F6IRF hamradio contesting

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

CN2WW - On the road again !

Je serais de nouveau actif depuis le Maroc avec l'indicatif CN2WW à l'occasion du prochain CQWW DX CW, en principe en catégorie SOSB20m. Le QTH sera le même que l'an passé (Dar Bouazza, depuis la station de CN2DX). Activité peri-contest du 22 au 29 Nov; QSL via EA7FTR. Plus de détails à suivre...
I will be active once again from Morroco, with CN2WW callsign for the next CQWW DX CW. In principle I will take part in the SOSB20m category.The QTH will be the same as last year (Dar Bouazza, from CN2DX location). Peri-contest activity fm Nov 22 to 29; QSL via EA7FTR. More details to follow...

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

CQWW RTTY - DQ4W / TM6A MULTS ANALYSIS

Just for the fun I took the BCC station, DQ4W claimed score published on 3830 for reference ( see http://lists.contesting.com/archives//html/3830/2006-09/msg00957.html )
Although they did more QSO's (2485 vs 2321),

which is quite normal taking into account their M/2 category, I was surprised to see that we managed slightly more mults (590 vs 581) despite our poor location, and quite modest antennas.
Multipliers by type... States/prov is our weak point !

Of course, it could be explained by a collateral effect of the M2 category, but what is interesting is that we managed more zones and DXCC's but less states/prov. The effect of our poor take-off toward NA is quite obvious in the following graphs: On 80m, the 8 degrees blocking does not look as a major handicap, but it becomes dramatic on 15m...

Conclusion: F6KAR maybe a decent location for many contests along the year, but certainly not for an ARRL-DX all-bands !

Multipliers by band... 15m is our weak band !

States/provinces by band: The effect of 8 degrees blocking !

TM6A @F6KAR - CQWW RTTY

F6KAR 3D view toward ESE, first mountain is "le saleve"(1500m) and behind "le mont-blanc" (4807m). F6KAR station is located near the F/HB border.

Bd QSO Pts Sta DX Zones
------------------------------------------
80: 345 743 20 50 14
40: 659 1550 35 87 28
20: 970 2428 52 108 35
15: 311 731 13 83 27
10: 36 75 0 31 7
------------------------------------------
Total: 2321 5527 120 359 111
Total Score = 3,260,930

Club/Team : Cern(*) Amateur Radio Club (F6KAR)
StationHigh bands station: IC756 + Ten-tec Titan
Low bands station: IC756pro3 + Ten-Tec Titan
Ants: 80m: shunt-fed tower 40m:
40-2CD20-15-10: KT34 and 3el ECO
RX ants: 100m beverages NE and S, K9AY loop
Software: N1MM Logger V6.9.6 with MMTTY soft-terminal
MSC: ICE band-filters, microkeyer USB-conterters
station pictures here:
http://f6irf.blogspot.com/2006/08/f6kar-waedc-cw-2006.html

Operators: Nico F5VIH/SV3SJ, Phil F6IFY, Pat F6IRF
Guest ops: PM HB9DTM/F6FNL, Seb F8CMF

Condx better than expected taking into account the very low SFI
(who could expect 124 countries to be logged this weekend in TTY?)
15m opened to Eastern-states on saturday, and 20m remained open quite late.
Unfortunately the propagation deteriorated on sunday, but the E's openings allowed 31 countries and 7 zones to be logged on 10m.
Good first night with 2 hours at rate >80, but bad second night with rate droping around 20 between 2 and 5z and very few NA-stns. No major technical problem experienced, just a few glitches with PA switching and software behavior, both probably due to some RF-feedback.
Finaly a decent score for the solar minimum, thanks to DX-peditioners and all participants for creating such a huge activity on the digital bands (and even a bit outside ;-) !

F6KAR 3D view toward NW, "le Jura"(1500m) represents some 8 degrees blocking toward NA

(*)CERN is the European Organization for Nuclear Research, the world's largest particle physics center. http://f6kar.web.cern.ch/f6kar/
see http://press.web.cern.ch/public/

For Dan Brown readers see also;-) http://press.web.cern.ch/public/Content/Chapters/Spotlight/SpotlightAandD-en.html

see 3830 post for multipliers stats
http://lists.contesting.com/archives//html/3830/2006-09/msg00985.html

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

F6KAR - WAEDC, Stats and audio-clips

WAEDC audio clip QTC'S - 21MHZ RK9CWW, EX2M, RN9SXX 28MHZ RW9QX, RU9CK, 9M6XRO

WAEDC audio clip QTC'S - 21MHZ UA9CDC

WAEDC audio clip QTC'S - 21MHZ CE3BFZ, PV8DX, CN8YR

WAEDC audio clip QTC'S - 14MHZ K6XX, VE3NE, KU8E, VE9DX
Click on the loudspeaker to listen to the clip. Click on the image to enlarge it...

qso's by time: not a contest to beat records !

qtc's by time: No good score possible without QTC's

Multipliers: hard to find, hard to work ! (multipliers are weighted 2x on 10-15-20m / 3 on 40m / 4 on 80m)

QSO+QTC by hour, the rate to look at...

Continents all bands: another contest where working NA is the key to success.

Continents by band: 80m tfc is trusted by NA statons...

