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Let’s take a look at February and a jam-packed roster of radio contests. There’s something for everyone this month – whether you’re a CW or RTTY lover, prefer phone contests or the newer digital modes like FT4.
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The prime contest seasons are behind us and ahead of us, so we’re in what I like to consider the summer doldrums.
Not a lot of really big contests to jump into, but plenty of interesting events if you’re looking for some ham radio action on a late spring and early summer weekend.
Let’s go take a look in Episode 8 of Zone Zero.
Welcome to Zone Zero, the ham radio contesting podcast. This is Bud, VA7ST, your faithful contesting observer, reporting in after a couple of weeks of downtime following the big WPX RTTY contest at the end of May.
Since then, I’ve been in station-building mode. Nothing major, I guess, but it sure has been an interesting couple of weeks as I have been addressing the shortage of HF amplifiers.
The little side-trip into technical country began the night after WPX CW. With nothing to work on, I decided to fix up a failing SB-221 amplifier, which had a tube go dark on me a couple of months ago. After checking things out I narrowed the problem to the now-dark Eimac 3-500Z tube itself.
That old tube has been in service since the day the amp was built in 1978, that’s 39 years of faithful high power for me and the unknown number of hams who owned it before me so that tube owes me nothing but happy memories. But I couldn’t give up on it without a fight.
Taking a tip from one of the online reflector groups, I re-soldered the filament pins – actually doing all five pins while I was at it — and the tube came back to life just fine.
But that got me going down a rabbit hole of changes to the amplifier. I spent an evening re-wiring for 240-volt service, as I now have a 240-volt circuit in the radio room. But when that didn’t appear to work, I returned the amp to 120-volt configuration.
After three more nights I finally traced the problem back to the breaker box. In the load-center, someone had put the double-pole breaker on a single pole of the mains power. I moved that double breaker one position over, and solved the problem – nice and stiff 240-volt service in the shack.
I spent an additional hour reconfiguring one of my SB-221 amplifiers for 240 volts, and haven’t looked back.
But that tube I mentioned? It bothered me that I don’t have a backup tube in case one fails in either of my Heathkit amplifiers. So I went online looking for a spare.
DX Engineering, Ameritron and RF Parts all sell 3-500ZG tubes for about the same price — US$220.
RF Parts won’t ship tubes outside the US. But DX Engineering and Ameritron will ship 3-500 tubes, and get my endorsement.
However, the currency conversion from US to Canadian dollars makes the price from any retailer a bit high — US$220 right now is $296 Canadian, plus shipping. So I looked around on Canadian swap and shops for a used 3-500Z tube.
And amazingly, I found one!
Well, it took a few days of hunting as these aren’t the most common spare part around. But Rick VA7EM, about half an hour’s drive from where I live, was selling an Ameritron AL-80BX amplifier with a spare 3-500Z as part of the package.
My ham-guy brain was ticking over pretty fast as I realized an AL-80B is a fine modern amplifier with a single 3-500Z tube providing about 600 watts out on 160M CW, plus it does the WARC bands for a bit of DXing firepower. My trusty SB-221 amplifiers have dual 3-500Z tubes and are bulletproof contest units putting out a kilowatt all day long if I wish, but they don’t do 160M or the WARC bands.
So, I got permission from the station manager – my lovely wife Kim – to make a call and see if I could acquire the amplifier and spare tube. The whole package cost me $1,000 – which is more than I went into this expecting to shell out for a spare tube, but I got a very solid, almost-new amplifier in the bargain.
I like that the AL-80B is still manufactured and sold in stores – which means parts and advice should be readily available if ever needed.
The retail price in Canada, by the way, is $2,300 – so I saved $1,000 plus another $300 in federal and provincial taxes and shipping charges buy buying slightly used and not having to ship anything.
So what does that all have to do with contesting?
Simple. Station-building – getting the gear – is a big part of the ham radio hobby and especially competitive contesting. Better, higher antennas, radios and other equipment that makes operating easier and quicker, even things as basic as more or better antenna switches, all improve your game.
