Saturday, February 16, 2013

Contest goals close to 50/50

In the thick of things
Well I am in the thick of things with the ARRL CW contest and as for my goals....I wanted to stay below 5 watts and try to get as many QRPp contacts as possible. Up to this point my QRPp contacts in the contest are at 92%!!! Because I am making mainly QRPp contacts the total contacts up to this point is suffering as I have to take the time to make the QSO. If there is even a faint signal coming back to the DX station I have to wait in line and sometimes these lines are over 5 minutes, this affects my total contact count big time. Some of the highlights up to this point in the contest are..........

1. Contacted DL6FBL with only 10mW's for a miles per watt total of 433,756 per watt an all time record  for me.
2. As was already mentioned 92% of contacts are QRPp and a majority of those are at or below 500mWs.
3. There are so far 9 contacts at or below 50mWs and again all these contacts are DX and not U.S stations.
 As for the rest of the goals like getting up early and racking up lots of time on the contest.........well the bed was sooooo comfee this morning it was very hard to get up and out before 8am! So that goal up to this point has not been met...but there is Sunday!! (dreams are free they say)
As for spending more time in the chair that will have to be weighted out on Sunday evening when the total time on air is looked at.
Contest on....it's off to 40m and maybe 80m as well..........will keep you posted

9 comments:

Bert, PA1B said...

Hello Mike, Congrats on all! WOW, 10 mW on a indoor antenna. And DX with 50 mW or less - FB. Yes this is so much fun. Indeed, the frequency must be absolutely clear, to make a QSO with very low power. Good luck on sunday. 73, Bert

Anonymous said...

Hello Mike,
congratulations - given your 10mW crosspond QSO, I'd call that
a 100% sucess.
Some more details ( band 20m?/time/antenna ) could help to encourage others, who also suffer from antenna restrictions, to give milliwatting a try.
As far as I'm concerned ( temporary 10m vertical on balcony )your report made me think about setting up my milliwatt rig
later today...
72!
Peter/DL3PB

VE9KK said...

Good afternoon Bert, I was amazed at how such a small amount of power gets out. You are right I do have to wait in line for the QRO and QRP ops to make their contacts. If I am lucky I will come across a DX station that is calling CQ and listening for contacts.
Have a nice Sunday.
Mike

VE9KK said...

Good afternoon Peter, it's great that the post has put a fire under your key...:). Some of the details are as follows...
1. Antenna is the Alpha Delta DX-EE dipole good from 10m-40m and with a tuner all the WARC bands as well. The dipole is located in the attic of my home. So it's surrounded by wood and insulation. By far not the most ideal situation but as you can see I am getting out!! The height of the antenna is about 30 feet (but in the attic)I would say.
2. The bands during the morning from 9 to noon were 10m and 15m. I then moved on to 20m and bounced back to 15m now and then. I was able to stay with 20m until about 8pm in the evening. Now 40m was alive but mainly with U.S stations and in this contest they do not count for points. So it was off the radio for the night.
Peter I would encourage you to set up the milliwatt rig...how far up are you with your balcony? What kind of rig are you using?

Anonymous said...

Hello Mike,
thanks a lot for he details - I was especially interested in
band/time of your now two 10mQ QSOs.
The base of my vertical is about 20ft agl - but with verticals
height isn't an issue, while ground conductivity is - the next beach is 200 miles from here :-(
I run homemade minimalist transceivers with 2...100mW most of
the time.
No luck on sunday, U.S./canadian stations on 20m were mostly around S9 'only', so no suprise my single digit milliwatts weren't heard and I gave up at 7pm, when signals started to fade out.
Keep up your great blog, OM!
Peter/DL3PB

VE9KK said...

Good afternoon Peter, the details on the two 10mW QSO's are as follows.
1. 20m at 14.042 and the time was 1907 UTC or 2:07 local in the afternoon.
2. 10m at 28.004 the the time was 1641 or 1141 local time in the morning.
I was out with my KX3 in the car today and was only to get one QSO with 1 watt. This QSO was just over the boarder into the U.S. I did hear some EU stations just booming in but even the the power raised to 5 watts the KX3 and car antenna just did not do it. The way I look at it is...making the contact is only a part of the fun. It's getting on the rig, sending out the code and enjoying the unpredictability of the hobby. After all if you just wanted great predictability just pickup the phone and make a call....:)
Have a great week Peter and ask me questions when ever I will be more than happy to help all I can.
If you would like you can also email me at ve3wdm@hotmail.com as well.
Bye for now and hope to hear your milli watts signal on this side of the pond soon
Mike
VE3WDM
ReplyDelete

Anonymous said...

Hello Mike,
it's some time ago, we talked about milliwatts crossing the pond.
Now two years later, 5mW into an EFHW vertical on 15m made the dream come true.
Please check out my QRZ page for the details.
Happy milliwatting!
Peter/DL3PB

VE9KK said...

Good morning Peter and great to hear that you have not joined the QRPp club and feel the thrill of how far so little power can go! I also checked out the QRZ page and your project looks good!
Mike

Bert, PA1B said...

Hello Peter, congrats on 5 mW to cross the pond, with the new Parasaki "all diode" QSK transceiver for 15 m. WOW.
Great info on the QRZ page. FB. 73, Bert