe and I shot the antenna launcher and got the end of the G5RV back into the air. So, now I am up with 2 antennas. I had to give the tribander a try even though I did not have the rotor connected yet. I was shooting north over the Pole and wound up working Germany, Iceland, and Wales, so I was quite pleased. You can definitely hear a difference with the tribander, even though it was not pointed towards Europe, but over the pole. Tomorrow, I have to do the final work on the mast and get the rotor cables hooked up. Larry wants to be here the first time I rotate the mast, so I might just hold off on that until Monday. It was so good to be back on the air again!!!!! Look for pictures of the new installation soon.

Next contest for me.....

Well, I am not anticipating being able to do much contesting this weekend due to antenna work and the like. But, I am going to be working the Washington State Salmon Run on the 16th and 17th. Larry (W3MGL) and I are going to do a multi-op from his house using his call. We are going for the smoked salmon prize!!!! In the meantime, I am still trying to study for my Extra class ticket. This is definitely not a walk in the park for me, as I am trying to juggle work, playing daddy and husband, and studying. The anticipated date for taking the exam will be the first Saturday in October when the local club has a testing session. So, hopefully, I can squeeze it all in!!!

Picture of the tribander in its current state

Well, I hope that this is the last week that the antenna will look like this. I am hoping that by this time on Saturday evening, I will be hooking it up to do a little radio!!!!

Goals to beat this year

As the serious contest season is about to begin, as usual, I am looking at my scores to see how I can improve on them. Of couse, last year was my first year as a general class, so I had more frequencies to play with. Fortunately, the ARRL's website has great statistical data for their contests. So, it gives me a lot to look at and make my goals.


2005 CQ WW DX (SSB) as KE4GWV
Score 108,800
Placed 18th out of 67 entries for 4th call area SOAB LP

2005 November Sweepstakes (SSB) as KE4GWV
Score 40,176
Placed 5th out of 38 entries in class for Virginia
Placed 134th out of 709 entries in class overall
Placed 506th out of 1,441 entries for entire contest

2005 ARRL 10 Meter Contest as KE4GWV
Score 9,844
Placed 3rd out of 9 entries in class for Virginia
Placed 6th out of 22 entries in class for Roanoke Division
Placed 73rd out of 113 entries for all of Roanoke Division
Placed 55th out of 228 entries in class for US/VE
Placed 730 out of 1,225 entries in US/VE overall
Placed 87th out of 364 entries in class world
Placed 986 out of 1,912 entries world

2006 ARRL International DX Contest as KE4GWV
Score 114,756
Placed 4th out of 30 in class for Virginia
Placed 20th out of 64 in Virginia overall
Placed 5th out of 53 in class for Roanoke Division
Placed 38th out of 124 in Roanoke Division overall
Placed 60th out of 520 in class US/VE
Placed 400th out of 1,279 in US/VE overall
Placed 98th out of 970 in class World
Placed 613th out of 2,219 World overall

So, I have some room to improve. I did get a couple of first place finishes over the past year. I got first in James City County for the Virginia QSO Party and I took first place in the GA QSO Party for Virginia. Of course, it's not hard to be first in Virginia if you are the only entry!!!! But, these stats give me a goal to beat. At the bottom of the sunspot cycle, it will be a challenge, but I am looking forward to trying to do better this season!!!

Another picture of the tribander under construction

This will be the last picture of the tribander under construction. The next pictures will be the ones I take tomorrow of it pointing straight up in the air awaiting the gang to come and put it up this weekend. I will be making some calls tomorrow to line up the antenna party. Of course, this is not the making of a major contest station like at K1TTT, W4MYA, or K3LPL, but it is definitely an attempt to make a competitive low-budget contest/DX station.

Keeping my fingers crossed

I am hoping that we will be able to get enough help to get the tribander up this coming weekend so I can work a little of the WAE SSB contest. I am going to try to get with Dave tomorrow and see if I can borrow his antenna launcher on Tuesday so that I can least get on HF again. I hate being without HF and I at least want to be able to work the contest with just the dipole if I have to.

Here is a picture of the tribander being assembled

Here is Larry supervising the operation and reading out the measurements. The picture quality leaves something to be desired since I took the photo with my cell phone. My wife had our regular digital camera, so I had to make do with what I had.

