SS2013 CW Prep

Aargh, SS 2013 has snuck up on me like a stealthy brain-eating zombie. Here's my last-minute panic plan. I don't have a station to guest-op this year, so I need to maximize my home station's effectiveness. This means:

• Putting up the best temporary antenna(s) I can muster
• Optimizing my BIC time
• Doing all the usual things

Goals

Given all these constraints, my goal is to make the NCCC KB-1000 award (1000 QSOs across both SS weekends) this year. My stretch goal is 1200 contacts total.

Sub-Goals

• A clean sweep on CW
• 300 contacts on SSB

My temporary 2-el triband yagi is already in the air, but is missing a functional feedline. I'll get that at HRO Sunnyvale tomorrow and should have the thing operational on Friday.

Operating Plan

I'm going to miss the first few hours of the contest because I'll be at my son's soccer match. I should be home around 1700 local time and on the air around 1900, which means I've had 5 hours off time already. Other than that I should have as much BIC time as I need. Looks like an all-nighter!

On the air I'll be operating Unlimited HP, using the cluster spots as much as possible to optimize mults and keep the S&P rate high. On Sunday I'll try to be fresh meat as much as my modest antennas allow.

Operating plan for the SSB weekend is still TBD. Hope to see you on the air this weekend!

-KM6I

SSCW 2012 PAC division SO/U/HP Win!

Yeeha, I won the Pacific Division Single-Operator Unlimited High Power category in the 2012 November CW Sweepstakes! Results are on the ARRL Contest Results web page. A 10^6 thanks to Kevin, AD6Z, for giving me access to his station for the weekend. And the pasta feed!

The one bummer is that I lost my clean sweep in the log-checking process. I'm not sure which one I lost, but I recall having an ESP QSO with at least one of the rare Canadian provinces. I also lost 29 QSOs to log checking, or 2.6%, which is 0.9% worse than last year''s error rate.

SO2R - are you nuts?

Call me crazy, but I've decided to build a single operator two radio (SO2R) station on my small suburban lot.

And I have no towers - just a big redwood tree with an inverted vee at 60 feet, and a ground mounted vertical (still under construction).

The goal isn't to win any major contests. The goal is to build my operator skills so that when I have the opportunity to operate from a shack that is SO2R capable, I can take full advantage of the station's capabilities. In the November Sweepstakes CW contests the last two years, I've had exclusive access to AD6Z's SO2R-enabled shack, but was unable to take advantage of all that aluminum. However, I did make use of the second receiver in my Elecraft K3, and I feel like I've learned enough to at least give SO2R a try.

So, the goals are:

1. Don't spend a ton of money
2. Allow me to practice SO2R on any arbitrary pair of HF bands
3. See rule #1

The first cut on the overall design is:

• Use the radio I have - a Yaesu FT-857D - as the second radio 
• Erect a second antenna as far away from my G5RV as possible
• See if using these two antennas without any bandpass filters works
• Build or buy an SO2R controller

Likely fails:

• My K3 has a great front end, but the FT-857D may not perform well with a strong local signal, especially when I'm running the KPA500 amplifier. Maybe a bandpass filter on the FT-857D will do the trick.
• Operator brain explosion

November Sweepstakes SSB 2011 Recap

Call: KM6I
Operator(s): KM6I
Station: AD6Z

Class: SO Unlimited HP
QTH: Los Gatos, CA
Operating Time (hrs): 23.5

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
  160:    0
   80:  144
   40:  197
   20:  349
   15:  171
   10:  124
------------
Total:  985  Sections = 83  Total Score = 163,510

Club: Northern California Contest Club

Comments:

Warning: long post - but may be interesting to read due to the fact that two
simultaneous operations were active from the same station. I think I saw one of
those from W3LPL for the CW weekend - did anyone else do one?

