Episode 12: Why we do it
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Something every contest operator has thought about at one point or another is, “Why?”
Why do we put in the long hours for no tangible reward? Why do we build our stations with unstinting dedication? Why are we drawn to the sounds of a band throbbing with signals, only to eek out a tiny slot for ourselves to join the fray?
They’re good questions. And there are as many answers as there are people asking them. But the keenest response is that nobody really knows, and we all know.
That’s the focus for Episode 12 of Zone Zero.
Welcome to Zone Zero – the ham radio contesting podcast. This is Bud, VA7ST. It‘s Labor Day weekend, and I have a confession. This weekend I operated in the Russian RTTY contest, and it was the first contest I’ve been in since July.
Yes, you heard correctly. I have been taking a summer break. Despite being a seasoned contest operator, it is truly amazing how you can lose your edge after just a few weeks of lapsing into no-contest mode. It took me several minutes on Friday evening to get the radios sorted out for RTTY and get back into he groove of seamless exchanges with other competitor.
It reminds me quite clearly that practice – getting on the air – is so vitally important.
And that has me thinking this week about why we do this. What’s the attraction.
The closest I can come to an answer is that it is compelling like an adrenaline rush you seek over and over again. And it’s comforting to be part of a community of avid fellow competitors. Belonging to a group, even one as hyper-competitive as the contesting community, is just plain neat. We share in wins and losses, and it truly is more about competing than winning or losing. The journey is the destination.
Before any contest, I psych myself up far beyond any realistic expectation of results. I look at how I did in previous years, I study the current band conditions, and for major contests I study how my competition fared.
That’s a lot of pre-contest preparation, and it doesn’t include the actual station itself — just the operator. This week, I thought I’d run through my routine so others can compare it with how they get ready for a contest.
The first step is to look at the calendar every week, and pick a target. Most weekends offer multiple events, and it’s your choice which you will make time for. In my case, I look for the contest that will offer the biggest bang per hour — the mot contacts, or the most opportunities to work new DX entities or counties, or add to my all-time prefix total. But mostly, I go for the contest offering the most contacts pr hour — DX or domestic.
And that’s because one of the prime motivator for my contesting is year-over-year comparisons with how my station performs. I make antenna and equipment changes — hopefully most of them improvements rather than steps backward — and I can generally gauge the benefit of station improvements from one contest to the same contest the following year.
3830
I recommend all contesters consider sharing their contest stories and scores on the 3830 website. Many of the world’s most active contesters do this, and it is a lot of fun to read what others have to say after a contest and see their unofficial – or claimed – scores as they come in.
After a contest, I will write down my thoughts about what worked, what didn’t, and any notable events such as finding an opening I didn’t expect – noting what time of day and where I was pointing. I will also note any new equipment used, or particularly good DX worked.
I use my own 3830 reports as sort of a personal diary — I track just about every contest I enter, and there are more than 800 of those records on my website, sortable by date, contest or mode.
Official results
If you’re new to contesting, I recommend deep research. Immerse yourself in the experiences of long-time contesters. There are a lot of great resources out there for that – including the official results of previous contests. Top places to start are the CQ Contest, ARRL Contesting site (and the ARRL Contest Calendar), the National Contest Journal, and hundreds of contest sponsor websites.
Propagation
During low cycle years it’s just a given — bands wont be good. In high sunspot years, it matters a lot, as you need to be where the action is and cannot afford to be one band too low when the world is somewhere else, such as working a brief or a strong, deep 10M opening over the pole.
Once the contest starts, don‘t be fooled. A hot start can become a death march of a finish, and vice versa. Many times I’ve plodded through a slow Saturday only to have a blast on a Sunday roll where my score skyrocketed. And just as many times, it has gone the other way around.
You have to be in it to know which way the contest will go. No shortcuts available.
I typically have the Orca DX and Contest Club homepage — and the Orca propagation tool – open on my computer monitor throughout a contest. I know how useful it is because I developed it myself specifically to gaher all the key bits of propagation and space weather date and present it visually in an at-a-glance dashboard I can rely on for consistent rending information about the HF bands.
