SSB without a Voice

John, W2GD wrote: ‘The other thing you learn operating LP or QRP is you must have perfect timing to overcome the ‘brute force’ advantage of your KW brothers. Sounds simplistic, but this has a huge impact on how well you do breaking pileups. It is a learned skill that takes practice to master.’ Well, he is pretty right. Almost all of the time during this contest I had to operate using the voice recorder of my K3 due to having lost my voice. This hampered the score quite a bit not only because the timing hasn’t been right but also responding to specific questions has been quite a challenge. Additionally, calling CQ myself has been out of question. Last but not least, operating having fever is not much fun…

Preparation:

There has been one new gadget for the contest. I bought a triplexer built by VA6AM and incorporated it into the antenna system allowing the spider beam to be used on several bands at the time. Although, the unused ports are not terminated with 50 Ohms yet it worked as expected. However, I have to admit that it feels a bit freaky though listening on 15m while transmitting on 10m at the same time.

The already proven 2-by-27m double-zepp antenna has been erected on Friday before the contest. It took a bit longer to erect due to illness already starting Friday morning. There have been three antenna to choose from:

• Spider beam with triplexer allowing to operate on 10m, 15m, and 20m independently
• 2-by-20m double zepp @13m
• 2-by-27m double zepp sloping from 16m down to about @10m

Contest:

I caught a few hours of hardly needed sleep before the contest because I really felt sick with high fever. So, getting up at two in the morning local time took some effort. The contest started slow. The first hour I was able to log only … stations. It got a bit better the following hours but the rate never really picked up. Unfortunately, I completely lost my voice in the morning and could only use the Digital Voice Recorder of my K3s to work QSOs. I took my time and had considerable breaks for the meals provided. At about 11pm local time I decided to call it a day. Working each individual station took considerable time, splatters on 40m were horrible and I had been completely exhausted and weakened by the illness. So, I took a 7 hour break. Afterwards, it started to get a bit better.

Conclusion:

Although, the result is well above the actual DL record it is not as good as I hoped for. However, I’m still satisfied taking all the handicaps into account.

Highlights:

Working quite some DX despite the qrp power level, i.e.:

• JA on 40m
• VK on 15m and 20m
• ZL on 15m
• VU on 20m

Low Points:

There have been a few pile-ups not to be broken:

• HK1NA – heard them on several bands not busy but not a single response
• TO90R – Reunion – the pile up had been to heavy
• AH0BT – Marianas – the pile up had been to heavy
• KL7RA – Alaska – the pile up had been to heavy
• XW1IC – Laos – couldn’t hear my tiny signal

Acknowledgements:

I would like to say thank you to DL2LSM and XYL for hosting me again and helping with all the antenna work and building the mechanical parts of the triplexer.

Outlook:

I don’t iknow if I want to do this again. Every QSO is really hard work and with declining sun spot numbers the open bands will be much more crowded and the chances of working DX will be much lower. Lets see what’s happening next year.

I’m looking forward to the WWDX CW 2015 end of November.

Preliminary Result:

Call: DK3WE
Class: SO All Band QRP
Rig:   K3 (5W) + K3 (5W)
Ant:   2x20m double zepp @13m, spider beam, 2x27m double zepp @15m
QTH:   @DL2LSM, JO61GH

Summary:

Total Score:  1762 * (83 + 292) = 660.750

Band   QSO    CQ   DXCC   Points   
--------------------------------
160     43     4     25     39    
 80    172     9     46    195
 40    139    12     48    184
 20    209    17     62    342
 15    214    22     58    441
 10    225    19     53    561
--------------------------------
Total 1000    83    292   1762

Downloads:

• Log (submitted)
• UBN Report