Posts from — December 2007

Most of us contesters are also more than a little interested in DXpeditions. Maybe not in chasing them, necessarily, but we all know what a tremendous effort goes into putting stations — especially rare ones — on the air for the deserving.

Steve, K9ZW, notes:

ZL8R Kermadec Island is an awesome nature preserve so remote that few groups ever get there. James 9V1YC’s DVD story about how “keeping it simple is sure a lot of fun” is captured filmed against the natural backdrop of what looks to be a fabulous place.

The BS7H Scarborough Reef filming in itself is as amazing of a feat as running radio operations in stunningly difficult conditions.

I’ll point you right to Steve’s, K9ZW, blog With Varying Frequency with the scoop on how to get these DVD’s.

Wow.

Scot

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When the Northern Lights come out, contesting goes on hold for most of the world. One can’t break a signal through the great Northern Lights; absorption is simply the rule.

Yet, little is known about the Northern Lights. Spectacular looking, great effects on communication, but clueless as to the energy source — outside of coming from the Sun.

Researchers have finally found the source, though, through satellites. Then the fun stuff started:

In March, the satellites detected a burst of Northern Lights over Alaska and Canada. During the two-hour light show, the satellites measured particle flow and magnetic fields from space.

To scientists’ surprise, the geomagnetic storm powering the auroras raced 400 miles in a minute across the sky. Angelopoulos estimated the storm’s power was equal to the energy released by a magnitude 5.5 earthquake.

“Nature was very kind to us,” Angelopoulos said.

Although researchers have suspected the existence of wound-up bundles of magnetic fields that provide energy for the auroras, the phenomenon was not confirmed until May, when the satellites became the first to map their structure some 40,000 miles above the Earth’s surface.

We knew that, didn’t we?

Scot, K9JY

Most people operate contests in what would be considered a “casual” manner. They operate on Friday night, or Sunday afternoon, or devote a day of the weekend to work some of the deserving.

Or, if the rules say an operator can operate only 36 of the 48 hours of the contest, then six hours of sleep a night might not be such a bad thing.

Sleep, in these operating modes, doesn’t much come into play.

But, if you are serious about working a contest and want to go full bore for the vast majority of the contest, sleep is a big issue. Because we should have so much of it.

There is remarkably little literature on what can be done about sleep during a contest. Even less about the effects of the lack of sleep on how you operate. But there are some resources out there.

One such resource is K5ZD’s excellent article, originally appearing in the National Contest Journal called A Sleep Strategy for DX Contesting.

K5ZD carefully looks at sleep basics, the first 24-hours of the contest, the second 24-hours, and even more tips after that.

Every person’s pattern will be different. But this article gives you a great jumping off point for the serious contest operation.

Scot, K9JY

Photo Credit

For most of my ham career, I’ve had this saying of “reliability first” and then the rest will follow.

Essentially, you can’t be on the air contesting, chasing DX or supporting your local emergency agencies if your equipment and antennas are not working.

In my experience, things usually break when we don’t pay attention to the details surrounding the setup of our equipment. We use the spare, wrong sized bolt on our tower, we skip the grounding until later, we ignore maintenance, or we do something so that it is just good enough.

In our installations, good enough usually results in failures at the exact time of need.

This morning, I was reminded of this yet again. Kate and I are staying in a bed and breakfast in Seaside, OR, doing a little bit of recovery from the layoff last week — spending time with each other and watching the waves roll in.

Just before 5 AM, we awoke to the full fury of a fairly large storm, packing 15-foot waves, lots of rain, and winds of 50 MPH gusting to 70 MPH. The wind started at 2 AM and continued until 8 AM this morning.

Relentless.

This, of course was after a storm two weeks ago here where the inn we are staying at was without power for six days and they experienced sustained 65 MPH winds for five full days with wind gusts recorded as high as 129 MPH. Hurricanes have nothing on this sort of force.

I’m not complaining of the storms nor their effects. But it was clear to me that if your ham radio station wasn’t already ready for such a force, ready for the power to be out, ready to help emergency agencies in their work, you weren’t going to be fixing much in the middle of these sorts of storms and their aftermath.

Is your station reliable and ready? What action items are outstanding that if completed would make your station reliably ready?

Scot, K9JY

Photo Credit: Hideki Saito

After you have done something for quite a while, learned a lot about it, experienced working with it, you still believe that you don’t know a lot about the subject. Consequently, you think the simplest things in your head everyone would just “know.”

The same is true in contesting. Yet, my first contest experience (Field Day) was a lot of learning on what to expect, how to go about making contacts, learning a little bit about how the band behaves in contests as compared to regular conditions — and to make sure I caught that great Saturday night meal the club put on. Yum yum!

But it was a lot of learning to do. Now it seems like not much. To someone starting out, though, there is a good amount to know.

Be willing to teach the simplest things about contesting to others. Just like learning how to do moon bounce, or mobile operating, or catching the elusive DX station, contesting requires others to teach who are willing to learn.

Be a teacher.

Scot, K9JY