By Dave Sergeant G3YMC
NFD is a major event in any club's calendar and the Bracknell club has entered this event for many years. In the past two years we have entered the Low Power section with a totally battery powered station and have come second place each time.
This page describes the activities in the 2004 NFD contest. For more details on NFD see the accounts on this website for the 2002 and 2003 events.
The photo shows John G3NCN making adjustments to the antenna
This year's contest followed the pattern of these previous events. The weekend, although marred by poor conditions on the higher frequency bands, was most successful and we achieved our highest score to date.
Ian Brown G3TLH, one of our operators for many years, moved away from the area last year and so would not be available this year. Getting good CW contest operators is always a problem for radio clubs so it did seem we would be down to two operators. Initial planning assumed this, so although there might have been an incentive to enter the restricted section with a full 24 hours operation for personal reasons this would not be possible with the remaining team. With that in mind we decided to leave the setup identical to last year's with another Low Power entry.
It was decided to return to Longhill Park, used for our 2002 entry, as this was very convenient and with its local location ideal for getting more club members participating. In addition it is a public area and some interest from members of the public was expected, always good publicity for amateur radio.
A request to use Longhill was made well in advance, and registration information emailed to the contest adjudicators - registration is now optional for NFD, but without it we would not qualify for any awards. It also allows other clubs to be informed of the section we have registered in - very useful during the contest when you can easily see how the opposition is doing!
A new club member, Maco M0WXO, is from Japan where he has the callsign JO1WXO. Maco is now operational on HF CW from his UK QTH and offered to help us with NFD. Unfortunately he had other commitments on the Saturday evening but was able to come along to set up and operated for the first hour.
The station again used my Elecraft K2 transceiver, with John G3NCN's as a back up. The
antenna was unchanged - a 204ft inverted vee doublet at 30ft supported with John's
lightweight aluminium mast. Power for the K2 would be 7AH gelcells, we had two of these
which would be more than adequate for our 12 hour participation. Logging would use my
Toshiba 386 laptop powered off the trailer battery with EI5DIs Super Duper logging software. Super Duper is now
freeware and we used the DOS version. Last year we had problems with the trailer
battery which caused the computer to turn off several times, this year a brand new
battery had been fitted so hopefully this would not be a problem. Part of the
preparation was to check that the computer would indeed work off a 12V supply and this
was successfully done.
As in previous years the antenna was fed centre fed with home made open wire feeder and fed with a switchable 1:1/4:1 balun - this was then matched with the internal automatic ATU inside the K2. This picture shows the balun with the toggle switch used for changing the ratio just outside the trailer awning - it was left in the 1:1 position as a good match was obtained on all bands in this position.
Use of the K2 ATU in conjunction with computer linking to the lap top via its serial
link makes instantaneous band switching possible, almost essential in today's amateur
radio contests. It would also allow us to check the 10m band
at frequent intervals for possible short lived sporadic E openings, something which
unfortunately didn't happen this year.
As in previous years we decided to operate the 12 hours allowed in the Low Power section in the first 12 hours. We were very aware this year that openings on 10m could not be relied on and that it was most important to use the whole of the night period to make maximum QSOs on 160m and 80m which would not be open during daylight. If hf conditions were unfavourable however we would miss valuable European portable stations on 20m with this choice of hours. With 12 hours to play with you have to accept some compromises
We arrived on site at around 2pm and the station was soon erected and John's camping trailer set up to form our home. Steve G4AUC also came along to give us a hand. Everything went to plan with only one or two minor hitches - the cable for the laptop was too short for instance. A quick tune-up and a good VSWR was obtained on all bands and we were ready to go with time to spare. Maco spent some time getting used to my twin paddle key using the test mode of the K2.
This is a general view of our operating position, with Maco M0WXO on the key and Dave G3YMC logging. Note the compactness of the station. The rig is powered off the 7AH battery in front of the K2.
The large box at the rear is my Yaesu SP901 external speaker, and not a power supply as some have suggested. This year we had an adaptor to allow us to run headphones in parallel with the speaker which helped considerably in copying.
Operation started on 10m and we worked a few, mainly local, stations, but we soon moved to 20m to get a higher QSO rate. When we returned to 10m we found it totally dead and no other stations were heard there for the rest of the contest. Towards dusk we moved down to 80m and then Top Band - conditions there were good with low QRN and our station worked very well down there. For most of the time there was just Dave G3YMC and John G3NCN in the operating tent so we took it in turns to operate.
At 4am (0300z) we had done our 12 hours of operating and it was time to close down. At this time of day the local midges were at their best and we realised we had forgotten the insect repellent! Unlike last year it remained dry and it was an easy job to dismantle and pack everything away and we were off site by around 5.15. Once home the logs were safely copied across to the main computer and initial results produced. Logs were emailed to the adjudicators the next day.
160m 80m 40m 20m 15m 10m Total
Valid QSOs: 104 115 70 50 2 12 353
Total Points: 776 416 229 171 6 92 1690
Claimed Score: 1690 points
This is a significant increase on our 2003 score. In general we are pleased with the result and is good. It would have been nice to have been able to work more stations on 10m and 15m but the propagation was just not there. It was more than compensated by an excellent QSO rate on Top Band. Initial feedback indicates we may (yet again) be in second place.
In the published results, which can be found in November 2004 RadCom or on the HF Contest website, we were indeed in second place. In first place was the GM DX Group G4OBK/P who had a sizeable lead having had a good QSO rate on 40m and 80m during the Sunday.
73 Dave G3YMC