Arbor Day  2013          Special  Event Station:    W8TNX   
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COOKEN ARC, Newark, Ohio will be activating  solar-powered W8TNX from the world-famous
Dawes Arboretum,   located in southern Licking County,  central Ohio, to celebrate Arbor Day.

When:        Sat.    April 27, 2013
Time:          9am - 5 pm EDST     ( 1300-2100 GMT)
Frequencies:       7.232 - 14.332 - 21.332 - 28.332 - 146.88 repeater

Over 50  earth-conscious  clubs and organizations will set up tents and displays at this  annual event  to celebrate the beauty and wonder  of Mother Nature.   

W8TNX will be  solar powered  for the first time in it’s history.  We are looking forward to this exciting event! 

Those who thought they worked Clipperton but werent in the log per DXA,  and made a  back up qso on 40 Sat morning were being told they WERE in the log and not to worry about not being  in DXA.  Happened to quite a few guys as they wound down and only had one station operating.  Lots of guys had pulled the plug once they got to 100k according to the Russian op doing the talking.

Ooops.  My mistake.   No PA this contest. 

Oh!  Thanks for the inquiry! 

We set a club record, despite limited (4) ops and modest station.

841 qsos
136,036 points
72 mults

But very poor conditions to northern lattitudes like EU...only five Euros ( DL, CT3, CT2, EI and  1 Netherlands stn) despite our new  Beverage looking at Amsterdam.   

And not so many 100w. stations  this time.....again, due to slightly disturbed ionosphere and increased D layer absorption.

But,  not too shabby!  With better conditions I could see 1000 qsos and 100 mults as entirely possible.  In fact, one night, near ur sunrise, about a month ago,  I  worked  19   EUROs with several 599 reports ( 100w. to a 13m  tall  qtr wave inverted L and 22x 20m radials.)  All over Europe.  It was the best night I ever saw.

Mongolia, Clipperton Island, Burkina Faso, Cameroun, The Vatican ( no tips on who the new Pope will be tho)

to name a few good ones to be had.  Nice to see the dead bands alive with sigs.

Started  looking for them last night and within 2 hrs had 7 contacts, on 12-15-17-30-40-160m, on mostly ssb plus cw.   easy to break the pile even with my 100w to ground plane antennas on most bands.

Added  40 ssb this morning around 8:30 EST.  Then 10M around 11 am. Just need 80 and 6m for a sweep.

Two bands were on the very first call., and most  within 5 minutes.  Amazing.  Great sigs and ops!  Check out their website with the pics, ops, world map, showing nearly instantaneous logs, so you know youre in the log! 

I see we worked  in the 160 ssb test. ( Club: WW8OH).

RFI and QRN are  brutal on 160.  I  spent 2 yrs with constant 20 over power line noise that I just tracked down and resolved.  Now I am left with S5 noise, but  intermittent S9 burst from other sources, that Im working on.  Utility was very cooperative but not very skilled at finding the sources.  Once I pinpointed the pole, the cleaned house and spotted the arcing lightning arrestor  ( heard it from the ground!)

In central Ohio. we had the entire 160M band filled with loud sigs both nights.   BUT, QRN was abnormally high, at S-9+10 dB, that  made copying the many  weaker signals impossible.  You could hear 1-3 stations in there calling after most CQs but couldnt pull the calls thru.  Bummer!

Also, northern circuits werent good.  Not so many 1's, West Coasters, and BC/Sask/KH6/KL7, and the hoped for opening to EU wasnt there, in good part due to the  QRN issues.

Got plenty of " Big Sigs", "59+20-40" reports/comments, but  hearing the other guy was the problem.

The 2013  WW8OH  500w to a 70 ft high 1 wavelength horizontal loop, M-S entry  managed 840 Q's in 71  mults, and doubled our score from 2012.  But without the warm WX/QRN issues, it would have been 1000 Q's for sure.

How about where you were?

CQWW 160M SSB CONTEST:

WW8OH is stepping the power up from 100 w. to 600 w. , and added a 400 ft Beverage pointing at Europe, for the SSB Contest this weekend.  Hoping to hit 1000 Q's. conditions permitting.  QRN is  pretty strong tonight.  Let's hope it   drops off, or else we may use te Beverage more than for DX!

Please watch for us and give us a contact.  Somewhere between 1.850-1.870.

In the 2013 CQWW 160 meter CW Contest:

100 watts  to a one wavelength  horizontal loop at 61 ft (( 0.117 wavenlengths high)  produced 851 qsos  in all continental US states + Hawaii and 15 other countries + 39 Canadian contacts

Hi Russ.

