COLLEGIATE CHAMPIONSHIP SUMMARY SHEET
Contest Dates : 06-Nov-99, 07-Nov-99, 08-Nov-99
Callsign Used : N5XU
Operators : K5PI, KT5I, AA5BT, W5JLP, KM5FA
Category : Multi-Single (M)
Default Exchange : # M N5XU 21 STX
Name : University of Texas Amateur Radio Club
Section : South Texas (STX)
Country : United States
BAND Raw QSOs Valid QSOs Points Mults
__________________________________________________
80CW 35 34 68 2
40CW 137 137 274 6
20CW 304 302 604 47
15CW 187 185 370 12
10CW 78 78 156 12
__________________________________________________
Totals 741 736 1472 79
Final Score = 116288 points.
Equipment:
Kenwood TS-850SAT
Heathkit SB-220
Yaesu FL-2100B
Force 12 C-4 (@ 100')
80M wire dipole fixed N-S (@ 80')
TR Log 6.45
This was our best start in recent years of participating in this contest.
For the first time, we were using a radio with computer control and using
the contest logging program to handle our CW. This is the first
serious contest that the club has put its new Kenwood TS-850SAT transceiver
through. It is a very nice radio to use, and the computer control was
very nice. For one thing, it meant that when we switched bands on the
radio, the logging software followed us, and vice-versa. No more logging
contacts on the wrong bands! The Kenwood TS-850SAT is super prone to RFI,
though, and we think we may have seen a few odd behaviors of that sort -
we're going to have to put type 77 ferrites on _every_ cable into or out
of that radio before the phone Collegiate Championship.
This was also the first contest at N5XU that we have used our favorite
contest logging software, TR Log, as an electronic keyer, using a homebrew
interface on the computer's parallel port. Our interface does CW to the
radio, PTT to the radio, and has a connection for the iambic paddles.
while none of the operators is by any means expert at it, using TR to do
all the CW in the contest was a very cool thing. TR does a great job of
anticipating the next thing you want to send, so most of the operation
could focus on receiving calls correctly.
We lost our amplifier in the first few hours of the contest. The Heathkit
SB-220 never completely died, but it was putting out less power than it
should have been, was getting less warm than it should have been, and we were
getting occasional "BAD TONE" reports whenever we tried to operate on 15M.
After some detective work, Kevin KT5I was able to see through the holes in the
case that one of the pair of 3-500Z tubes wasn't glowing properly on
transmit. So, we took the amplifier out of service, and stopped getting
bad signal reports. We continued to operate barefoot for about 45 minutes
until Robert K5PI returned with his Yaesu FL-2100B amplifier from home. What
we thought was going to be a half hour of off-time while we swapped amps out
turned out to be closer to 50 minutes, mostly in the 0000-0100 hour, and at
one point we had three people soldering one cable! The Yaesu FL-2100B
probably puts out only about half of the output (600 watts) of a healthy
Heathkit SB-220 (1200 watts or so,) but the Yaesu amplifier served us well in
the pileups, and in particular in working VY1JA through the aurora, and was
worth the effort.
We had more operators in this year's CW Sweepstakes than any since 1989.
This was Johanna W5JLP's first CW contest. She did some search and pounce
on Saturday night, and then on Sunday night had a nice hour-long run calling
CQ at 18wpm, and making lots of QSOs. At one point Saturday night, nine
people were in our shack at once, and boy was it crowded!
It looks like we got lucky in achieving our clean sweep. KP2N was possibly
the only station on for the contest from the Virgin Islands section. From
what we gathered on the local packet cluster, he never called CQ, and we were
fortunate to have him answer one of our CQs for his ninth contact of the
contest. The other difficult sections turned out to be North Dakota, Manitoba,
and the Northwest Territories/Yukon/Nunavut sections. There was a great
strategy debate in our shack on Sunday night about whether to look for the
elusive VE4 contact we needed for a sweep on 20M or 40M. Fortunately, we
managed to find and work VE4GV on 20M, with an hour to go, and thereby avoided
fisticuffs.
Once again, using a check of 21 seems to have thrown a few people off.
It is kind of fun, though. We only had one rag-chewer break in and ask
"What is SS?" When our slower operators called CQ below the 20 wpm speeds,
very few contesters actually slowed down to match. But most slowed down a
little more than they have in the past, probably a result of people being more
careful as a result of log-checking.
--
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Kenneth E. Harker "Vox Clamantis in Deserto" kharker@cs.utexas.edu
University of Texas at Austin Amateur Radio Callsign: KM5FA
Department of the Computer Sciences President, UT Amateur Radio Club
Taylor Hall TAY 2.124 Maintainer of the Linux Laptop Home Page
Austin, TX 78712-1188 USA http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/
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