W4KAZ

Many thanks to Bruce and Laurie for hosting the group.  I know I had a great time operating their station.

For NAQP SSB I was part of that group, including N1LN, N1YXU, NT4D, KA1ARB and myself, W4KAZ.  We operated Multi-2 from the N1LN station under the NC4KW call sign.  Final score 195,880 with 1180 QSO’s and 166 mults before log checking.

Bruce let us show up a bit early to give us a few quick lessons on the station.  This was the first time any of the group has guest op’ed at their location, so its going to take a few stabs to get all of the ducks in a row.  Despite the new situations, everything seemed to go pretty well.  Murphy refused to put in an appearance, despite the green ops.  The easy station layout helped.  

The equipment was all functioning as expected, and the antennas seem to play as well as I expected, i.e., much, much better than my few simple wire antennas strung out from the KazShack.  We didn’t do a lot of jockeying the antennas, but it didn’t really seem necessary.  Conditions were the least cooperative aspect of the weekend, as 10m and 15m did not open as we had hoped they might.  The low band noise levels were high, as the storms seemed to be plopped right in our 

At the outset, we started on 20m and 15m but the lack of any signs of life on 15m made that seem a futile waste of time.  So the 15m station moved down to 40m.   But even 40m was slow.  20m was the best band at the outset but rates there were not very high either.  40m began showing signs of life as folks seemed to begin migrating down due to conditions.  When NT4D turned the 40m station over to me, I noticed the rate had been creeping up there.  At some point after I turned it over to KA1ARB, the 40m station got out ahead of the 20m station.  

Closing in on the 400 QSO point before dinner time, I was over on the 20m station and N1LN was on the 40m station.  Bruce had hit a lull, and 20m activity picked up a bit.  I finally got the 20m station caught up at 190 Q’s each, but N1LN soon had a flurry of QSO’s on 40m, and didn’t look back.  When Bruce and I gave up the chairs to catch a bite to eat, we could hear NT4D and KA1ARB tearing into the after-dinner pileups.  Rob was having good rates on 40m, and we had our best rates of the contest then.

As the evening progressed 40m mostly kept delivering a slow but steady trickle of QSO’s.  Later in the evening I moved the 20m station down to 80m, and still later down to 160m as rates on 20m slowed.  

Overall I probably operated about six hours total.  Without a formal plan, I think the team was good at giving up the chair for the other ops to participate.  At the end, I was begging someone to pull teeth on 160m.  That was a bit too much of a grind.

I think the N1LN station is going to become well known in the Multi op and M/2 classes, and Bruce is going to have a blast operating SO2R.  Their station plays well on 40m and 20m.  I’ll need to reserve opinion on 15m and 10m.  The K3 is a damn strong radio, and it seems to be a S&P op’s dream rig, given the filtering.

It seems like the propagation favored the Gulf coast, based on the huge score reported to the 3830 reflector by NX5M and by W5KFT.  Those guys really kicked butt on 20m.  I suspect W5WMU will also turn in a good score.  But I think for a maiden voyage shakedown cruise, we probably did pretty well as NC4KW.  The propagation for NAQP from our NC QTH sure didn’t deliver that extra 1300 Q’s we would have needed to win, but I think we will be competitive with the regional stations.

We shall see, as I expect to be ready to grab the mike and make some noise as often as I am welcome to join the fun. 

I hope that coincides with good propagation soon!

From todays K7RA propagation forecast:

“”Sunspot numbers for August 7 through 13 were 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, and 0 with a mean of 0.”"

Well.  

Whoop- tee -doo….

And odds are several months more of that excitement is sure to follow.  Ick.

This Saturday is the first time I’ll get a chance to operate from the station at N1LN/N1YXU. We will operate using the call NC4KW. The operators will be N1LN, N1YXU, KA1ARB, NT4D and W4KAZ.

N1LN operated the CW NAQP as an SO2R. Conditions were not so good, and the WX accounted for unusually high noise levels in this area. It looks like we may have better WX over the next several days. That would sure help, because high noise on SSB is much more difficult than for CW.

I expect this will be a good shake-down operation for the guest ops. It will give us a chance to get accustomed to the set up over at Bruce & Laurie’s. Time to browse the K3 manual a bit.

I’m really looking forward to it.

This turned out a bit better than I expected, despite the pop-up T-storms in the area all afternoon. 

I’m always a bit leery of the August NAQP’s.  My first radio in the shack after re-licensing in 2000 wound up being zapped by a nearby lightning strike in the midst of NAQP in 2001.  It turns out one of my neighbors had more three houses over had a lot more damage.  We think it hit the utility pole in front of his house.  It seemed to come into everyones house via the CATV lines.  My CATV boxes were shot, and the CATV lines cross the shack where the antennas come in.  But the radio was toasted via the connection to the computer. The radio’s CPU was shot.

