Another 2m Contest from CARC Hut 18

Following the recent success of Brain and Howard taking part in a 2m QRP contest from the CARC clubhouse, I was inspired to try my hand.

I had intended to spend the majority of the evening of Tuesday 5 July sorting out the equipment returned from Kent after the RSGB VHF NFD contest of the previous weekend. However it occurred to me that I had everything to hand to make a good stab at that evening's RSGB 2m UKAC contest. These run every Tuesday evening of the year with the first Tuesday of the month being 2m, the second 70cm, the third 23 and 13cms, the fourth Tuesday for 6m and when there is a fifth Tuesday in the month this is used for 4m.

You can find the calender here http://www.rsgbcc.org/vhf/

The rules are fairly simple with the normal 1pt per kilometer worked multiplied by the number of unique locator squares of UK contacts i.e. IO91, IO92, JO03 etc. You can of course work European stations and these do count for points (the number of km) but their locator squares are not counted towards the multiplier. This is deliberately designed to encourage UK stations to work each other and increase activity, at the same time giving stations all over the UK a fair chance at doing well.

So instead of tidying the clubhouse (don't worry I did that on Wednesday 6th), I dug out my old IC275H and the 400W 2m PA, hooked it all up to the club 17element beam and tested it out. All seemed to work OK despite not having the masthead preamp which has been repaired but is awaiting fitting to the tower. I didn't bother with a CQ caller as the contest is only 2.5 hours long, starting at 1900Z and finishing at 2130Z. This proved to be the right decision.

Unfortunately neither did I have my adapter lead with microphone preamp to allow the normal Heil HC4 headset to be used with the IC275. Most Icom radios supply 8V on the microphone pin which at a minimum need a capacitor in line to prevent damage to the Heil mic insert. This 8V is present to power a mic preamp built into Icom microphones. This means that the level of other non Icom microphones is too low and needs an additional microphone preamp.

I ended up just using the Icom fist mic that comes with the radio.

As I had little idea how well or badly the club site would work for a 2m contest I wasn't sure how many QSOs were likely. I opted to use the Minos logging software written specifically for RSGB VHF contests by Mike Goodey, G0GJV. This excellent piece of software has all the contests preloaded ensuring that they are scored correctly. Simply enter the station information such as your call, your locator etc and the software does the rest. A good tip is to ensure that your PC clock is correct. Minos uses this clock to log the QSOs.

You can find documentation and downloads here http://minos.berlios.de/

Operating as G6RC, the contest itself proved to be very enjoyable. At times it was more like HF than VHF with 3 or 4 stations replying to a QRZ call. In total I worked 131 QSOs in 2.5 hours with ODX being MM1DDD/P at 598km. Also worked were GI, EI, GW, F, DK ON and PA. I deliberately didn't spend much time with the antenna pointing at Europe but in hindsight it might have been worth a short period bagging the big stations at 700+km for extra points.

The claimed scores for the contest can be found here

http://www.rsgbcc.org/cgi-bin/claim.pl?Contest=144MHz%20UKAC&year=2011

At the time of writing, with the execpition of Bryn, G4DEZ and Dave GI4SNA both of whom have excellent VHF QTHs, equally good equipment and are seasoned operators, the other stations above G6RC are all portable, a huge advantage in a VHF contest.

So lessons learned.

The CARC clubhouse is a great site for UK VHF/UHF/SHF contests.

The IC275H is a great receiver. I barely suffered from QRM despite many other big stations on the band. It is certainly my radio of choice.

I need to be better at working pileups. Picking the full call, first time from the melee will certainly speed up the QSOs leaving time for even more.

Get the headset working properly. Bring the right lead.

Move the computer screen down making it easier to operate the logging. The radio doesn't need much tweaking and can easily sit off to the right of the computer screen.

So the next 2m UKAC contest is on Tuesday 2nd August. I hope to be at the club to give that a go. I will have had knee surgery the week before so it might not be possible. If anyone else is interested in this or other Tuesday evening events, let us know.

Alternatively if you fancy a portable entry that too can be great fun. Remember to claim the score both individually and for the Crawley ARC.

73
Mike
G0KAD