Author: Steve G1YBB

This 3rd session of the Backpackers series is timed to coincide with the last 3 hours of VHF NFD which meant finding a quiet frequency was going to be  interesting.

On the up side it was a glorious day when we arrived at the summit site to set up:

Building the 9 element portable DK7ZB yagi:

Antenna up and ready. Some strange coloured background behind it!

Shack up and ready for us:

Shack views don’t come much better than this:

To keep us sustained we have proper contester food:

Once on air we scanned the band looking for a slot between the strong VHF NFD stations. We found one a fair way from the strongest ones but one near from the North lifted our noise floor each transmission and made receive pretty tough. However we persevered and activity seemed pretty good though DX apart from Scotland was scarce for us.
We like to run mostly and keep the work rate up to keep the QSOs coming in and search and pounce when it goes quiet. The last hour was very slow after the NFD closed down but on the up side we had a receive back! We managed 120 QSOs which we were pretty pleased with and a best DX of nearly 800km to the Orkneys which was great. And he was booming down too. No ON or PA at all though.

QSO map:

Claimed scores:

Results:

Full results list (PDF)

The 2nd event in this series of contests coincides with the Practical Wireless QRP contest so we decided we would do both. This contest starts earlier than most of the other Backpackers event so it was an early start for us, or I should say even earlier.

The weather this time was fairly poor. Lots of rain and quite windy. So we arrived on the top pretty soaked through with terrible visibility and a pretty dense low cloud.

The summit site is pretty exposed so if there is any wind at all anywhere, it’s usually very windy on the summit. We were ready for this though. The lightweight mast I have built was made in 3 sections and purposely designed for such an occasion. For lower less exposed use in contests where we are OK to use its full length all three sections are extended and we have a set of guys for each section. (the lower guys are really only there to hold it up while we extend it etc). But for the backpackers series section 3B we are only allowed 4m high, which just so happens (it was designed that way really) to be the height with the mid section extended. This means we have the option of double guying the highest section of the mast. We have separate pegs for every single guy as this negates the need for knots and saves us set up time by just putting the peg in the loop, and putting the peg in when the guy is taut. This also means on a 4 metre mast we have 8x 550lb breaking strain guys on 8 decent sized pegs, so despite the scary wind noises when inside the tent the antenna is pretty safe.
Double guys shown here (one on left is the lowest set up guy going to a tiny tent peg):

Once in the tent we were pretty cold thanks to the liquid cooling we were enjoying. We’d allowed plenty of time to deal with any unforeseen circumstances or issues setting up in the bad weather so we had time for a few warming cups of coffee.

Once under way we forgot about being cold and set about the job in hand:

We got pretty decent activity in first hour or so, and to be honest not bad in the first 4 hours, which is all of the Backpackers contest. However DX was rare we managed a French station at Calais and one Belgian station. It was nice to point to Guernsey hoping to pick some mults up and within 5 minutes we got one, thanks for that! The last 3 hours to make up the PW QRP entry were best described as dire. Without the CQ caller I made I am pretty sure we would have quit and gone home. On the plus side we never heard anyone with a higher QSO count, but PW is a square multiplier contest and I feel we are going to suffer with a low square tally.

There was no post contest looking around and chatting. Radio straight off and try and pack up before the looming black cloud making it’s way towards us arrived. Here we are ready to roll (taking turns holding the mast for the camera):


QSO map:

Claimed scores:

Results:

Full result list (PDF)

This session I had company in the shape of Paul G1YFC to help set up and operate. Another pair of ears is always welcome with the weak stations or when we are suffering from QRM from other stations. On reaching the bottom of the ascent of the hill we were greeted by flashing flooding from the lashing storm that was hammering the car. The lower roads where more level had 4 to 6 inches of flowing water over them and even the higher steeper sections were a brown rushing river about 1 or 2 inches deep. This is a picture of the very last section of hill with hardly any catchment area above it:

Once on site we sat in the car to wait out the heavy rain. It eased a little so we started to put the mast up but the rain picked up and it felt like someone was pouring a hosepipe down the back of my non waterproof trousers so we abandoned ship to the car. It eased again so back out we went and this time it stopped and the sun came out. By the time we had the antenna up we were bone dry from soaked through.