K3 + KPA500
80M dipoles (E/W, N/S) @ 110'
2 el 40 (2)
5 el 20
5 el 15
5 el 10

This was a shared-station operation at Kevin, AD6Z's shack above Los Gatos, CA,
in Silicon Valley. Kevin's shack is SO2R-capable, and we split it in two for
this contest. Antennas were shared by getting up and walking over to a
Six-Pack, and band coordination was handled in an ad-hoc fashion, mostly by one
of us getting sick of 20 meters and asking for a change. The 10 and 15 meter
antennas share a common feedline, so it wasn't possible for us to use those two
bands at once, which was kind of a drag since 10 was pretty good this year (I
had my best hour of the contest running on 10).

My goal this year was to make enough QSOs to qualify for the NCCC KB-2000 award
(2000 QSOs between the two Sweepstakes weekends). Since I had made 1085 Qs on
CW, the easy goal was 915 contacts, but I set a stretch goal of 1065 to give me
something to shoot for. I made a target rate sheet by multiplying last year's
rate sheet by 1065/915. That actually turned out to be a bad idea. When sharing
a station, band choice is limited, and that will make the rate sheet very
"lumpy" and unless you are on the same bands as the previous year, the target
rates may not be achievable. But it was good having a target.

This was also my first contest using my shiny KPA500. Since Kevin's the host,
he gets the 1500w amp, but he does have an AL-80B and I could have used that,
but I, well, just wanted to play with my new toy. It just sat there and put out
500w. I could tell its fan was running a little faster when I was running and
CQing a lot, by putting my hand behind the case, but Kevin's AL-1200B was right
behind me sounding like a small tornado, and totally drowned out any small noise
the Elecraft amp was making. Switching bands with the KPA500 in the mix is a
dream: Select the right antenna on the Six Pack, select the correct bandpass
filter, press the band button on the KPA500, and talk. No tuning, and the K3
follows the band selected on the KPA500 (or vice versa). I can't wait to use
this amp in a CW contest and make use of QSK.

Since I led off last year on 15, it was Kevin's turn to get the 10/15 antennas
for the start of the contest. I found a frequency on 20 meters about 10 minutes
before the contest and held it by making some contacts. Then, the contest
started... and I got booted by a really loud station about 500 Hz up from my
run frequency, and no room to move down. He was making rate and I wasn't, so I
went S&Ping up the band to find another slot. After an hour, I hadn't found a
slot, but that was when we'd agreed to swap antennas.

On 10 I got a run frequency right away and the rate went to 76 for the next
hour. I may have made a mistake by choosing a run frequency above 28.5 MHz, but
the band was pretty crowded, and the rate was good, so I stayed.

After that hour we swapped antennas again, so it was back to 20. It was
crowded, as expected, and I S&P'd until I found a run frequency, and then had a
nice 82-QSO run that took an hour and 8 minutes. There was a lot of
headache-inducing splatter on 20. Two stations in particular were the worst
offenders, with one covering 20KHz of the band. I stayed on 20 for a long time
because it was productive and because 15 had closed and Kevin was using the 40
meter antennas.

Just after 0200Z Kevin went to 80 and I hopped on 40 and found a run frequency,
which had rate > 60/hr for a while, but a broadcast station came on at 0230 and
kept getting louder and louder. Around 0330 we swapped antennas and I found a
run frequency low on 80. Rate wasn't great, so I used the second VFO to line up
S&P QSOs and used the SO2V capabilities of N1MM to swap the VFOs quickly for the
"second radio" contacts. I feel like I'm getting more proficient at listening to
the two channels of audio at the same time. The downside is that you give up the
great diversity receive capabilities of the K3 (it puts the two antennas in a
stereo mix), and Kevin's beverage really works great on the low bands.

For the rest of the evening Kevin and I traded off on 40 and 80. My rates were
fairly steady. At 0830Z I got called by V73AX in the Marshall Islands for a
signal report. I stayed up 30 minutes later than last year, as I'd taken a 30
minute break earlier in the day to eat. I quit at 0900 needing ONE and SC.
Because I'd had a good run on 10 and then 20 was productive for me, I had zero
15 meter QSOs in the log, which seemed weird, but that's how things shook out.