Come to think, NAQP has been an expensive contest.  I lost a power supply in January NAQP.  Hmmm…

So the T-storms always give me cause to pause.  The WX at 1800z wasn’t looking good, but I decided to give it a whirl. I checked 10m first, and there were signals.  Hot Dawg!  After three quick Q’s, There’s a loud static crash on the radio followed by a distant rumble of thunder.  Plug Pulled PDQ.  

THAT didn’t last long.  

After a few hours but-not-in-chair, around 2030z a check of the local WX radar seemed to show the KazShack QTH would be in a hole between the scattered storms, so I hopped back on.  After a short bit of S&P, I got in a short run on 20m of about 70 minutes duration, then broke off again for dinner with the family.  

After dinner, I hit the waves again about 2250Z, and operated until about 0400z.  I did only enough S&P to find a decent run frequency.  My goal was to practice running on CW.  I met that goal easily enough.  I was only able to run at about 22wpm, because I was just not copying well enough to try to get up to higher speeds.  Despite the relatively low CW speed, at one point the 10 minute rate was over 125/hr several times, and I had a 90 minute rate up to 70/hr at the peak.  That’s easily the highest rate I have ever run on CW, even in contests with a simpler exchange.  Great news.

After the slow start, I sort of fell into the groove.  I really started to feel comfortable running CW, and that was really cool.  When there is more confidence in the accuracy of my copy, it will be a major milestone even if the comfortable CW speed is below 25wpm.  Pushing the CW speed up to 30wpm is the next target beyond 100% copy.

There is of course still tremendous room for improvement.  I’m sure my score will be demolished in log checking.  My error rate will be terrible.  The new goal is clean copy.  Aim for less than 1% errors(be happy under 3%)

The Good:

• Great CW rates on 15m and 20m.  Decent high band conditions for late summer.
• Best sustained CW rates I’ve been able to manage.
• K2 is a great contest radio.  Excels at S&P in a crowd. Learning the features.
• The interference between the ft-920 and the K2 are not so bad.  Tested with the 20m stub in place on the K2 and the 40m bandpass filter on the FT-920.  Rudimentary SO2R might be possible on a budget.

The Bad:

• I’m expecting the log checking to decimate my score because of a high error rate. GET IT RIGHT
• Copy skills need a lot of work, as I needed a lot of fills due to not copying the exchange the first time.  GET IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME.
• Practice is also needed in pulling call signs from pile-ups.   THAT’s a new experience.  GET AT LEAST ONE PARTIAL FROM EVERY PILE-UP.

The Ugly:

• Horrid noise levels on 40m and 80m.  I never even checked 160m.  Pulled the Plug at midnight local.  Ick.  I sure hope its better for SSB.
• Thought the T-storm had snuck up on me at the start.  CHECK THE WX RADAR.

Class: Single Op LP, .......Operating Time (hrs): 6.5
Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:    0     0
   80:    9     7
   40:   49    26
   20:  149    41
   15:   77    26
   10:   17     9
-------------------
Total:  301   109  Total Score = 32,809

Update, Aug 1st 2008: New photos added to N4A website

The N4A trip with N4YDU and K4CZ was great. (Check out the N4A website for more photos, more to come soon.) Having K4CZ along made the set up a snap, and we had good weather too. Outstanding. The calm weather had the ocean calmed, and the water at the beach was postcard perfect all weekend.  While checking in for our room, the ranger noted that the previous week’s tropical depression had washed lots of shells ashore.  The conch shells near the campground had already been gathered, but the tide line was covered with all sizes of clam shells, some of which were five or six inches across. Hugh.

“Good” weather is relative.  It was still hot, pushing 90°F, but the humidity was somewhat less than normal because of a cool front in the area.  We were able to set up in relative comfort for July at the NC coast. Instead of suffering from near heat stroke, we were merely hot and sweaty.

The station set up went well enough.  Propagation conditions did not really open to Europe very well, so most of our QSO’s were with domestic stations.  The noise levels on 80m were high, and 80m wound up being almost entirely useless.  40m was similarly disappointing, with high noise to signal ratio’s.

K4CZ and I had a chuckle about Saturday evening.  After a long day, with little sleep the previous evening, and then running stations for nearly four hours, rates slowed Saturday evening and N4YDU hit the relatively early sack for some well earned sleep.  The cabin is small, basically one room.  K4CZ and I had the audio on speaker, and were sometimes not sure of some of the faster exchanges.    N4YDU was answering our exchange questions in his sleep!  The man really is a CW machine.

Our final score was significantly better than last year, but it looks as though we may have been outdone this year.  We wound up with 635000+ points on 882 total QSO’s and 134 mults.  That’s almost 300 more QSO’s than 2007.  My own personal goal was for the group to reach 750 QSO’s, and we made that.  So I’m pretty happy with the operation, even if another team has done better.

It was a great weekend.