Being an old goat, Ive seen many  lengths of coax come and go, and used many barrel connectors to splice them together.    And if Im out of barrel connectors or the PL=259s  arent on the end of the coax I have, I dont mind splicing and taping them together!  Sacre Bleu!! It's never been a problem, at least enough of one that ive recognized it...

But what I do have problems with is  critters and lawn mowers gnawing at the vinyl jacket of my coax, allowing moisture to get in and ruin coax. SWR goes wacky.  And I go looking at the connectors, the antennas, and finally pull up the  run of coax thru the grass or under the ground. No fun.  But I usually find the problem in the grass!  I then   go back a couple of feet and cut out the bad section.  If the  jacket looks ok, I splice.

A second problem  has been the usually buried barrel connectors and PL 259s  corroding over time, when they get wet.  My  vinyl taping hasnt always been perfect and water gets in, so I sandpaper or scrape with a knife edge and reconnect.  No Penetrox.  I only use penetrox  between aluminum yagi  or vertical antenna sections on assembly. And it does a great job.

Recently I cleaned most (dozens) of my coax PL 259s ( some date back 30-40 years)  with  DeOxIt and was surprised at the   oxides that came off both the center conductor and the   outside threaded  screw on connectors.  Resin, corrosion, bugs.  So the DeOxIt made a big difference in brightening up the  surfaces on a bunch of coax and 12-18-24" coax jumpers. 

I sleep better at  night - and have eliminated a  several annoying, erratic swr issues here in the shack from what I am pretty sure were corroded - but still good -   jumpers.  Once cleaned, they dont have the jitters any more when I move coax round on my antenna switches, swr meters, and rigs.

Here's another solution. 

Dipoles are way less susceptible to  man made noise than verticals are.   So put up a  single dipole fed with a single line of coax.  Try 40 meters for starters. 

Then if you find it is much quieter,  add  elements  and convert it to a fan dipole with single coax feed, and  individual antennas cut for the bands you want to operate. The higher the frequency  ( 40 20 17 15 10) the better for noise reduction.  Perhaps try  try 40-20-17-10 .

 

I worked   XV7IG/9  on 30 meter CW on  26 Sept. 2008.  ( Viet Nam)

But I can find no record of the call sign - or a similar one - on the www. 

Before I give up on my only Viet Nam QSO in 55 years,  Im making one last inquiry here in case anyone  knows more about this call sign.

Thanks.

I had a QF-1 back in the 70s.  Nice piece of gear.  One day  my tower took a close lightning strike..or maybe even a hit.  The shack was next to  the washer and drier. ( Later when we moved, and the washer/drier were  unhooked and  put on the truck, I saw both parallel faces  on the adjacent sides had  a giant black discharge arc mark on it  with much of the porcelan blown off the metal sides. ) 

But right after the strike, my QF-1 stopped working.  I looked inside and saw both ac bypass disk ceramic caps  had melted off at all four leads, and the center of the caps had black holes in them.

The Point:  Try  testing  or replacing the bypass caps  to ground, located across both sides of  the ac line  where it enters  the chassis.   I think mine were .05 mf 500 v rated.  or maybe 1000 v

My Panasonic 50" is  4 yrs old and sits two feet from my shack desk, on the other side of the wall. 

No  obvious problems here, even when I switch it on and off.

I do get some misc. spurs from the CATV which runs from under my desk over to the TV., to my comuter and  phone system but not a big deal.

My problem has been power line noise at 59+20.  Found the direction with my vhf yagi ( 6m)  and used Googe maps to  drive a couple of nearby streets.  Found  two very noisy power poles on the car's AM radio ( using 1700 khz)  Called the utility. Two linemen came over and I took them to the poles.  First pole they climbed, insepcted and tightened ALL the hardware.  No effect.  I took them to the next pole, and as soon as they got out of their truck, said: "This is it! I can hear arcing from atop the pole."  Sure enough, the lightning arrestor was continuously arcing.  He pryed the  arrestor spark gap  wider apart and all noise stopped.  The arc gap had never cleared following a strike.  Also, the rubber boot encasing the contacts had been blown apart...ripped apart all the way around its circumference.  They changed it out and no more problems.

Well, the S9+20 nmoise was gone, but now I hear intermittent S9 noise from two other directions plus a steady stream of 1 second interval popping noises.  More  work to do!  But I can operate 160-80-60-40 meters most of the time and really hear the DX again.

Huge progress but more needed.