Sunday morning I started on 20 around 1400Z but went to 15 at 1430 because it
looked good in the bandmap. I eventually found spots for ONE and SC and had the
sweep at 1921Z, Oddly, I got called by 4 more ONE stations while I was running
on Sunday (one was QRP). Working ONE was a lot easier if you were running.

Kevin and I kept swapping the 20 and 10/15 antennas about every hour until
early afternoon local time, and I actually pulled almost even with my goal.
Near the end of the contest I spent some time trying to run on 80, but I think
I'd worked most of the west coast stations and rate was low. I was able to S&P
some stations in the Midwest/East Coast with the high dipoles, and the
beverage/K3 diversity receive was really helpful there. But looking at the
goals, I realized I'd had a big spike in rate for the last 4 hours last year,
and I wasn't sure if that would materialize. It didn't, and I ended up about 80
QSOs short of the stretch goal. Still, I beat my main goal by 80 QSOs, beat last
year's QSO count by 18, and had a great time in the process.

Thanks again to Kevin for sharing his station with me for the Phone weekend,
and letting me play with it exclusively for the CW weekend. Across the two
weekends, Kevin, me, and his station put more than 2,500 QSOs in the the log.

Comparison:


Time  2011  2011  2012  2012   2012   2012  Diff
      Rate  Total Rate Total Actual Actual  From
                  Goal  Goal   Rate  Total  Goal
------------------------------------------------
2100    48     48   53    53     31     31   -22
2200    27     75   30    83     76    107   +24
2300    52    127   57   140     30    137    -3
0000    58    185   64   204     38    175   -29
0100    43    228   47   251     70    245    -6
0200    47    275   52   303     55    300    -3
0300    33    308   36   339     28    328   -11
0400    45    452   50   389     44    372   -17
0500    41    394   45   434     28    400   -34768
0600    48    442   53   487     41    441   -46
0700    58    500   64   551     35    476   -76
0800     8    508    9   559     31    507   -52
0900     0    508    0   559      0    507   -52
1000     0    508    0   559      0    507   -52
1100     0    508    0   559      0    507   -52
1200     0    508    0   559      0    507   -52
1300     0    508    0   559      0    507   -52
1400    23    531   25   585     40    547   -38
1500    32    563   35   620     52    599   -21
1600    34    597   37   658     36    635   -23
1700    26    623   29   686     42    677    -9
1800    23    646   25   711     18    695   -16
1900    25    671   28   739     42    737    -2
2000    26    697   29   768     28    765    -3
2100    24    721   26   794     10    775   -19 *
2200    35    756   39   833     49    824    -9
2300    60    816   66   899     38    862   -37
0000    50    866   55   954     54    916   -38
0100    61    927   67   1021    42    958   -63
0200    40    967   44   1065    27    985   -80


* Lost will to face 20M, took some off-time


---------------------------------------------------


Cabrillo Statistics           (Version 10g)           by K5KA &
N6TVhttp://bit.ly/cabstat


CALLSIGN: KM6I
CONTEST: ARRL-SS-SSB
CATEGORY-OPERATOR: SINGLE-OP
CATEGORY-TRANSMITTER: ONE
OPERATORS: KM6I


-------------- Q S O   R a t e   S u m m a r y ---------------------
Hour     160     80     40     20     15     10    Rate Total    Pct
--------------------------------------------------------------------
2100       0      0      0     31      0      0     31     31    3.1
2200       0      0      0      2      0     74     76    107   10.9
2300       0      0      0     14      0     16     30    137   13.9
0000       0      0      0     38      0      0     38    175   17.8
0100       0      0      0     70      0      0     70    245   24.9
0200       0      0     52      3      0      0     55    300   30.5
0300       0     18     10      0      0      0     28    328   33.3
0400       0     30     14      0      0      0     44    372   37.8
0500       0      0     28      0      0      0     28    400   40.6
0600       0     41      0      0      0      0     41    441   44.8
0700       0      9     26      0      0      0     35    476   48.3
0800       0     31      0      0      0      0     31    507   51.5
0900       0      0      0      0      0      0      0    507   51.5
1000       0      0      0      0      0      0      0    507   51.5
1100       0      0      0      0      0      0      0    507   51.5
1200       0      0      0      0      0      0      0    507   51.5
1300       0      0      0      0      0      0      0    507   51.5
1400       0      0      0      9     31      0     40    547   55.5
1500       0      0      0     24     28      0     52    599   60.8
1600       0      0      0     13     23      0     36    635   64.5
1700       0      0      0     27     15      0     42    677   68.7
1800       0      0      0     18      0      0     18    695   70.6
1900       0      0      0      0     25     17     42    737   74.8
2000       0      0      0     11      0     17     28    765   77.7
2100       0      0      0     10      0      0     10    775   78.7
2200       0      0      0     18     31      0     49    824   83.7
2300       0      0      1     19     18      0     38    862   87.5
0000       0      0     28     26      0      0     54    916   93.0
0100       0      0     38      4      0      0     42    958   97.3
0200       0     15      0     12      0      0     27    985  100.0
------------------------------------------------------
Total      0    144    197    349    171    124    985


