Monthly Archives: October 2014

SAC SSB – new SM record

                    Scandinavian Activity Contest, SSB

Call: SJ2W
Operator(s): SM2WMV
Station: SJ2W

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Da Traesk
Operating Time (hrs): 24
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
   80:  128    40
   40:  316    55
   20: 1353    69
   15:  517    63
   10:  235    54
-------------------
Total: 2549   281  Total Score = 1,781,259

Club: Worldwide Young Contesters

Comments:

My first SAC SOAB since 2006, hopefully it wont take 8 years until I do the next
one. I had fun, it was quite easy to do 24h even though my body starts aching
when sitting still for 24h. Even tried the CT1BOH style of pee can so I
wouldn't need to lose any time in the chair. It worked, but I need to modify it
so I need to concentrate less :) 

Felt a bit handicapped only having one amplifier on 15/10, so when doing DUAL
CQ on these bands I had to go LP with one radio which was noticeable. Need to
get this fixed somehow.

It was a very fun battle with OH2UA @OH8X. We did take turns of being #1 during
most of the contest on the scoreboard (cqcontest.net) and it ended up with about
6000-7000 points between us, so it will be a close race. Its amazing the amount
of mults the Finns are able to get, even though I am quite happy with my mult
count Toni had 21 more mults. I missed some easy ones on 10m, tried to move
them during whole Sunday but I didn't get SP, ON, OM, EU etc on 10m which was
frustrating. Also very frustrating with some people who didn't want to move but
I must say that most people tried so cheers for that.

It is funny how a 24h contest end up so close in both the CW leg and SSB leg in
the battle of the north. In the CW leg 1.6% difference between OH8X and SJ2W and
in the SSB leg about 0.4% :)

The new 15m stack (5x6el) worked great even though its not rotatable from the
shack at the moment, so I ran out on Sunday morning and turned it towards Asia
by hand. Except the amplifier issue the station is wonderful to do SOAB now, it
works really well and is very simple to operate.

Fun to work the first QSOs with my good buddy Dave (N2NL) as WH7AA on 20 and
40m. He managed to work me on 40m with a vertical 20m dipole, so thanks for
that :)

New SM record! Thanks for the QSOs.

Antennas
80m: 4-SQ
40m: 3/3el + 2/2el + 4-SQ
20m: 6/6/6el + 5/5el + 4el @EU
15m: 6/6/6/6/6el + 6/6el + 5el
10m: 6/6el + 6el @46m
8 beverages

K3 + ACOM 2000A (Sponsored by Ojojoj Music AB)
FT1000MKV + 4-1000 (80-20m)
N1MM Logger

Check the website for more information and continous updates of what goes on
at the station.
http://www.sj2w.se/contest/

SAC SSB coming up!

Hello boys and girls!

SAC SSB this weekend and I will try to run SOAB HP as SJ2W during the contest. I have a sore throat so participation is not 100% but I hope that it will feel better tomorrow since it felt better this morning compared to yesterday. So make sure to look for me on the bands and give me as many points as possible!

http://www.sactest.net

15m stack finished

This last week has been quite intense. I’ve spent some evenings finishing up parts for the 15m beams and during the weekend we managed to get all beams ready and lifted. The crew during the antenna lift was SM2XLL, SM2LIY and SM2UVU plus me. SM2UVU did the climbing while attaching the beams and when he had to leave at 1400 I climbed and we hoisted the stackbox and finished up some details on the side support for the booms. On Sunday I did another climb and finished up the work so we could try it out during the CQP which was fun. It seem to be a killer, during the wide open propagation’s during the day we didn’t see that much difference in signal strength but the signals were a lot more stable on the new stack. But when we got late evening/night propagation’s we could see 5-10dB difference which is what I was hoping for. Also it gives us a lot more flexibility being able to have three directions on 15m where two of the systems are stacks that perform very well on DX. I will be getting to test it out during the SAC SSB contest this weekend SOAB HP, so make sure to work SJ2W on as many bands as possible!

On Sunday SM2XJP came out and we put some connectors on cables and shifted out the 1 1/4″ coax to the 2/2el stack and put it on the new 15m stack. I would rather have one piece of coax to the main antenna system for a band and let the secondary system on 40m have 7/8″ with a few jumpers. Less risk of failures of the main system that way, also less loss on the 1 1/4″.

Now some smaller tasks are left to do before the snow is allowed to arrive. We need to get the tower rotating and hopefully we can get that done before CQWW CW. I doubt we’ll have it rotating before CQWW SSB but you never know, we’ll see. Currently I am feeling a bit drained on energy but hopefully that will improve during the week, it usually does.

So CU lads in SAC SSB and big thanks to SA2BRJ who did the optimization of the stack on the super computer they have at work!