Over the past weekend, the AL-980B had its maiden voyage here.
I ran the first leg of the DRCG Worldwide RTTY contest on the AL-80B, and had a great time. I didn’t notice a performance difference with 500 watts on RTTY using the Ameritron versus more like 700 watts with the SB-221 amplifier.
I didn’t expect to work more or fewer stations with either amplifier. Rather, I wanted to compare them running teletype, which is a 100 per cent duty cycle that pushes amplifiers to their limits.
Unless you have one of the big amplifiers costing 10 times the price of an SB-220 today, RTTY is not a mode to transmit continuously for more than a few seconds at a time,. If you keep things short and provide cooling pauses of a few seconds between transmissions (a technique which is perfectly aligned with the pace of RTTY contest CQing cycles), your amplifier should run a RTTY contest all weekend long without any issues at all.
The difference I saw was quite clear: the SB-221 ran a lot cooler – the plates of the single tube in the Ameritron glowed dull red and then orange after a few transmissions, while the SB-221 tubes never even began to turn color, and remained a lovely dull carbon gray.
The SB-221 amp won the heat shootout, but it doesn’t do 160M or WARC, and the Ameritron wins for pure flexibility and I also like that it has a reasonably accurate SWR and power meter in it.
So, now I have a few high-power options and the redundancy I want for operating in the big contests that really matter this fall.
That’s Amp Talk for this week. Now let’s take a look at actual contests.
CQ WPX CW is now a couple of weeks in the past, and the next worldwide contest is the IARU World HF Championships in July.
For me, that will be preceded by what I hope everyone will play in – the Radio Amateurs of Canada RAC Canada Day Contest, which is actually on Canada Day, July 1. I’ll provide more detain abut these two contests as their dates get closer.
I mentioned the past weekend’s DRCG Worldwide RTTY contest. Well, I don’t know how well I did but I put in nearly 11 hours – considerably more than the six or seven hours I normally allocate for this one – and managed 251 contacts in 30 or so countries.
The DRCG RTTY gives you more points for contacts in zones further away from you, so being in British Columbia can be a real advantage. A contact between me and W6 in California might be worth 2 points on 20Ms, but a contact with Yugoslavia is worth 32 points.
Normally, all those European QSOs rack up massive umbers, but 20M wasn’t super strong to Europe over the pole – workable but only passable not great. So I didn’t gorge on EU points.
What does promise some advantage is my easy shot to Japan, here sometimes thousands of hams get on for a contest. But not in this one. I managed a handful of JA contacts on 20M, worth 24 points apiece on 20M and double that – 48 points – on 40M. The activity just wasn’t there to make a feast of Asian DX points.
Maybe next year.
I also listened around on six meters in the ARRL: June VHF contest, but other than one CW signal heard on a meteor scatter event for less than a second, nothing heard here in British Columbia.
Coming up on the calendar next weekend – that’s June 17 and 18, 2017 – you’ll find the All Asian DX CW contest. That’s 24 hours of Asian-focused activity, starting 0000 UTC on Saturday.
For teletype fans, also get into the Ukrainian Classic DX RTTY contest, which starts at 1200 UTC Saturday for 24 hours. The multipliers are Ukraine oblasts or provinces, plus all the DXCC countries worked on each band.
And for Top Banders who like 160M like I do, the Stew Perry Top Band Distance Challenge runs his weekend for 24 hours starting 1500 UTC Saturday – in my part of the world, because 1500 UTC is actually 8 a.m. Pacific time on Saturday morning, the Stew Perry is really a Saturday night contest. I’ll get in on it with the new amplifier and try to make my first-ever QRO contact on 160M.
I’ll be limited in time, though, as Sunday I am taking my two grown boys on a salmon fishing expedition on Vancouver Island for all the fish we can eat and all the crab we can catch over a couple of days next week.
I will be back in plenty of time for the following weekend’s contests, which include the Ukrainian DX Digital contest and the ARRL’s June Field Day.