Gross QSOs=994        Dupes=9        Net QSOs=985


Unique callsigns worked = 985


The best 60 minute rate was 76/hour from 2200 to 2259
The best 30 minute rate was 90/hour from 2226 to 2255
The best 10 minute rate was 108/hour from 1455 to 1504


The best 1 minute rates were:
 4 QSOs/minute    1 times.
 3 QSOs/minute   16 times.
 2 QSOs/minute  175 times.
 1 QSOs/minute  583 times.

20M Sweepstakes Heckler

This is one of the more creative hecklers I've heard in recent November Sweepstakes:



And it just begged to be worked into a riff:

SS Phone 2012 Prep

Like the last two years, I'll be station-sharing with AD6Z at his mountain shack above Silicon Valley. Kevin and I will be operating two contest efforts simultaneously, utilizing his excellent antenna farm and bandpass filters.

My goal for this year is to make [2000 (nccc kb-2000 award) - 1085 (raw qsos from the cw weekend)] = 915 qsos. Of course, I need to add a stretch goal onto that number, so the real goal is 1065 Qs for this weekend, and I'm assuming a sweep. Given the reduced activity observed during the CW weekend, this might be a real stretch, but it's my goal and I'm sticking to it.

I plan to give my new KPA500 amplifier a workout during the contest. Although I'll be giving away about 3dB relative to Kevin's AL-80B amp, well, hey, it's family.

Strategy updates this year: if I'm not CQing, I'm losing. Keep hitting the damn F1 key, lamer! Other than that, the strategy advice is to be more aggressive, and stick with a run frequency even when you think it's dried up -- it'll come back to life.

Also, devote more attention to 10 meters. While pickings were slim during the CW weekend, there are potentially more SSB contacts to be had from Novice/Technician licensees from 28.3 to 28.5 (so if you're CQing, don't go high).

Hope to work you this weekend!

-- Update Thursday Nov 15

I just got back from Kevin's shack where we got everything plugged in and checked out. We re-fused the KPA500 to run from 220V so it will be using one of the dedicated 220V circuits. A couple of of other random notes:

• I was seeing very high SWR on all bands, and disconnecting and reconnecting the coax from the bandpass filter to the amplifier remedied the problem. So if that crops up again, that's the cable to replace.
• Both operating positions share a beverage receive antenna, which is plugged into the AUX antenna input on my K3. To enable diversity receive with the beverage, hold the SUB button until the display reads DIVERSTY. But be aware that any SO2V stuff, like selecting the 2nd entry window, will pull the subreceiver off of diversity duty, and when you go back to VFO A's window, diversity receive will not be restored. I think the way to use this is to just know that, if you've got a weak station calling, to turn on the diversity receive and don't worry about the second VFO.
• I loaded my rate goals into N1MM, and in the process, noticed just how "lumpy" they are. That reflects some bad operating decisions on my part last year (like, why did my rate drop to 30/hr in the second hour of the contest?). But there are also some puzzling rate bumps in the last few hours of the contest. Depending on those rate bumps again (especially given how hard the last few hours of SSCW were) would be a bad idea. Basically, I should have put some more thought into my rate goals, rather than just taking last years log and multiplying it by a constant.
• I'll be 3dB down from last year, since I'll be using 500w instead of 1000w. But I'm hoping to make up the difference with more aggressive CQing.

