CQ WPX SSB 2015 alias Murphy contest

I hate to say it, but it seems, that Mr. Murphy visited us. What could have happened, that went wrong. QTH is in total decay, but let's get along…

In hockey jargon it would be said, that it is better to lose once 9:0, like nine times 1:0. We will translate it into radio amateur speech. Better to have everything go wrong in one race, as in every race one thing.

Friday

In the morning it poured like a torrent. 6:51 an express train arrived from Prague with Pavel OK1PMA in it. This was followed by breakfast at my house and shopping in Tesco. Subsequently, the rain stopped and we set off in pairs to Michalková. There we first heated it in the ovens, they met Jan and unloaded things from the car. After “arrival” we got to work.

We took down the mast. We measured Inv.V at 80m, they found a fault in the screws, which connected the arms to the PL connector. We sanded them and fixed the antenna.

Next came the renovated relay box. Julo OM7AA rebuilt it in the club, he tried, measured and thus should have premiered in WPX. We hung it up and whistled through all the bands, whether, after switching the station, the relay in the relay box is also switched. All bands up to 15m worked, but we should have connected the tribander to the 15m connector. Since the search for the cause, why the relay does not switch seemed time consuming, I proposed to rebuild the band decoder. We converted it that way, to connect the tribander to the connector for 10m. The PL coax went into the relay box with some difficulty, and it was no longer possible to pull it out. When using a higher force, the coax connector fell apart completely. We had to get another thick PL-ko and stretch 30m extension cords to the mast. We cleaned the plug in the relay box a little and the new coax connector went in much better. Subsequently, we tried and measured everything. Another half hour of fucking.

We still have a faulty 40m direction indicator and since it was down, Pavel undertook to clean the traps on the emitter. One did not whistle, so the fault is probably in it, because the others are whistling and so we also hung the Yagina's emitter down to the ground (the spotlight has been down for months). Only the Yagi boom with the power supply remained above. Finally, the mast went all the way up.

Yet, what Pavel was lifting him up, I went to the forest to stretch the arm of the 160. When I came back, Pavel informed me, that the rapier in the mast somehow no longer raps and you still have to hold the crank when lifting, otherwise the whole mast will fall down. In other words – the brake in the lifter has gone. No super. In addition, the mast also has a mechanical brake, and we insured the fall of the entire mast with that, that we wired the crank to the mast.

We hung the 80m Inv.V arms and measured everything. Then we pulled out an auxiliary 2el Dk7ZB Yagi on 15m from the woodshop for the multiplier workplace. Dali sme ju na 6m stožiar a postavili vo dvore. They stretched the coax and measured. PSV 3,5 it spoke, that something is wrong. I didn't like the PL connector on it, but since the others had just arrived, how did we get up to it…li. Igor OM6CI and Peter OM6PR also arrived at the same time, who had car problems on the way. They were immediately informed about the problems and that it was only in the afternoon, but that Pavlo and I have already done enough.

It continued inside. We brought in the HV source and the final stage. They connected everything, they stretched 380V and turned it on. We found out, that the key on the HV source is broken, but somehow we managed to turn it on. It came to light during testing, that Peter forgot the power meter at home. Tuning the PA will therefore be a little more difficult, much more demanding.

Igor began to disassemble the source and the second radio. This time it was to be his Kenwood TS570D. They experimentally connected a 15m Yagi to it. Then the Laco OM7RC arrived and while I was watching BB-NR hockey they were trying to get the radio working, which they gave up after a few hours. They can't turn on the radio. It didn't even listen and eventually didn't even broadcast. Laco offered himself, that he will bring his own, but only on Saturday morning and he will also pack a tuner with it, in which there is a PSV and performance meter.

As it was already many hours and the eternal HAM debate was raging, a traditional filing cabinet was created and there was no time left for workplace networking. Well, maybe the networking won't even be necessary in the end, if there is no second radio. The debate has been going on for so long, that we almost missed the start of the race. To, that it is also necessary to broadcast, we only found out 9 minutes before the start! We made it. I started it traditionally, because everyone is somehow afraid or something. Well, on the one hand, it's a responsibility, get it off to a good start, but on the other hand it is also necessary to say that, that I like to start it :-). As usual, Pavel took my turn and I went to sleep.

