Category Archives: Contests - Page 3

CQWW DX CW – SJ2W

                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW

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

Class: SOSB/20 HP
QTH: Da Traesk
Operating Time (hrs): 41
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:                    
   80:                    
   40:                    
   20: 4042    40      140
   15:                    
   10:                    
------------------------------
Total: 4042    40      140  Total Score = 1,608,300

Club: Worldwide Young Contesters

Comments:

What a blast! We had planned a M/S effort for this one but we felt we were short
on operators so we decided to do a couple of single band efforts instead. I did
20m unassisted with the SJ2W call and SM2LIY did SB 15 (A) with SM2M. 

I had some thoughts about maybe doing SB 40 instead but considering this might
be the last chance for some decent openings on 20m for a while in CQWW CW, I
decided to do SB 20 and man am I happy about that. Bands were open 48h but I
did sleep a bit anyway and Sunday morning sleep was longer than what I had
planned, I don't think I lost that much on it though since it had closed down
towards US. This was the first contest I used the K3 as a run radio and it took
me a while to get used to it, I didn't really feel comfortable until after maybe
12 hours with it.

Huge amount of JAs worked, 434 zone 25 which is really high considering it was
on 20m! I could work JAs pretty much all the time except in the afternoon.
During the night they came through and during the morning and day they came
through with good signals. Since the SFI was a bit low we were really saved by
some bursts of aurora during the evenings that opened up the bands and held
them open for a long time. Without that bands would have closed early and we
would have loosen our propagation's advantage up north.

We put up a new tower this summer for the inband position that is located about
450m from the other antennas. We didn't have time to get a yagi up but I climbed
up with a trap dipole that I used to QSX the band. I did not move from the run
frequency with the main radio except a few times when I needed to concentrate
to break a pileup. I tried to continuously scan the band and found quite a few
mults and stations that way. However on Sunday it was pretty much all the same
stations over and over again. I use a homebuilt switching system so I do
transmit on the 2nd radio as well which switches over the amp + antenna from
the run radio to the second radio. The run radio then gets the
"inband" antenna. The high dipole @30m worked so much better than the
vertical we used before for listening so that was a good choice to switch.

The target I had was about 3000q and to set a new SM record. I was hoping with
some luck to be able to beat the Scandinavian record set by OH6UM @OH8X last
year but I had my doubts since I knew how propagation's were then. I did manage
both and also claimed a new EU record, if now nobody else has beaten me or/and I
have been a too big LID in the log check.

Radios: K3 + TS590SG (inband)
Ants: 6/6/6el + 5/5el + 4el @EU
Amp: SB-220 (Borrowed from SM2EKM)
N1MM Logger+

CQWW DX CW – SM2M

                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW

Call: SM2M
Operator(s): SM2LIY
Station: SJ2W

Class: SOSB(A)/15 HP
QTH: Da Traesk
Operating Time (hrs): 40

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:                    
   80:                    
   40:                    
   20:                    
   15: 2714    40      158
   10:                    
------------------------------
Total: 2714    40      158  Total Score = 1,244,826

Club: Worldwide Young Contesters

Comments:

Contest started slow, some small opening in the beginning with weak signals, and
after about 50 QSO,  time for some sleep before the band was about to open in
the morning. Thanks to some Aurora the band was useful to NA both evenings, and
sometimes the signals were outstanding strong from NA.
Plan was to set a new SM record, but ended up with a claimed new EU record.


The big stack (6/6/6/6/6) performed very well again, and the smaller (6/6) was
useful to split and switch directions fast.
FT1000MP MKV with extra preamp + ACOM 2000A (Sponsored by Ojojoj Music AB) 

73s Per SM2LIY

Finally an update!

I have been lazy updating the website lately, sorry for that. I have been very busy with a lot of different things and not much interesting stuff has happened down at SJ2W. I had planned to work SOAB in CQWW SSB but after messing with the WIFI-link during whole Friday I felt exhausted and ran extremely low on motivation so I spent the weekend doing other stuff instead. We have however gotten the WIFI-link to work UFB now, I have 97/97 MBit at SJ2W and the ping from the work QTH down to SJ2W is 4ms (!).

SM2NOG came by and we put up a rotatable dipole that I got a few years ago from SM2XLL. We figured that antenna would be a lot better at 30m height than the current vertical we have been using for inband. I did listen a bit and could get very close to our CQ frequency and still be able to hear people well on 20-10m. It does not work at all on the lowbands, so I will need to hook up the switch and the other vertical for that.

SM2EKM needed some climbing help at his QTH so I brought with me the climbing gear up north to the work QTH and since I was staying in Luleå a weekend (for the first time since early summer) I went to him and we put up a new 9el for 6m that he built (YU7EF design). It was icy and cold but it went very well and we were finished well before sunset.

WB4RFQ also came to visit. It was very fun because he emailed me and told me since he worked for Facebook he would come and visit Luleå for work. He wanted to get a tour of the station and I made him aware of SJ2W being 180km from Luleå (where I work) but he did not mind. I also asked him if he was allergic to dogs since I would have Hicco down at SJ2W for the weekend since Anna was traveling, but he did not mind. He came and we went for pizza, I gave him the tour and he told me some of the plans they have for a Club station in San Fransisco.

I have also worked some on a few electronic projects and I hope that I will get time during the XMAS break to start building on the QBL amplifier again.

Plans for CQWW CW will be that I will do SOSB 20m unassisted with SO2R inband setup and SM2LIY will do SOSB 15m assisted I believe. So make sure to work SJ2W and SM2M during CQWW CW!

SAC SSB

Last weekend we had invited some of the “new guys” who haven’t been doing ham radio for a long time. For some of them this was the first contest and it seems like they had a lot of fun. It was fun to see the excitement of SA2CLC who just lives ~2km from SJ2W after his first run shift in the chair. We did a small M/M with two radios and most of the time was operated by the new guys even though me and SM2LIY did some short shift. The participants were SA2CLC, SA2BLV, SA2TMS, SA2KNG and me + SM2LIY were the “teachers” this time. Hopefully they were excited enough that they want to do more contests even though propagation’s were absolutely awful this SAC SSB, but they didn’t seem to mind.

I had problems last weekend when leaving to go up to the work QTH again, that the sewer had plugged up. So I borrowed some equipment from a friend and got it loose after a few hours of work. I had SM2LIY as help and we managed to get it so that the water coming out of the sewer pipes were clear so most of the crap seemed to have been gone. I really need to fix this permanently some day.

After the SAC SSB contest I climbed the 60m tower and attached some WIFI-bridges that will be used to get a better internet connection to SJ2W and it will also deliver internet to my neighbor + SM2XJP. I attached it with three M8 screws each, it was a new experience to drill and tap holes at 52m height 🙂

I have also done some work on the new antenna switches. I will start selling complete switches this winter and right now I am working on getting them easy to produce and I will also launch a web shop. However I will keep on selling the boards as well, so people can build it themselves if they wish.