Hi all,
Our OCRA (Orange County Radio Amateurs) club ran 9A once again as W4EZ
this year, trying for a repeat or improvement on our 3rd place national
effort of last year. Here was our layout (well, almost):
https://groups.io/g/OCRA-DFMA/photo/39174/1?p=Name,,,20,1,0,0
Installing that many antennas in the requisite 1000 ft circle with
minimal mutual interference is a real feat, let me tell you! We even had
a sagging 80M OCF dipole tangle with a beam at one point...
This year we finally achieved our long-term goal of all Elecraft
transmitters. Our testing over the last few years agrees with the
collated test results by K9YC here:
http://audiosystemsgroup.com/TXNoise.pdf
Although a few years old, his results agree with our tests that the K3
has the lowest in-band phase noise of any we have tested. This has been
a real problem in past years, with almost all Yaecomwood transmitters we
tried txing intolerable levels of phase noise like this Kenwood (20M,
200 KHz spacing) running SSB from last year as recorded in the CW shack:
https://proaudioeng.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Kenwood-tx-phase-noise.mp4
This year we had 7 Elecraft K3s and two KX3s. The only phase noise
issues we had were from the one KX3 running FT8 digi, and mostly ~S3-5
when a beam was pointed towards the digi antenna from ~300 feet away
with a 30 KHz spacing. Other than that we were really pleased to have
finally been almost free from the band-shattering noise experienced in
previous years. Kudos to Elecraft for such great Tx performance!
Overall the band condx were OK although not great from central NC,
although a surprising appearance of 6 and 10 meter propagation helped!
It is always a challenge contesting QRP and it is difficult to break
pile-ups, so running as opposed to S&P is often the best bet. Of course
running is not a panacea when QRP, I must have been stomped on a dozen
times by others who (to give them the benefit of the doubt) didn't hear
me CQing on channel.
We once again attempted to wireless network N1MM over all 9 stations,
but it became erratic so logging was done in several networked pods
instead. We won't know the total score until the logs are collated.
I would say the biggest challenge we faced is one I heard from other
groups: it is getting to the point where a lot of heavy lifting (we had
6 towers) is difficult with a bunch of old fogies. If large FD efforts
like W4EZ are to continue youth outreach is not an option.
Nevertheless, at least this year no one was hurt, except for many a
branch from lines shot over trees, and many a burger and other
refreshments were enjoyed as well!
Cheers & 73,
Howie - WA4PSC
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