RSGB 2m Trophy. Invicta Contest Group, G5H.
North Foreland, Kent.
Operators.
Ian Hope, M5IJ
Paul Taylor, G0ILO
Matt Payne, M0LMK
Ian Lowe, G0PDZ
Ozzie Hall-Osman, G1OFL (Operated M5IC in RSGB SSB Field Day)
Helpers with Set up, strip down
Robert Honeysett, G1UBW
Phil Challans, M5PGC
The September 2m Trophy Contest is a great contest as it co exists with an Europe wide VHF contest giving plenty of activity on the band. Likewise, it is also RSGB SSB Field Day, so a few groups also add a 2m station to their event.
The Worked All Britain Group also hold their high-power contest during this event so they can benefit from the activity (but no one asked us for our square!). The Sunday morning adds the Backpackers to the mix for the final four hours, these are the hardy souls who drag their kit up a mountainside & operate in conditions that sensible folks would retreat down to a comfortable pub warmed by an open fire & enjoy a pint or two whilst staring at the rain washing the windows.
But bad weather was not a concern for this contest in North Kent. The weekend before the kids returned to school was very warm, dry & importantly not very windy. Saturday gave us crystal clear views out over the English Channel with views towards the North Sea only interrupted by the blades of the wind turbines of the wind farm slowly turning in the gentle breeze. As with all clear days this time of the year as the sun dropped in the evening a fleece top was required unless vigorous exercise warmed you instead. Sunday dawned with a sea mist that remained all day but on land it was crystal clear & warmer than Saturday.
The weekend didn’t get off to the best of starts. Before I had left home, I had a call from Oz who was attempting to get on to the site. Access instructions were clear, explicit & accurate, but if two people’s mental image of a term greatly differs information is not communicated. After a few ‘back & forth’ minds were aligned & Oz was on site. Shortly after another phone call! This time Ian Hope to tell me he was a mile from the site had a flat tyre on the trailer tent & needed another jack to change the wheel. After a frantic round robin to identify someone with a jack & available to come out (My car doesn’t have a spare tyre, so no jack….!), gaining two offers of help I called back to find Ian had been helped by a passing stranger & the wheel had been changed. Drama over…. Not quite!
Somehow, I managed to leave home & get on site before Ian arrived (local knowledge maybe) but shortly after I had parked up, I saw Ian approaching but inexplicably stop at the threshold of our field. As I approached, I heard a tyre spinning on the hard packed dry mud. Simple, the weight of the laden trailer was too much to allow the front wheel drive grip on the dry mud rut! However, as I approached, I saw that the trailer was lopsided, down dramatically on the passenger side, with a freshly ploughed line behind in the track. Ian had lost the trailer wheel just yards from the site. The wheel was recovered from the cabbage field (Luckily it hadn’t rolled too far down hill & out of sight).
We stripped the trailer of excess weight, the two scam masts & all the antennas. After an appeal to Matt to turn out with the trolly Jack offered half an hour before, we managed to get the wheel back on – after a fashion
Matt took the opportunity to deliver the generator at the same time before returning to work with a promise to return when free.
A brief consultation was held & plans reformed on where to place the station, agreed to be closer to the field entrance than planned as no one wanted to trek with the Scams, nor did we want to risk the cable tied wheel further than necessary. The trailer not only was a load carrying device but also a trailer tent, our home for the station & more importantly my bedroom for a few hours sleep over night.
Robert then Phil arrived & the five of us then erected the trailer tent placed the Scam masts run out the cables & put the station together. With the time lost due to the wheel, we agreed to get one Scam mast together & install the pair of nine element LFA Yagi. That was successful & I had time to configure the operating position to my liking, with time for Ian to repair the faults I’d induced by moving everything (or so we thought!)
So unusually I was able to start operating at the contest start. I opened on a frequency low in the band & started a ‘run’, the calls to my CQ were a slow but steady flow. I initially pointed the ‘9s’ Northwest to work into UK, after a few calls were logged I had the first comment of having a noisy signal, “RF on the mic”, Ian checked & reconnected a loose earthing wire, problem solved. All was well, then another report of bad audio so I stopped operating whilst Ian took a slightly deeper dive & found that the earthing lead on an EMC filter had come adrift & was relying on physical contact of casings & as I was moving the desk, we had an intermittent connection. All earthing & other connections rechecked & no other issues were noted. About an hour into the contest Ian connected the second & third arrays. We had a fixed stack of four rear mounted three element LFA Yagi pointing Northwest & on the same mast & interleaved pointing East were four three element DK7B Yagi.