Ernesto pays a visit

Tropical Storm Ernesto came for a visit yesterday. I was too busy at work to call home and see how things were fairing. On the way home, I called home and my wife said that everyone was OK. I asked how the tribander was and she had my son Justin take a look. He said it was all bent up and had fallen off the stepladder supporting the mast. Well, I checked on the antenna the second I got home. The stepladder had leaned over but had not fallen. The reflector was bent over a bit, but when I put the mast back on the ladder, it went right back into place. Unfortunately, my G5RV came down in the storm. It looks as though the wire from the northern end of the antenna was stripped off the insulator. So, I don't think I will have to add any wire to the antenna, but I will have to pull the rope down from the tree on the northern end and re-shoot it over the pine tree. I will have to see if I can borrow our club president's (KE4ZPZ) spud gun to shoot it. If he will let me borrow it, I will just re-shoot the whole antenna on both ends as the southern end is also much lower than it started out this spring. I would not have thought that the G5RV would have come down because there was a lot of slack in the antenna before the storm, but I guess the wind was really whipping around out there. I am hoping to get both antennas up in the next week or so. Unfortunately, I do not see myself getting them up this weekend, but hopefully next weekend. That will be in time for the WAE contest which I would like to try out the new tribander to see how it works. So, here I am, a ham with no HF antennas up at the moment. Of course, I could throw one end of the G5RV over a low limb and operate if I needed to for an emergency, but it is frustrating to not be able to operate. I have had this G5RV come down twice already since I purchased it this year. It does not seem as sturdy as the one I bought from Radio Works over 10 years ago. I still have that antenna, but I was keeping it as a reserve. I did take it to Tennessee in July and used it to operate from there, but I would like to have a sturdier G5RV, so I guess I will have to homebrew one the way I want it.

Ohio QSO Party

Ohio QSO Party
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs
--------------------
80: 0 12
40: 0 38
20: 0 14
15: 0 0
10: 0 0
--------------------
Total QSO's: 64 Ph Mults = 39 Total Score = 2,496
Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club


It's not enough to win, but it was a lot of fun. I heard my friend Paul N4PN in there working them hard and, so far, it looks like he is the top scorer in the out of state category.

Glad the weekend is over

Well, I definitely had an interesting weekend. Saturday, my family returned home and we had the tribander lying in the back yard ready to put on the 30 foot mast. I did operate a little bit in the Ohio QSO Party also. Monday, Larry (W3MGL) and I got things ready for Dave (W9NNK) and John (K6OWD) to help us put it in the air on Tuesday. On Tuesday, things started out pretty good. We got things together and then we found we needed better anchors for the guys. From there, things went downhill. John was not feeling well and had to leave us. Larry is a lot of moral support and a great source of knowledge, but at 80 years old, he is not much for helping with the physical labor! Dave suggested that we try another approach for lifting the mast with the antenna on it. So, I am going to make a saddle for a rope to ride over my roof and we are going to effectively use my house as a gin pole to raise the mast. Right now, with the holiday coming up, it looks like the earliest we could do it will be on the Saturday after Labor Day. So, still in good shape for contests!!! I am hoping to make the saddle this weekend, especially since it looks like it is going to be very rainy with the remnants of Ernesto travelling overhead. Then I am going to put out a general call out to the club for bodies. Hopefully, that evening we will have the tribander in the air!!!!

Upcoming projects

I have a number of projects that I need to get done:

1. build a cabinet to keep the ham gear in & organize it better
2. put up the tri-bander in time for contest season

The tri-bander project is set to be finished in a couple of weeks, hopefully!!

What a weekend!!

Because of my job, my weekend is actually Sunday - Tuesday. I had to adjust my schedule last week so I had off Saturday also. I was supposed to pick up my son John from his mother and meet her about 2 hours from my house. I had asked my elmer, W3MGL (Larry), if he wanted to join the rest of the family in the little adventure. He said yes, so we were off!! The only problem is that my ex decided to call and have John ask me if he could stay an extra day. So, I agreed. We then decided to have our own little adventure, which wound up having lots of ham ties. We visited my barber Sully, AD4RG, who cut my oldest son's hair and then did mine. Sully had not seen Larry for years, so it was a great reunion all around. Sully is now the EC for Middlesex County and has been a friend for many years. People wonder why I drive almost an hour for a haircut, but I am a loyal client. Sully did John's first haircut 10 years ago and John has only had his hair cut a couple of times by anyone else. We left from Sully's and had a wonderful seafood buffet at Carolina Barbecue at Gloucester Point. When we finished, we decided to drive along the beach at Yorktown where we found N1LO (Mark). Mark often operates from the park there and he had just finished operating and was going to play the banjo for a little while before he left. He showed us his rigs and told us how he operates and how a number of "homebrewers" meet there at the park to work, swap stories and have some great fun together. Mark is always coming up with ideas on operating and it was interesting to see some of his ideas in person. So, it was an unexpectedly fun day. Sunday, I finally worked YU6AO. I have been trying for a while, but just have not been able to get him. Actually, I worked him twice on 20m!! I did make a number of contacts, but in a casual manner as I was not feeling well. Now, most of the family has some type of summer bug that my wife brought home from our vacation. Yesterday, I had the interview for the Deputy Director of Emergency Communications position where I work. I realistically do not think that I have a chance for the position as I am not a political person and there is a lot of politics involved with the position, but I am going through the process anyway just to let my bosses know that I am interested in moving up.

Up, Up & Away

Well, we are off and running with the blog.....We will have to see how it goes. This is a place for my musings about ham radio and contesting.....So, this is the first entry!