But that’s all in the future. Hope you can get on for some or all of the fun to be had on the air.
Subscribe to Zone Zero on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or your favorite podcast platform. Tell your friends, and come back often for more.
Until then, let’s go get ‘em. I’ll see you out there!
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In the first full episode of Zone Zero, Bud looks at the SP DX RTTY and BARTG 75 RTTY contests.
Both events include a continent multiplier, which adds a fun extra dimension as you scour the bands trying to find all six continents – Africa, Europe, Asia, Oceania, North and South America.
If you’re new to the podcast, let me point you to our introductory episode – which I’ve called Episode Zero – as it is a bit of an introduction with info about me and why I started Zone Zero. It’s a good primer for anyone wondering what this is all about.
I want to say a few words out of the gate about location. I am on the West Coast – in the gorgeous southern interior of British Columbia.
To give you an idea of the geographic location, we’re about 60 miles north of the Washington State border. Spokane, Washington, is about 260 miles driving distance to the southeast of us. And Vancouver, BC, is about 240 miles to the west.
Our location on the west side of North America means something to fellow hams from California all the way up to Alaska, as we combat the aurora borealis and its impact on the frequency bands we know and love.
The further east you go, the less you have to rely on the polar path to reach Europe, and the aurora has less impact. From my corner of the world, at least, I have to point directly through the heart of the auroral zone if I want to hear — or be heard in — Europe.
So, imagine the aurora as a great big donut or bagel shape, suspended over the north pole. That donut gets bigger or smaller, depending on geomagnetic conditions – when the sun is storming — spewing a coronal mass ejection or high-speed solar wind at Earth — the aurora gets stronger and bigger, essentially absorbing radio signals so they simply do not pass through.
In this part of the world, if we want to reach Europe, our signals have to go through the near side of the donut, over the polar ice cap, then through the other side of the donut into Europe.
With strong auroral conditions, very little signal gets through – if any.
Now, sometimes, the donut pushes so far south that parts of Northern Europe are actually inside the oval. When that happens, we might see a curious phenomenon known as the Scandinavian Express.
If I point due north even when the aurora numbers are elevated, I can quite often work Scandinavian stations in Sweden and Norway, when I can’t hear anything else at all from Europe. That can add a few multipliers to the log when nobody else is hearing me over the pole – it’s worth a listen even on days of poor propagation.
It’s tough from the west coast, going through both sides of the auroral oval – it is a significant factor in contesting in northern latitudes, and in particular from the west coast of North America because there’s no other option for working Europe. Keep in mind that pointing long-path to Europe means going through the aurora Australis, which is usually just as strong over the south pole.
Over the past weekend, in the YU DX contest – where Yugoslavian stations were the focus from around the world – and in the Manchester Miniera CQMM DX contest sponsored by Brazilian hams – conditions were quite bleak, but we did make some contacts over the pole on 20M or 14 Mhz, and I even made two contacts in Europe on 40M, which from this part of the world can be a challenge during low-sunspot years.
So conditions were bad but not as bad as I expected.
Let’s take a look ahead at the upcoming weekend contests. There’s not a whole lot of contest activity, but there are two events I’d like to highlight.
My usual routine is to check the Orca DX and Contest Club website – that’s the club for British Columbia and Pacific Northwest – at orcadxcc.org. I’m the webmaster, and try to keep a short list of upcoming contests in the Contest Corner, and there’s also a very handy propagation dashboard I developed, which can give us an at-a-glance reading of band conditions.
In future episodes, we’ll explore the Orca propagation dashboard in some detail. For now, I see that the geomagnetic field K-index has been up and down on April 19, currently at 3. If that K index is elevated over several hours or days, the A-index will rise, and I like to keep an eye on the A-index as it can help predict how good or bad radio conditions will be.
For example, right now the A index is a whopping 17, the geomagnetic field conditions are active, and the aurora level is 7.2 and rising. Simply put, the bands are pretty much shut down right now.
