2020 CQWW-VHF Contest Hilltopper Operation
This year's contest took place near Alvord, TX in grid EM13. A good friend and ham buddy of mine, Dale Cheek (NY5B) mentioned a place that might be good for contesting. I had about a week before the contest started but couldn't go scout out the location ahead of time. So, a 'map recon' was done using topographic maps and the location looked promising.
Since I was coming into an unseen location, I decided to arrive two hours early and see what I could find. Upon arrival at 11 AM, I found the initial spot to be high in elevation but enclosed by 40-foot trees in all directions. It wasn't looking too good at this point, so I decided to keep travelling east up the road from the site. Another quarter mile away revealed an even higher elevation that was around 1150 feet and had amazingly clear line-of-sight in all directions!
It took about an hour to set up the mast, antennas and generator. This was the first chance for me to try out the new generator power system, the home-brewed 6-meter Moxon, and the 7-element home-brewed 2m beam. The 2m beam was the one broken in half just an hour prior to the ARRL June VHF contest so I had no reference on how it performed in a rover/portable setup. I had enough mast sections to go up to 35 feet but decided to keep it at 20 feet due to wind and limited guying options.
At the start of the contest, I worked several stations on 2m SSB up to about 75 miles out. The first was NY5B, who recommended this area, and he was running 15-watts and I ran 10-watts due to my entry category. Swinging the beam to the east brought in Dale with no signal but clear Q5 audio! The beam is sharp but really helps dig out the signal. Given the conditions for this contest, I don't think my dual-band 2/440 halo would have worked as well. I called CQ for a while and turned the beam a quarter rotation or so every other call. I also worked two stations on 146.550 FM simplex using 10 watts and the Larsen NMO2-70 antenna on the truck roof.
Six meters was a bit rough since I heard very little in the way of sporadic E enhancement. In fact, almost all of my QSOs were ground wave propagation save for a few in Florida and Pennsylvania. When six is open, the Moxon acts more like a broadsided dipole. With ground wave signals, it made a huge difference as to where it was pointed. Most of my contacts on this band were FT8 but I did manage to locate N5XTR calling CQ on 50.125 SSB. Joel had a hard time copying my call and got the prefix. I ended up switching to CW and sending my call which he copied! We then completed the exchange on SSB and then moved to 2m SSB. Copy was much better on 2m. Joel was amazed that we worked ground wave on 6m with my 10-watt signal!
I almost forgot to mention the generator. That's the point--it's super quiet and just plugs along doing job. Since breaking it in a few weeks ago, I added a TrippeLite surge and EMI protector to the line. This cut down on the noise a bit but there is still a 'ticking' noise on both 2 and 6 but it really didn't cause a problem. Just out of curiosity, I switched to HF bands on the FT-857 and there was considerable hash present on all bands. So, I'll definitely finish up my brute-force filter and toroid winding project in the near future should I want to use the generator for HF portable. For this contest, I ran the rig off of AC power and my MFJ 30-amp switching power supply.
So, I really like the portability of this system overall. The generator stows behind the passenger seat and the auxiliary battery system works really well. Here are some pictures of the deployed generator and the auxiliary battery system.
To top off a fun day, another friend and ham operator decided to come visit the hilltop. Olan Rich, KI5DVX, lives about 30 minutes away from the location so he came up to check out the site. I think we might have another rover or portable operator in the making!
KI5VDX (left) and WA5RR
Since I was coming into an unseen location, I decided to arrive two hours early and see what I could find. Upon arrival at 11 AM, I found the initial spot to be high in elevation but enclosed by 40-foot trees in all directions. It wasn't looking too good at this point, so I decided to keep travelling east up the road from the site. Another quarter mile away revealed an even higher elevation that was around 1150 feet and had amazingly clear line-of-sight in all directions!
It took about an hour to set up the mast, antennas and generator. This was the first chance for me to try out the new generator power system, the home-brewed 6-meter Moxon, and the 7-element home-brewed 2m beam. The 2m beam was the one broken in half just an hour prior to the ARRL June VHF contest so I had no reference on how it performed in a rover/portable setup. I had enough mast sections to go up to 35 feet but decided to keep it at 20 feet due to wind and limited guying options.
At the start of the contest, I worked several stations on 2m SSB up to about 75 miles out. The first was NY5B, who recommended this area, and he was running 15-watts and I ran 10-watts due to my entry category. Swinging the beam to the east brought in Dale with no signal but clear Q5 audio! The beam is sharp but really helps dig out the signal. Given the conditions for this contest, I don't think my dual-band 2/440 halo would have worked as well. I called CQ for a while and turned the beam a quarter rotation or so every other call. I also worked two stations on 146.550 FM simplex using 10 watts and the Larsen NMO2-70 antenna on the truck roof.
Six meters was a bit rough since I heard very little in the way of sporadic E enhancement. In fact, almost all of my QSOs were ground wave propagation save for a few in Florida and Pennsylvania. When six is open, the Moxon acts more like a broadsided dipole. With ground wave signals, it made a huge difference as to where it was pointed. Most of my contacts on this band were FT8 but I did manage to locate N5XTR calling CQ on 50.125 SSB. Joel had a hard time copying my call and got the prefix. I ended up switching to CW and sending my call which he copied! We then completed the exchange on SSB and then moved to 2m SSB. Copy was much better on 2m. Joel was amazed that we worked ground wave on 6m with my 10-watt signal!
I almost forgot to mention the generator. That's the point--it's super quiet and just plugs along doing job. Since breaking it in a few weeks ago, I added a TrippeLite surge and EMI protector to the line. This cut down on the noise a bit but there is still a 'ticking' noise on both 2 and 6 but it really didn't cause a problem. Just out of curiosity, I switched to HF bands on the FT-857 and there was considerable hash present on all bands. So, I'll definitely finish up my brute-force filter and toroid winding project in the near future should I want to use the generator for HF portable. For this contest, I ran the rig off of AC power and my MFJ 30-amp switching power supply.
So, I really like the portability of this system overall. The generator stows behind the passenger seat and the auxiliary battery system works really well. Here are some pictures of the deployed generator and the auxiliary battery system.
To top off a fun day, another friend and ham operator decided to come visit the hilltop. Olan Rich, KI5DVX, lives about 30 minutes away from the location so he came up to check out the site. I think we might have another rover or portable operator in the making!
KI5VDX (left) and WA5RR
Score Summary
Entry Category: Single-Op Portable QRP Assisted
Total Contacts: 36
Total QSO Points: 41
Total Multipliers: 25
Total Score: 1,025
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