We had a few QSOs before the start and fisnished the last rag chew with the first QSO in the contest but found it a slow start. Conditions seemed quite odd and we could hear a lightning strike crash every now and then for most of the contest but we didn’t see any. Paul had time to take an arty low sun shot of me in action:

We also had an interested visitor:

Anyway, we got 105 QSOs but didn’t work one single European station not even Frank PE1EWR who always calls us. Although our QSOs were respectable and points per QSO also not bad, we just didn’t have the multipliers.

Our QSO map:

Claimed scores:

And the results:

Full result list (PDF)

This was the series of contests I have been building the lightweight and portable antenna system for. I knew exactly where I wanted to operate from and the new (to me) super lightweight Yaesu FT-817 radio and the modern Lithium batteries have made it a possibility for me. Most of my previous contesting in the 80s and 90s was done in the Black Mountains below Pen-Y-Gadair. It is a great site for the non multiplier contests but because we were below the summit we always lost out on multiplier events. I always wanted to operate from the summit but with our equipment then it was a no go for us with no 4WD and even a landrover would struggle to get there.

But I can walk there! Well I can with Paul G1YFC to help carry the gear.

Here I am loaded up:

And Paul with his load too:

Nearly at the summit:

The weather today was practically perfect for contesting on top of the exposed summit, unlike the day before when the winds would probably have made it impossible to get my lightweight mast up safely. We managed to get the antenna set up before a light shower and soon had my mountaineering tent up too. We set up away from the summit cairn to be out of the way of walkers but also to be above the steeply falling East facing side of the mountain to make the best use of the ground gain:

Paul took an arty one of my direction label and the end of the coax:

Once the radio was connected up we scanned the SSB section of the band to see who was about and to find a free frequency. There were some strong fairly local (as crow flies) stations below 144.300MHz so we went higher to be clear of them. I noticed I could hear one station CQing 50KHz away so decided a 100KHz away would be a good plan. Once it hit 11:00 we were off. About 90 minutes later Rob GW7LAS/P popped up and after our exchange informed us we’d kicked off an hour too early. Doh! Disaster. We worked some good multipliers and quantity of QSOs in that first hour, for no avail. There was nothing for it but to soldier on and make the best of a bad job.

Later on we had a sharp rainstorm and with it came S9+ of rain static. So strong the station that we could hear 50KHz off his frequency was only just readable above the noise. Luckily it died back down after a while. The last couple of hours were pretty hard work beaming north for some Scottish points proved fruitless as did beaming to Eire. We did beam down towards Guernsey hoping for some GU and maybe a French station that seems to be on often in the UKAC events and were pleased to pick up Guernsey and Alderney almost straight away.

We finished with 121 QSOs of which 79 were in the qualifying period. We lost 9 multipliers from 6 QSOs in that first hour alone! However we managed to salvage a reasonable claimed score of 783,300 points which put us just in 2nd place in our section. One more average QSO would have taken us to 1st!

Here is our QSO map, valid QSOs in green, invalid in red. We lost some good distance ones and multipliers too:

Our claimed score was encouraging though. Hopefully Rob GW7LAS/P made more logging mistakes than we did, one decent lost QSO more than us would mean we would swap places:

Results showed we couldn’t overtake Rob after all. So close yet we could have done so much better. BIG lesson learnt there!

Full result list (PDF)

For this next session of the the UKAC series I decided to use an old site that was the site of my first ever 144MHz VHF contest when I entered the PW QRP contest with Kevin G1VDF. I chose to operate here as I was hoping to get back earlier as getting into bed at 1am on a work night was a bit late. The drive is slightly longer but it is a drive on site so packing away hopefully would be quicker.