KM6I SSCW 2012 Report

Call: KM6I
Operator(s): KM6I
Station: AD6Z

Class: SO Unlimited HP
QTH: Los Gatos, CA
Operating Time (hrs): 23

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
  160:    0
   80:   64
   40:  299
   20:  351
   15:  365
   10:    6
------------
Total: 1085  Sections = 83  Total Score = 180,110

Club: Northern California Contest Club

Comments:

Many many thanks to my station host Kevin, AD6Z, for letting my use his amplifiers and aluminum farm again this year. Like previous years, Kevin provided me a local skimmer to feed me spots. He also heroically pulled a Macgyver when the wireless connectivity to my laptop failed, and built a wireless bridge from a Netgear router and some open-source software. And then when the amplifier failed he built a new one from a coat hanger, some aluminum foil, and a potato. Ok, I made that up. But the wireless bridge thing is true.

Elecraft K3 + AL-1200B
80M dipoles (E/W, N/S) @ 110'
2 el 40 (2)
5 el 20
5/5 el 15
5 el 10

When I sat down to plan for this contest, I looked back at last year's score and noticed that I was 17th place nationally in Single-Op Unlimited HP. Delusions of grandeur led me to calculate that if I could improve my score by 6%, I might crack the top ten and get my call listed in QST. And then I calculated that if I added 130 more QSOs and got an 83-section clean sweep, it would put me at 200,000 points, so I set that as my stretch goal. I created a target rate sheet for the stretch goal so I could track my hour-by-hour progress.

I also did a few things to reduce the number of QLFs, including using a full-size keyboard instead of the built-in mini keyboard on the netbook I use for logging. I also used a second, larger monitor to let me have larger bandmaps on screen. Last year I only used the netbook screen and the bandmap was just too short vertically to see new calls unless they were close to my run frequency.
I made sure to find a good run frequency about 15 minutes before the contest and occupied it right up until the bell. That paid off, with rates the first two hours of 94 and 84 vs 76 and 76 last year. I was excited to be slightly ahead of my stretch goal after the first two hours.

I stayed pretty close to my goal rate most of Saturday, and tried to use N1MM's SO2V support to get S&P QSOs queued up on the KRX3 subreceiver during slow times. I actually managed to grab a couple of extra Qs that way, and only lost my run frequency once. It was good to discover that managing the separate audio streams in each ear didn't cause my head to explode.

Saturday night I started to fall behind my goals pretty significantly, and I decided to stop at 12:30am local time instead of 1am like last year, hoping that starting at 5:30 would give me more time on 20 when the east coasters were there. I had 660 Qs in the log and was missing only RI.

When I got started at 1330Z Sunday morning, 20 wasn't happening yet, so I ended up starting on 40 and did pretty well, with 27 QSOs in 30 minutes. Maybe it was still a good choice despite 20 not working. I moved up to 20 at 1400Z and got called by RI for the sweep at 1419.

Later, though, things really started to come apart. The bump in rate I saw at 1600Z last year never materialized, and I kept sliding backwards toward my totals from last year. It really felt like I'd worked everyone, and everything the skimmer was seeing (and that I could find by tuning around) was a dupe. Switching bands every now and then would find a few fresh-meat calls being devoured by bloodthirsty pileups, and CQing on that band would produce little bursts of rate, but it wasn't enough to keep me on track. I kept at it, watching for new calls to pop up on the skimmer and pouncing on them.

Sunday afternoon, Kevin and I noticed that many of the big guns were showing skimmer spots on two bands at once - probably using dueling CQ mode on their SO2R setups.

Finally, at 0200Z after CQing on 80 meters for 10 minutes straight without a call, and staring at a bandmap full of grey, I decided to call it quits. On the bright side, I got home in time to say goodnight to my kids.