I then turned to 9s Southwest hoping to cover most of the compass simply by switching between the three arrays. The NW stack worked perfectly & was pleased to work a Scottish station almost immediately with no problems, but when called by a Belgian whilst on the NW stack upon switching to the E stack he became inaudible, so worked him on the NW instead. A quick check revealed the preamp on the E stack has failed or had some other fault at the masthead box. It was agreed to leave well alone & basically ignore that E array. Though I did work a few, very strong, EU stations on that array when the 9s were pointing the wrong way.
Having sweated the morning & early afternoon away, once the station was built, Robert took his leave promising to return in time to help dismantle the station on Sunday. He was as good as his word.
So, to further explain the station we used an Icom IC-7400, adapted to have a split receive (RX) & transmit (TX). This gave a 5w 14MHz drive into a Q5 transverter. The transverter delivered about 50w of 2m to the valve driven amplifier the output was then split half the power going to the 2x9s & the other half to the two 4x3s. Before the two 3s however was another splitter giving them each a quarter of the total output of the amplifier.
The rx lines from each array was fed via a three-way switch to the rx of the transverter, giving the operator the choice of what to listen to, but all the arrays were driven on tx. Full legal limit of 400w was delivered to the feed point of the 2x9s. Each array had a masthead box containing the rx pre-amp, band pass filtering & relays to switch between rx & tx.
My thanks must go to Ian, M5IJH who owns, builds & maintains all this kit. He amazes me in that he slaves away to provide this kit contest after contest, slowly improving as we go & puts up with my suggestions, even putting the sensible ones into action (sometimes even the silly ones, you never know until you try!) He will even sit back & not operate if someone else has even half an inkling to sit in the operator’s seat. As a group our philosophy is we would rather give a new or inexperienced contest operator time in the operators chair, alone or supported, than maximise our contact rate. It is a competency that can only be acquired by doing.
Other thanks must go out to Matt, M0LMK who loaned out his monster diesel generator. OK, so he had an interest that it needed some hours put on it at half load to run it in. But still generous to loan out a brand-new bit of kit that is required as a fall back to keep his business running in the event of power cuts.
Whilst the rest of us were concentrating on the 2m Trophy, Ozzie set up his small HF station & used the groups call of M5IC to make an entry on our behalf for the RSGB SSB NFD.
A couple of hours into the contest we were joined by Paul, G0ILO who was given no time for pleasantries & catch up but put to work at the radio immediately. He put in a good shift as well, only relieved when Matt turned up & he likewise was put to work. We then all took irregular turns until later in the evening.
We had several visitors from the local amateur community during the day, but about 10pm everyone had drifted away including Paul & Matt. By 11:30pm the contact rate was dropping to a trickle & as the propagation forecast was for potential lift conditions to develop early Sunday morning, Ian & I decided that we would close for the night. I set an alarm for 4:45am but was already awake so killed the beeps immediately. Why was I awake? I’d tweaked my back the previous day & the thin mattress that normally lulls me into the land of nod was not enough to release the spasm. I was however in the operators chair shortly after 5am & a steady run was developed including plenty of EU stations. I hobbled around all day, but once established in the operators’ chair, I was fine.
Sunday morning brought another steady stream of visitors to the station from local clubs & afar. Hopefully we can convert them to operators & helpers for future contests.
One point I haven’t mentioned so far is another of Ian’s talents. He always seems to wait until I’m established operating to then appear at my side with a plate containing a delicious cheeseburger, bacon bap, sausage in a bun or egg banjo (just for fun at breakfast time, imagine the risks of biting into a bap containing bacon & a runny fried egg dripping with brown sauce, then trying not to get yolk, sauce & grease down your front or worse on the microphone, keyboard or PTT button!). A favourite of an evening is a ‘spag Bol’, the garlic bread may arrive as an afterthought, but that would be nit-picking! Truly fuel that keeps me happily in the chair making contacts. Thanks, mate, for the sustenance.
