On the bench:

2012-Nov-20 - Amp Fixed, and Sweepstakes

I repaired the amplifier. When I opened it up, I could see that one of the transistors was cracked in half and another was black. Both of them were open circuit when I tested them out of the circuit. A third transistor behaved strangely when tested. I replaced all three of them. Luckily I still had 5 transistors left from the batch I purchased from Hong Kong. I went through the slow painful process of removing each. Then I put in a new ones, making sure that the 50V rail was not shorted after each was soldered in place. Finally I set the bias pots to minimum and went through the process of setting up the bias again, remembering to connect the antenna socket to my dummy load because it keeps the amplifier stable.

ARRL Phone Sweepstakes

With the amplifier fixed it was time to take part in the SSB Sweepstakes Competition. Before I could get started I had to go up on the roof and repair my dipole, which had been torn in half by Tropical Storm Sandy.

With a working Antenna and 500 Watts from the amplifier, I was ready. I'm not a serious contest participant, but I like Sweepstakes. It's fun to try and work as many multipliers as possible. In this Contest, each ARRL district and each RAC district counts. There are 83 in total.

I managed to get on the air a little after the start of the contest, or 6pm local time on Saturday. The contest runs for 30 hours through to 10pm local time on Sunday. I worked a couple of hours Saturday evening, then spent some time with the family. Then worked from 10pm till about 2am local time. On Sunday morning I worked stations for a couple of hours before we went out for the day. Once we were back, I managed to get on for about the last 4 hours of the contest.

71 Sections Worked, but not much of Canada

I managed to work 71 sections, which I thought was pretty good for about 8 hours of operation, all hunt and pounce, and all on 40 meters. I only missed Vermont during the day. Otherwise I worked everything close to me. The only other US sections I missed were Kentucky, West Texas (WTX), Utah and Alaska. I managed to work Hawaii late into the night. Somehow I managed to work every other state. My big gap was in Canada. I never even heard Saskatchewan VE5, Manitoba VE4, Newfoundland/Labrador or the Northwest Territories.

Not sure what I will do differently next year. I managed to work every station that I heard. In fact, I worked every section that I heard on the air, even if I was not able to work them at that time. It just seemed that the sections I did not work were not available on 40 meters.

That said, I might have picked up Vermont and the rest of Ontario if I had been on for longer during the day. Kentucky is probably also workable during the day. I also might have gone to bed too early or not got up early enough to work Alaska. I should do a calculation to see if it is ever in darkness when I am. Can I work it on 40 meters?

Can I work Alaska on 40m?

To find out I downloaded and ran VOAProp. The chart is for the path from my QTH to Alaska. You can see that it is a pretty narrow window for 7MHz. I selected one click above medium power, which gives me an S5 signal (near the noise no doubt) between 0800 and 1200 UTC. That's 3am to 7am local time. I definitely missed that during the contest. The Northwest Territories are also best during this period, although they should be workable from about 2300 UTC through to 1200 UTC, or from 6pm in the evening.

So next year I need to operate very early in the morning. I probably should have gone to bed earlier and then got up much earlier. I could have had a chance at a cleansweep on 40m.

I looked a bit more closely, and it really seems like only 0900 and 1000 UTC work. Otherwise large parts of Alaska don't receive the signal.

That said, a cleansweep would have been MUCH easier if I had been on 20 meters too. Perhaps that is a good incentive to get the new radio project finished.

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Comments on this post

On: 04/22/13 16:16 N1XIH/7 said:

Unfortunately not too many operators in Utah. I heard one on 20m. 40m went long very early on. I was hoping to work Utah and many West Coast stations on 40m. As in previous years. But they could only work East Coast. Good luck with the projects. Look out for me in November. 73's N1XIH/7 qrp in Utah.

On: 04/23/13 13:13 G0KLA Chris said:

Thanks, I will look for you in November!