Why do we do it?
Back to our opening question. Why do we do it? Well, I once thought it was amazing to receive a certificate, but I have hundreds of them now. Division and section titles for BC and Canada, and even a handful of top 10 worldwide, though not in the major contest. I still love to receive a certificate from the sponsors, bu it’s not a motivating influence for me any more.
I’m also not really into competing with other stations because I know I can’t compete hardware-wise, and operating-wise I’m good but not nearly as good as many two-radio operators with multiple towers to pick from.
I am a weekend contester and happy to be that.
I obsess about antenna projects, trying to get the best out of the limited funds, space and time I have to work at it. And I do quite well within those constraints. Ingenuity and penny-pinching go hand-in-hand very nicely.
I don’t like climbing towers, so I have a small tilt-over crank-up that does well for me. It’s safe but I’ll never win CQ WW with the antennas it will support. That’s okay by me.
Over the past week, I took some time to tilt over the tower and made improvements to the Steppir three-element yagi. More specifically, I added a 6M fixed-length reflector to the Steppir, and moved the original fixed-length director forward a few inches, which optimizes the antenna for 6M.
I also put up an 8-element cross-polarized 2M yagi at the top of the mast. Now, I am all set for contesting on 6M and 2M, when the opportunity arises.
It takes only a few seconds to describe the project, but in reality it took weeks of planning. The changes to the Steppir yagi for 6M alone took a full week of evenings using antenna modelling software to determine exactly how long to make the aluminum tube elements, and exactly where to place them on the antenna’s 16-foot boom to optimise forward gain at a good SWR.
Then there was the parts sourcing. Where can a guy get aluminum tubing locally? Turns out not many places stock good-quality tubing in 5/8“ and ½“ diameter. But DX Engineering sure does. I got eight ½” pieces and two 5/8“ pieces from DX Engineering, a length of 1.75“ and 1.5“ boom material, including the $40 FedEx cost, for a lot less than I could buy it locally – assuming anyone locally had the material, which they don’t.
DX Engineering is the place to go for antenna material.
All the effort was worth it. I have already added a few new gird squares to my 6M total – I only have a few dozen so far, but I hope to keep adding squares as I work on 6M – it’s really a blast to make contact via meteor scatter or on FT8 mode when there is e-skip or rare tropospheric ducting conditions.
And how about that 2M yagi? In our mountainous part of British Columbia, we usually can work up and down the valley for 50 miles or so. But a few times now, pointing south, I have decoded stations as far south as Reno and Las Vegas, Nevada. This weekend, I heard a station in Utah.
On 2M via ionized meteor trails.
That’s really quite amazing for a 12.5-foot-long VHF antenna sitting at about 30 feet on top of the crankup tower.
On the calendar
Next weekend, pull the microphone off the shelf and get involved in the Worked All Europe phone contest. It runs 48 hours, from 0000z Saturday (that’s Friday afternoon in the Pacific timezone) to 2359Z on Sunday.
And for VHF-enabled stations, you might weant to explore the ARRL Septembr VHF contest, starting t 1800z on Saturday. Bands from 50 Mhz through to 902 Mhz are in the rtunning, and it’s a great way to add to your locator grid square collection if you are working toward the ARRL grid square awards.
We are about to launch into he 2017 fall contest season. Get those projects done, and be ready for the action.
The solar cycle is in a low period, for sure, but there’s a lot of fun still to be had on the airwaves this fall and winter.
Keep this in mind: if you can make your station work well for you in the solar minimum years, you’ve got something that will play very competitively when sunspots return and five watts to a wet noodle will work the world.
Contesting this year and next will challenge everything you have – your station and you. Now’s the time to hone your skills, and to enjoy every opportunity to compete.
That’s it for Episode 12 of Zone Zero.
If you like these occasional ramblings of a real-world contester, join the growing number of subscribers – it costs nothing to subscribe and it helps build our listener base. If you do nothing else, let your club know about Zone Zero, or jot a note about your contest experiences and leave a comment.
Let’s go get ‚em! I’ll see you out there.