A conversation that developed during the contest between the operators was the apparent lack of UK stations. The site was a new one to us, so we had no experience here, but the topographical projection indicated only very minor obstructions to the horizon in the near proximity & yes, they were from the Southwest through to the Northwest. From just West of North through to West of South the horizon was unobstructed, the next land mass being Europe. During my operating I know I had Intermediate stations with their 50W max responding to my calls from Wales & far into the North & we worked Northern Ireland, Eire & Isle of Man with good reports. So, I don’t believe we were compromised, was it simply that there were not as many stations out there as hoped.
Working strings of German stations, many into the far Eastern border of that country certainly proved the sites credentials as a good site to work into EU.
I know I took conscious effort when on a run to swing the beam ‘around the clock’ but was disappointed not to hear West Country stations of any of the Channel Islands. Likewise, when on ‘search & Pounce’ I did listen ‘high to low’ in the different directions in the hope of digging out the smaller & distant stations or those simply missed previously. After the contest I found that other stations had worked into Spain. It was disappointing to not do the same as the distance along with being another country would have done wonders for our score.
In the closing couple of hours of the contest, I suggested that we focussed West & North in the hope of picking up the Backpackers as well as the operators that had entered for the last six hours or were simply `Sunday morning ops’ taking advantage of the contest to put a few entries in their log. It worked in that we picked up a good few low score reporting portable stations, but we still had a good smattering of EU stations working us off the back of our beams
The close of contest came with Paul, G0ILO in the chair & he managed to squeeze in the 275th logged contact with literally seconds left. OK we will lose a few to errors & duplicates but that was a pleasing number, privately & unknown to either of us Ian & I both hoped to reach 250 but a minimum expected of 200. So generally pleased with the outcome.
As ever even as we were closing down & packing up, we were voicing plans. Some outrageous, some tweaked repeats of previous experiments & some further developments on what we have in place.
The immediate issue of what to do about the broken wheel trailer tent was sorted by getting permission of the farmer to leave it near the entrance of the field after replacing the cable ties with some bolts so it could be carefully towed in place. All the kit that normally sat on the trailer was loaded into the van of one of our visitors who kindly offered when he heard of our problems. That kit went into local storage for Ian to collect once he had been able to collect a spare wheel hub & wheel from storage at home, then await the delivery of studs & nuts ordered online whilst on site.
Readers of previous blogs will have noted that Maddie ‘the DX Dog’ normally gets a mention. Well, she was present & was her usual good self. As an old girl she has become used to my strange behaviour & being taken to odd places. However, she has recently been joined by Ted ‘the talker’. Ted has been passed into my care as my daughter has recently given me my latest grandchild. Ted, being ‘a talker’ can’t be left alone at home without annoying the neighbours. Two children, a pram & a dog is too much for a new mum, so grandad has a new dog. To those who heard our voice caller will have heard Ted, almost like a roger bleep at the end of the call. Each & every time with a closing woof! Ian didn’t notice it when he recorded it. Hopefully Ted & I will have a conversation which will result in him becoming a little more like Maddie, calm – mostly.
I’ve scattered a few thanks through this report, but I close with a few more. First thanks to Ian, M5IJH who invited me to join him on the precursor of the ICG nine years ago starting my current passion for contesting & being a great mate. Second, Thanks to Matt, M0LMK who as a fellow Hilderstone member has been a great mate, constantly giving effort to the benefit of others. On this occasion his relationship with the landowner got us the permission to use what promises to be a great site if we are allowed to repeat the visit. Thanks to the amateur radio community, locals who visited & fellow club members who visited to look, learn, or just say hello. Those who responded to my appeals to turn on their rigs, work us & a few others. Every contact made gives the contesters to gain points that may move them up the table towards the silverware. My last thanks are to the contesting community without whom there would be no challengers to work with & against.
Finally thanks you for reading this far, if you have, maybe you could contest too? If so, you know who to speak to.
73 (Best Wishes)
Ian, G0PDZ
Invicta Contest Group
M5IC, G8TRF, G5H
Another excellent write up Ian. Well done mate.