In retrospect, having the rate goals was motivating for the most part, and I'm glad I used them, even though it was frustrating on Sunday. I saw some 3830 soapbox comments where people felt like participation was down about 10% from last year. So maybe staying even with last year's rate was actually an improvement. The sweep might be at risk from log-checking, though, as I only have one contact each for NNY, ONN, and PR.

Looking at the 3830 claimed scores, I'm sitting in 13th 14th place right now. Well, there's always next year!


Thanks for the QSOs everyone!

-Gordon

=======

Rate Goals vs. Actual:


Hour 2011 Goal Actual
---- ---- ---- ------
2100   76   85    94
2200  152  169   178
2300  227  254   231
0000  297  331   316
0100  352  392   380
0200  414  462   448
0300  473  527   498    
0400  509  568   551
0500  560  625   595
0600  607  677   640
0700  643  717   660
0800  643  717   660
0900  643  717   660
1000  643  717   660
1100  643  717   660
1200  643  717   660
1300  643  717   687
1400  690  770   738
1500  733  818   776
1600  786  877   823
1700  836  933   855
1800  873  973   896
1900  901 1005   923
2000  933 1041   951
2100  960 1072   975
2200  988 1102  1002
2300 1022 1140  1031
0000 1052 1172  1068
0100 1078 1202  1085
0200 1099 1226  1085



Cabrillo Statistics           (Version 10g)           by K5KA & N6TVhttp://bit.ly/cabstat


CALLSIGN: KM6I
CONTEST: ARRL-SS-CW
CATEGORY-OPERATOR: SINGLE-OP
CATEGORY-TRANSMITTER: ONE
OPERATORS: KM6I


-------------- Q S O   R a t e   S u m m a r y ---------------------
Hour     160     80     40     20     15     10    Rate Total    Pct
--------------------------------------------------------------------
2100       0      0      0      0     94      0     94     94    8.7
2200       0      0      0      0     84      0     84    178   16.4
2300       0      0      0     34     19      0     53    231   21.3
0000       0      0      0     85      0      0     85    316   29.1
0100       0      0     37     27      0      0     64    380   35.0
0200       0      0     68      0      0      0     68    448   41.3
0300       0      0     50      0      0      0     50    498   45.9
0400       0      0     53      0      0      0     53    551   50.8
0500       0     11     33      0      0      0     44    595   54.8
0600       0     40      5      0      0      0     45    640   59.0
0700       0     13      7      0      0      0     20    660   60.8
0800       0      0      0      0      0      0      0    660   60.8
0900       0      0      0      0      0      0      0    660   60.8
1000       0      0      0      0      0      0      0    660   60.8
1100       0      0      0      0      0      0      0    660   60.8
1200       0      0      0      0      0      0      0    660   60.8
1300       0      0     27      0      0      0     27    687   63.3
1400       0      0      0     51      0      0     51    738   68.0
1500       0      0      0     24     14      0     38    776   71.5
1600       0      0      0     30     17      0     47    823   75.9
1700       0      0      0     14     17      1     32    855   78.8
1800       0      0      0      0     41      0     41    896   82.6
1900       0      0      0      1     25      1     27    923   85.1
2000       0      0      0     11     17      0     28    951   87.6
2100       0      0      0     14      6      4     24    975   89.9
2200       0      0      0      1     26      0     27   1002   92.4
2300       0      0      0     24      5      0     29   1031   95.0
0000       0      0      3     34      0      0     37   1068   98.4
0100       0      0     16      1      0      0     17   1085  100.0
0200       0      0      0      0      0      0      0   1085  100.0
------------------------------------------------------
Total      0     64    299    351    365      6   1085


Gross QSOs=1095        Dupes=10        Net QSOs=1085


Unique callsigns worked = 1085


The best 60 minute rate was 95/hour from 2342 to 0041
The best 30 minute rate was 104/hour from 2103 to 2132
The best 10 minute rate was 120/hour from 2112 to 2121


The best 1 minute rates were:
 3 QSOs/minute   10 times.
 2 QSOs/minute  204 times.
 1 QSOs/minute  647 times.


There were 30 bandchanges and 1 (0.1%) probable 2nd radio QSOs.