But maybe things will improve by the weekend. And maybe not. That’s sort of the challenge for radio contesters — predicting what radio signal propagation will be like, because that can dictate how you will operate a particular contest. It will certainly help you decide whether to optimize your score by trying to find DX contacts or go for higher rates of lower-point but more plentiful domestic stations.
For this weekend – April 22 and 23 – we’re looking forward to the SP DX RTTY and BARTG 75 RTTY contests. Both of these are “everyone works everyone” worldwide contests using radio teletype.
Now, it’s no fun listening to someone reading details about time, date and rules for a contest, so I will encourage you to get the details online – check the show notes for this episode one at zone.va7st.ca for links to the orcadxcc.org website and the best contest calendar I know of, the WA7BNM Contest Calendar (which you can also find with a Google search for WA7BNM).
Up first this weekend is the SP DX RTTY contest, sponsored by the Polish Radiovideography Club. It starts at 1200 UTC on Saturday, April 22, and runs 24 hours.
I really enjoy radio teletype contests. The important thing in this contest is to work as many Sugar Papa or SP stations in Poland as possible.
One of the tips and tricks is to be on the air when Europe is open. These days, from North America’s east coast you may catch a morning opening on 15M, but on the west coast that’s unlikely.
20M will be the big band for Europe no matter where you are.
For me, I expect a very narrow window for working Europe on Saturday morning – possibly for only an hour and only on 20M or 14 Mhz.
The multipliers in this contest are each DXCC country and each Polish province – and they count on each band. So if you work Iceland and Hawaii on 20M, you can work them again on 40M as new multipliers on that band, too.
What I think is a fun feature of the SP DX RTTY contest is that you take all of your contacts and multiply them by the number of countries and Polish provinces you’ve worked, and then multiply that by the number of continents you worked.
One of the challenges, with conditions the way they will be, is to find Africa.
From the North American east coast and Europe, that won’t be too difficult. From the west, it can be much more difficult. But pointing antennas just south of the auroral oval, if conditions are reasonably okay, can produce contacts with North Africa and the mid-Atlantic islands, such as EA8 – the Canary Islands, which are counted as Africa.
Those will be like gold this weekend. All the other continents should be relatively easy to find. The ZL stations in New Zealand and VKs in Australia have been relatively active in recent months, and KH6s in Hawaii should be a slam-dunk from all of North America, so the Oceania continent will be pretty straightforward.
That’s a quick look at the SP DX RTTY contest.
The other contest is the BARTG 75 baud RTTY contest. And it’s a short one!
It’s a four-hour contest, starting at 1700 UTC on Sunday. Its uniqu e feature is operating with 75-baud RTTY. Now, most RTTY contests are 45 baud. But at 75-baud, you can call CQ in a second and a half, so the cycles of CQing and listening are quite rapid and you can reach high rates, particularly for a RTTY contest.
The multipliers are all the DXCC countries as well as the call areas of the US, Canada, Japan and Australia.
And you also get to multiply your score by the number of continents you work. I like that feature. Continent multipliers can boost your score quickly – but the challenge is you have to find all six continents to really be competitive. The big gun stations will find them almost certainly.
If conditions are bleak, though, even Europe could be tough to land for some of us – and I would encourage you to get those continents in the bag as quickly as possible. Remember, you only have four hours to find them all.
Looking at previous years, I usually have found six continents – Oceania, Asia, Africa, Europe, North and South America, but not always. This weekend, if the Canary Islands or our friends in Morocco like CN8KD are active, I might get Africa, but that’s not a sure thing. There have been other, longer contests that took me 12 hours or more to get them all – often Africa is toughest, but even South America can be challenging if there aren’t many operators on the air.
In this one, I think six is doable.
Okay, I think that’s wrap for the first show. You can read more about the show and find episodes at ZONE.VA7ST.CA, our home site.
Subscribe and tell your contesting friends about the program.
You can email me at [email protected] with thoughts about the podcast.
73 from British Columbia, everyone. Thanks for listening. I’ll see you out there.
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