I’m only back from the Cape Lookout expedition for a couple of hours now, but the activation of NA-067 from near the Cape Lookout lighthouse was a load of fun.  We got excellent WX(for July in NC), the company was great, and conditions provided better results than the 2007 attempt.    I’m tired, need a hot shower, and I’ll need to unpack some of the gear to get to the logs, but it looks like we’ll wind up with about 875+ QSO’s and over 120 mults.  

!!!!!!!! . Way Cool . !!!!!!!!

We have a slew of great photos taken by N4YDU(and a few by W4KAZ) in the pipeline….coming real soon now.

During IARU a QSO with a WV ham apprised me of the fact that “my callsign” was already being used by a broadcaster in the Charleston area. So, curiosity led me to find 107 KAZ. As luck would have it, you can also listen to their stream via the web. The link is a javascript so I can’t link to it from the blog, look for “Listen Live” at the top of the right sidebar.  

They also have an AM affiliate, but the AM side doesn’t have a stream that I can find.  Its unlikely I’ll be able to DX them with my radio either, as they occupy 680, the same frequency as 50kw WPTF.  I’m only about a mile away from WPTF’s antenna site, so once again poor KAZ is overwhelmed by the high power Big Dawgs. WKAZ is only allowed 244 watts at night -  WPTF’s HARMONICS are louder than that!  

Cool.  If I ask, I wonder if they will send me some promo material? I guess not, because W1KAZ, W2KAZ,….W0KAZ might all ask for freebies too.  

We will be making another expedition trip to Cape Lookout NWR overlapping the IOTA 2008 contest.  Our goal is to put CALO on the air.  We’ll be pounding 10m looking for E skip openings in the periods outside the IOTA contest, and be handing out Q’s during the contest on all of the contest bands.  If we are able to get a 160m antenna up, we’ll also be on that band outside the contest period.  Our time is limited, but we expect to be operating as soon as we get the station/antennas established, sometime in the early evening of Friday July 25th, probably mostly SSB before the contest.

We’re lucky to have an additional op joining us this year, K4CZ.  The extra help will be a big boost, and this should help us overcome problems of the sort presented by Murphy in 2007.  For 2008 the operators are N4YDU, W4KAZ, and K4CZ.  There’s little doubt that N4YDU and K4CZ will do a lions share of the operating. Nate is one of the best ops I’ve worked with and is an exceptional CW op.  Barry is going to be a big assist for Nate for both CW and SSB - I’ll need to pull my weight on SSB and the logistics.  

I don’t think we will have a 6m rig available, so our plans to activate CALO on 6m may come to naught.

The N4A website will be updated with 2008 photo’s after the op is complete.  Might see some here too.

I am more pleased with this radio every time I use it.  The K2 was really a joy to put on the air during IARU. The CW copy is good.  The narrow filters are remarkable, relative to most other radios that I have tried. Good CW audio in a very narrow passband with no ringing detectable.  I found myself wanting to break away from my “run, run, run” operating game plan.  My original intent was to practice my run skills, but I found the K2 to be so good at S&P mode that I wound up doing a bit more S&P than I originally intended.

With the K2 filter set to 200 hz, S&P turned up workable stations every 200 hz.  I was able to hear the weak stations down in the QRN that I probably have never known were there before.  I was able to work many of them.  It was a genuine “Wow!” experience.

I have yet to master many of the nuances of the K2’s operation, so I did run into a couple of “moments”.  I acquired a KAT100 only a couple of days before FD, so I’m not completely up to date on its operation.  I found this to be a problem when switching between antennas.  That’s a problem, because I like to flip back and forth between alternative antennas.   I need to dig into the manual and deepen my understanding of the tuner.

The KAT100 is pretty slick though.  It tunes with low power, and it is very fast relative to my other rig.

My only other real issue is with the rx audio levels.  I have several sets of headphones to choose from, and all are different on the K2, much more so than the other radio.  I found myself juggling through several pair during the ‘test.  The differences range from extraordinarily bad to passable.  None of the current crop of headsets rise to the level of good.  This is something I will need to resolve, because the headsets are a “must have” preference.

I’m now looking forward to getting the 160m option built and added on to my K2.  S&P in the 160m contest is sure to be a lot of fun with this radio.  Also,  it will be nice to have the rx antenna input again.  That is a feature of the 160m option.  It is a feature I really like for 80m and 160m - I’ve become a real fan of using an rx antenna on 80m and 160m.  I’ll begin on that mod after the IOTA weekend.

The issues I have with the rig are minor compared to how much it has added to the joy of operating.

I just took another look at the 2008 ARRL DX CW scores.  My friend Nate, N4YDU placed 3rd in the southeast region, SOAB-LP.  That’s outstanding.  I know he’s doing it with elbow grease, because his station is nearly as antenna challenged as my own. There are no 90 foot towers over there either.  It looks like some of the new wires he’s hung in his trees worked out. 

There is also no denying the man is a CW QSO machine.  Good deal Nate!