NFD with the Clifton ARS

As busy few days radio wise!

NFD took place this weekend and I was part of the Clifton ARS entry (G3GHN/p) from near Maidstone in Kent. 

I provided a full station, IC-756Pro, PC running N1MM, Microham Microkeyer, 9.5m mast and a doublet antenna to go with the club’s auto ATU. It is the first year we have run a doublet fed with open wire, in the past the ATU was at the top of the mast at the centre of the “dipole”. This time we had 50ft of open wire feeding the 260ft long inverted-V.
This seemed to be a better antenna than previous antennas on all bands, but especially on 40 and 80m. I had a panic when AATU did not tune the antenna on the cw part of top band, but did higher up in the SSB section. We played around with the length of the antenna, to no avail. G3JKY came to the rescue and commented that the voltage at the feed point must be too high and that we either needed to dramatically change the length of the open wire (we weren’t sure by how much) or add some capacitance at the bottom of the open wire feeder when using top band. We were reluctant to cut the open wire in case it made things worse so went for the capacitance route by fitting an so-239 across the terminals of the AATU and plugging a random (50ft?) length of co-ax into it. As the co-ax was open circuit it provided enough capacitance to help the ATU do its stuff on top band. Well done Jakey! I couldn’t have come up with that. I now need to learn how to optimise the open wire length so we don’t have that performance again! Any idea, readers?

On the air things went well. HF conditions seemed poor on Saturday and I go us to 9pm with 200Qs in the log including a one hour arte of 58 around 8pm. After all the effort of getting to site and putting the station up I was pretty tired by then. JKY took control overnight with a sterling 215 Qs between 9pm and 7am – 136 on top band for a good points haul. We had an hour off for breakfast and to solve some problems with the co-sited 2m backpackers station and then I took it to the end to produce a final score of:


Band                QSOs              Pts
1.8                   135                  1020
3.5                   114                    388
7                      140                    462
14                    115                    376
21                    39                     141
28                    25                     168
Total               568                  2555


A winning total? Not even close. Better than last year by quite a long way and the conditions on 10 and 15m were better last year as well so overall I have to be pleased. Its still very tough with only two operators though!


Some more data:
QSOs

Band                 Total               G3JKY         M0BPQ        
1.8                   135                   135                        
3.5                   114                    63                    51           
7                      140                    14                  126          
14                    115                                          115          
21                      39                                            39            28                      25                                            25           
Total              568                    212                  356   


G3GHN/p Max Rates:
2008-06-07 1504Z - 2.0 per minute  (1 minute(s)), 120 per hour by M0BPQ

2008-06-07 2015Z - 1.3 per minute  (10 minute(s)), 78 per hour by M0BPQ

2008-06-07 2047Z - 1.0 per minute  (60 minute(s)), 58 per hour by M0BPQ