Saturday

On Saturday morning, Laco arrived with his Icom 751 a tunerom. After several tests he declared, that the antenna in the yard sucks and that even his Icom can't tune it. So Peter and I went to the yard. Dali sme dole Yagi, they measured the entire antenna, but everything was OK, we measured it with coax and PSV again 3,5. Subsequently, we measured the coax, but it was also fine. Then it dawned on me, that I didn't like the PL connector on Friday. So I cleaned it a little, scratched with a drill and I tightened the coax properly with combinations. PSV 1:1,1, bug removed.

We connected a tuner to the transmission path, we wired it up and Laco got down to networking. We didn't broadcast, it still did not want to network the RUN workplace with Windows XP and the MULTI workplace with Win7. So we replaced the new laptop with Win7 with an old laptop with a broken display, but with Win XP and after a while everything was working and we could broadcast. But we stood for almost an hour.

I would rather forget about my Saturday afternoon shift. I couldn't call almost anywhere in the upper zones. I had to dictate the number to the Spaniard about 10 times. The Japanese didn't hear me, The Russian did not hear me, serious about it…and I released another one. Then I left for a family celebration. My old lady was celebrating 100 years!!! I arrived back at the cottage at half past nine in the evening. The evening and night went perfectly well. The lower bands worked as they should.

Sunday

The Sunday morning shift did not start well. Somehow we still didn't like the tribander. We measured the PSV of the tribander together with the relay box and the meter showed bad results 1:3,35. The mast had to come down again, we tore one arm of the 80s while assembling it. We disconnected the relay box, they connected the coax from the cottage to the tribander and the PSV immediately dropped to 1:1,6. Once again, we disconnected the relay box from the road and thus lost the 160m band. But we could continue to use 20/15/10m. We also didn't see the coaxial connectors at the coupling under the mast, so we flew them both to be sure. When we are modernizing everything! And we also replaced the old clutch with a brand new one. But again, we stood for less than an hour.

Igor left us around lunch, who had to go home early, because a business trip outside of Slovakia was waiting for him. We had to run the rest of the contest in threes. Another blow came in the afternoon. My tribander suddenly went silent and I could hear almost nothing. The mast had to come down a third time. To, that when folding it, the 160 leaned against the eye of the fence and tore, was secondary. The PSV of the tribander even without the relay box was over 3. However, we were no longer able to eliminate this error, no measurements showed anything, the power PL connector is shorted and we don't know why. So we left the mast down and continued only with the 15-40-80m bands.

We spent the early evening calling on multipliers on 15m. Pavlo and I watched two hockey games NR-BB and Třinec-Sparta. Peter chopped the multipliers and Pavel used to make the hand rotator for him :-). Multipliers were made at the multiplier workplace 80 a 40m. When the 15 definitely died, we retuned to 40m.

We ran the rest of the contest for 80m, where, despite the ending race, it got off to a pretty good start. I caught such an excellent frequency, where I had no interference. I was making a string of connections without ever asking back. Everything went exactly as I expected. However, around midnight I was grinding from the last one and Pavel had to replace me. While Peter and I were both sleeping, Pavel ran the remaining two hours of the race. The total score is 1588 connection a 2,3 million points.

To last year's record 2170 connection a 4,22 we couldn't even get close to a million points this time. Murphy's visits stole one connection after another, and I estimate that he stole at least from us 500 connection. If not for that, we would definitely attack last year's result. Repairs and other strenuous activities took away our precious time. It is also nice to see from the following graph of the hourly number of connections.

The following graph shows the distribution of connections by continent. This time, basically, only the lower bands "worked" for us, and the graph corresponds to that. The other stats basically don't make much sense.

So let's summarize it nicely:
– torn shoulder 160ky
– torn shoulder 80m Inv.V
– 40m Yagi v still in failure
– tribander v poruche, usable only on 10m
– only 80m Delta loop and 40m vertical remained functional

We have to think carefully about what will happen next. Trapped antennas did not work well for contesting, and even the deer do not know what will go up on the mast.

Mr. Murphy, thank you very much for your visit, but next time please visit someone else.

This time I can't even say when we will appear on the air again, first we have to fix the antennas and then we'll see. The OK/OM DX SSB contest is coming up, CQ WPX CW … but as i said, we'll see!

73 Števo OM7KW wrote for the OM4C group