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

F6KAR - WAEDC CW 2006

WAE DX Contest, CW
Ops: F5VIH/SV3SJ, F6IFY, F6IRF
Station: F6KAR
Class: M/S HP
QTH: JN36AF

Band QSOs QTCs Mults
-------------------------
80: 86 2 21
40: 381 367 56
20: 390 714 64
15: 175 218 39
10: 52 24 19
-------------------------
Total: 1084 1325 496
Total Score = 1,194,864

High bands station:IC756 + Ten-tec Titan - Low bands station:IC756pro3 + Ten-Tec Titan
Ants: 80m: shunt-fed tower and sloper -40m: 40-2CD - 20-15-10: KT34 and 3el ECO - RX ants: Unterminated 100m beverages NE/SW and NW/SE, K9AY loop
Software: WIn-Test
The Weather has been extremely bad all weekend, with frequent showers and lowtemperatures (almost a CQWW-CW weather !)
With the Jura (8deg toward west horizon), our KT34 and a low 3el trap-yagi, wecould not expect to be really competitive on high bands, and this was confirmedby the difficulties we experienced in several pile-ups.
On low bands, it seems that we had a good signal but the WX strongly affected our receiving performances, especially on 80m.

Anyway, those details apart it has been a great weekend, without major technical problem, and we are more than happy with the score.
The conditions: Surprising! Based on the few days before, we did not expect 15mto open toward states, not to mention 10m. The strong multiple hops E's, really helped, resulting in 31 five-banders, 5 U.S call-areas on 10m and 7 on 15m.
The traffic: On a total of 44 DXCC entities worked, more than 2/3 of the QSO'swere achieved with NA. A few "interesting" entities were there. Just to mentiona few: 3W, 4K, 9K, 9M, 9V, A6, CN, FP, HP, VP9, P4, V31, VP8/h, VQ9...
The activity: Obviously being on the Eu-side and working only DX stations can't generate high hourly rates when you are at the bottom of the solar activity. Maybe the rules are still not yet understood, or is it the fact that north hemisphere summer does not stimulate HF contesters but getting new stations to work became quite a challenge on Sunday - we counted as much as 46mn between 2 consecutive QSO's... fortunately the QTC's were there ! On the other hand, it was not too hard to find a clean frequency...
The QTC's: The world may also be divided in 2 by the ones who deal with QTC'sand the ones who

don't !!! (revised version of the famous Clint Eastwood sentence, in a Sergio Leone movie!) OK I understand the casual participant only responding to CQ's, but it is quite surprising to hear stations calling CQ-WAE, and refusing to send QTC's, even when the rate gets very low... Not to mention the "?" (meaning : what are you talking about ?) when you ask for QTC's ! A bit like running a KW in a QRP-contest !
Apologies to the stations we annoyed with repeated "QTC?", but for a EU competitor, the spontaneous offers are so rare, that there is no alternative strategy to aggressive search...
It has been a great pleasure for me for me to join the CERN RC(*) team - my first multi-op for quite some time -
Thanks to all for the QSO's and QTC's andto the DARC for organizing

this nice event...
(*)CERN is the European Organization for Nuclear Research, the world's largest particle physics center. http://f6kar.web.cern.ch/f6kar/

Friday, July 28, 2006

CQ WPX RTTY 2006 RESULTS

3rd world place, 1st EU and new EU record for TM6A in the SOAB LP category. See the contest story at: http://f6irf.blogspot.com/2006/02/tm6a-wpx-rtty-contest.html

3eme monde, et 1ere place EU avec un nouveau record d'Europe pour TM6A dans la catégorie SOAB LP. Voir le CR du contest à http://f6irf.blogspot.com/2006/02/tm6a-wpx-rtty-contest.html

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Training material for the WAEDC CW

Monday, June 05, 2006

ARRL RTTY ROUNDUP 2006 RESULTS

The antennas used for this contest: Optibeam OB6-3M, SteppIR 2elements

PJ2T grabs the plaque for the DX SOAB LP category, but with the 2nd place, I established a new EU LP record. The contest story, and a few audio clips demonstrating the SO2R technique: http://f6irf.blogspot.com/2006/01/f6irf-arrl-rtty-roundup.html http://f6irf.blogspot.com/2006/01/rtty-so2r-audio-clips.html

ARRL RTTY 2006 results

PJ2T enlève la première place, pour la catégorie DX SOAB LP, mais avec la seconde place de la catégorie, j'établis un nouveau record Européen. Le contest-story et des clips audio du contest (demontrant la technique SO2R) sont la http://f6irf.blogspot.com/2006/01/f6irf-arrl-rtty-roundup.html http://f6irf.blogspot.com/2006/01/rtty-so2r-audio-clips.html

Sunday, June 04, 2006

F6IRF: Rien de neuf... ou presque

Bienvenue à Axel et Mael, déjà à l'entrainement avec Morse-Runner... La maman Suzy se porte bien, mais le père PM(HB9DTM/F6FNL) montre qqs signes de fatigue !
Welcome to Axel and Mael, already training at Morse-runner. The mother Suzy is OK, but the father PM(HB9DTM/F6FNL) looks tired.
F6IRF/CN2WW actuality is on

http://cn2ww.blogspot.com/ WPX and peri-contest activity... you'll know everything about my last trip to Morocco...
Kevin en 1988 avec mon transceiver fabrication maison...
Kevin in 1988, with my homebrew transceiver...
Toute l'actualité du moment se trouve sur : http://cn2ww.blogspot.com/ WPX-contest et peri-contest activité, vous saurez tout sur mon dernier séjour au Maroc.

Monday, May 15, 2006

CN2WW soon on the air

I will be active starting saturday 20, until wednesday 24 from Dar-Bouazza (nr Casablanca) from CN2DX location.
Depending on the condx, I may take part in the "king of spain" HF CW contest, or focus on 6m band. Outside contest, I'll focus on WARC bands.
Will then move to Casablanca, and then to CN8SG's place in Kenitra from where I'll be active for the CQ WPX contest.
Conventional QSL via EA7FTR, electronic confirmation via LOTW. See you on the bands.