Where I decided to set up was a little cramped and awkward to raise the mast on my own so it took longer than it could have. However I did manage to get all set up and on air a little before the kick off although with no real spare time for any photos this time.

I could hear some seriously strong stations giving me some interference so I tracked them down to check they weren’t in the field behind me or something similarly close. They weren’t but they did report I was giving them issues with splatter and sounded like I had far too much compression on my audio. This was the first time out for my new build of the BX-184 CQ caller which I suspected might be set too high in the mic. As I didn’t have the right tools with me to do anything about that I tried to cut down the overdriving by turning down the SSB mic gain down a fair way. This was said to help but not solve the issue completely, though I was receiving the complaining stations so strongly the signal reading never came off the ‘stop’ between their words even. I changed my operating frequency for a further 10KHz away from them to try and help.

Once under way activity was quite good as last time but generally although signals all seemed to be really big I didn’t really get as many more distant stations. I’d hoped to make use of the ON4KST chat like most do for finding multipliers but I was not getting any cell coverage to get online which was a shame. I did manage to find two new GI squares searching and pouncing though again missed some other ones. It’s tough to know how long to spend away from the running frequency searching and pouncing!
My QSO map for this contest:

My QSO count was 2nd highest and my claimed score put me in first place in the low power section. However it was close at the top and adjudication could easily scupper that:

The results came in quite quickly this time and I was pleased to see I was still top out of the 85 entries in AL section! I lost 5 QSOs for errors but luckily others lost some too and I stayed top:

Oh, and I was in bed by 11.45pm, result!

Full result list (PDF)

After hoping to enter the previous two sessions of the RSGB 144MHz UK Activity Contest series but for various reasons failing to get on the air this time I finally succeeded. It’s 18 years since my last VHF contest. This time I could try out my newly finished and as yet untested on air 9 element DK7ZB yagi and lightweight portable mast.

I checked the past year’s results to see if my old (from back in early 1980s) site was being used in the UKAC series. As it didn’t seem to be I chose to try there for this contest.

The original plan was Paul G1YFC would also come up for the contest (we won our last contest in 1998) but he couldn’t make it so I slogged up the hill with all the gear on my own to the trig point on Graig Syfyrddin which is at a height of 423m which a clear take off though has the 400m higher black Mountains West of it:

Literally every radio item I would be using for this contest was new to me since the last contests I did. It was a pretty calm evening so setting up was fairly straightforward and I soon had the mast and tent up:

Once I had the Yaesu FT-817 connected up and the tablet fired up I worked a few stations before the contest getting good reports from my QRP station which was good to hear. I did learn it’s much wiser to operate from a hill you can pronounce the name of though. One quick check outside before the contest starts revealed a nice sunset:

Once the contest started activity was pretty good. For the first hour or so I was exceeding 1 QSO per minute and getting great reports. Things did slow down a bit and QSOs came in little bursts of activity. I made use of the 2nd VFO for some search and pounce but was mostly running. Logging was done on my Surface Pro 3 using Minos by G0GJV. What I should have done I think was also try the ON4KST chat that everyone uses. It actually never occurred to me on the night. This was a great shame as I missed a couple of leading big gun stations somehow that would have given me some valuable new multiplier squares. Anyway I got 120 QSO in total which seemed respectable.
Here is my QSO map:

Packing up as quickly as I could by headtorch I headed down the hill almost running at some points. Even rushing it was midnight when I reached the car and 1am by the time I got to bed.

My claimed score (before adjudication) put me in 3rd place in my section. 4 multipliers (2 UK new squares) would have put me top! Missing those big station multipliers was very costly indeed!

Overall I am very pleased with the first go out this century. It was meant really as a practice run for the forthcoming 144MHz Backpacking series of contests and also the PW QRP Contest which I have always been a big fan of. The equipment all seemed to work well apart from one small temporary issue with the keyboard on the Surface Pro 3 failing to respond which was very inconvenient. I did get it going but without know how or why it stopped working.

Full result list (PDF)