Class: Single Op HP
Operating Time (hrs): 24
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
Band  QSOs
------------
   80:  512
   40:  553
   20:  632
   15:   50
   10:
------------
Total: 1747

State/Prov = 58 Countries = 70 Total Score = 223,616

Serge UT5UDX wanted to give this ago following on from his 3rd World result in the WPX RTTY 09.

As usual both IC 7700’s were pressed in to service and didn’t miss a beat. The new 80m 4 square performed very well with over 300 North American QSO’s in the log which was pleasing as I see this aerial still as work in progress.

Serge brought the new RA6LBS  hybrid coupler and control gear from the Ukraine just before Christmas and I installed it over the holidays (RA4LW was coming to install it but could not obtain a visa so he posted it to Serge in Kiev) in the freezing cold and snow. Some more work needs to be done on the phasing lines but I will wait until it’s a bit warmer and I can feel my fingers.

As it stands Serge’s effort’s should gain him N0 1 EU but we will wait and see how it shakes out in the overall standings but Serge seemed pretty happy !

73 Paul

G6PZ

Ops: G6PZ, 2E0CVN, G3TJE, G4MJS, G7VJR, GI0RTN, KU5B, M0CLW

 BAND   QSO  CQ DXC DUP  POINTS   AVG
--------------------------------------
  160   550  18  71  17     902  1.64
   80  1163  29 103  16    1888  1.62
   40  1278  40 144  28    2724  2.13
   20  1515  37 135  27    3104  2.05
   15   763  33 117  10    2064  2.71
   10    14   2  14   0      13  0.93
--------------------------------------
TOTAL  5283 159 584  98   10695  2.02
======================================
       TOTAL SCORE : 7 946 385

G6PZ has spent most of this year concentrating on our LF antennas (see earlier posts) and new to the field is an 80m 4-square and a new topband antenna. We are very pleased with the results and we feel our transmit performance has greatly improved. Conditions seemed quite reasonable on the two bands but it seems some of that may actually be due to the antennas; we had some excellent runs into North America on 160m.

It was nice to see some nice runs to NA on 15m, but not half as a good as in CQWW SSB. That said, we did work a number of zone 3s and some nice mults picked up there.

The first night’s weather forecast didn’t look good and we experienced a freak squall with very high winds and heavy rain experienced for about 30-45 minutes. It was essential for G6PZ to lower the towers therefore this did slightly impact our 40m capability toward the latter part of the night. Furthermore, a relay died in the 80m 4-square phasing unit and that meant we had no direction switching. This was fixed for Saturday night, however, and we were able to fully utilise the antenna.

Just to round things off, the 160m vertical’s SWR increased in the lower part of the band and using a antenna analyzer revealed the resonant frequency had moved to 1910 kHz; this was rectified by adding 1-1.5ft of wire to the top loading and the resonant frequency was 1840 kHz - perfect.

20m closed very early on both evenings and that meant going to LF earlier than expected, some some slower rate hours experienced. We are just thankful that 160m was as good as it was! 40 zones on 40m is also an achievement as we have never worked all 40 zones on any band in previous years!

Call: G6PZ
Operator(s): G6PZ 2E0SQL M0CLW M0DXR G4DBL G4MJS
Station: G6PZ

Class: M/S HP
QTH: Somerset
Operating Time (hrs): 47.5

Summary:
Band   QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
160:    285     11         54
80:     626     18         87
40:     857     35        122
20:    1196     35        128
15:    1239     36        135
10:     171     19         76
------------------------------
Total: 4374    154        602  Total Score = 6,730,668

The weekend has passed and the bands have returned to there normal less busy state, after they we’re took over for 48hrs for the yearly CQWW SSB contest, this year I took the trip down to G6PZ in Weston-Super-Mare on the south west coast of the UK.

I arrived at the station Friday afternoon, and we were soon out in the field doing some finishing touches on the 4 square that Paul (G6PZ) had been working on over the last couple of weeks, and cranked up the MonstIR to its full height I can tell you that’s no easy job!

Simon (M0CLW)

The contest started and didn’t seem to easy going and we found it hard getting any large NA runs on 40m due to lots of QRM, but non the less a steady stream of QSOs where being worked and 80m was near enough the same but picked up slightly at sun rise.

Peter (G4MJS)

During the day we were pleased to see that 15/10m opened up giving us some much needed QSOs and Mults, we spend some time on these bands then moved to 20m later on in the day. During the day we also finished building the quarter wave 160m vertical and laid some much needed radials.

Sunday conditions seemed very much the same, with 15/10m being full of stations during the daytime and during the final hour of the contest 160m gave us a good run of North American stations, and with the new 4sq on 80m it certainly made made us feel loud.

Overall a very enjoyable weekend contesting and socialising with the team! I’m looking forward to the next contest already.

The elements are made in three sections.  The bottom is a 3m  2.5 x .25 inch aluminium tube, the middle is a standard 6m scaffold pole and the top is a 12m  spiderbeam pole.

The first job is to make the overlap joint for the aluminium  sections. I’ve allowed for a minimum of  a 12 inch overlap. Two M10 tapped threads are made in one end of the bottom section spaced 10 inches apart and one inch in from the end. Stainless steel allen headed bolts were then screwed in ready to receive the 2nd section. A M8 thread was put into the other end ready for the feed point connection.

The scaffold pole forms the 2nd part to the element and has to be made ready for the overlap joint with the Spiderbeam top section. I’ve allowed a 15 inch overlap here as I  wanted to give the Spiderbeam pole a good fixing and to spread the loads caused by any whipping over a larger area.

The spiderbeam pole was made up securing each joint with pvc electrical tape, this was then overtaped with self amalgamating tape. It was then slipped over the scaffold pole for a 15 inch overlap.  Two M8 threads were made through each side of the overlap, 3 inches in from the end of the Spiderbeam pole, ready for the M8 stainless steel allen headed fixing bolts. I bent two large flat washers over the profile of the scaffold pole to go under the M8 bolts to spread some load around the Spiderbeam pole when tightening the two together.

A M8 thread was also put into the scaffold pole 2 inches below the bottom of the Spiderbeam pole ready for the wire connection point.

The two were separated and a 6mm pvc covered copper wire was fed through the Spiderbeam pole from the tapered end. It was then pulled out the other end and the pvc cover stripped back over the distance of the overlap. This gives just enough clearance for the spider beam pole to slip over the wire on to the scaffold pole. The bare wire was terminated with a crimp on lug soldered and finished with shrink wrap and bolted on to the scaffold pole with a M8 stainless bolt. The overlap joint was then secured with two M8 stainless bolts and profiled washers and taped up. The wire at the tapered end of the Spiderbeam pole was taped up to form a water tight seal.

As the element is designed to swivel on the bottom bracket and lay flat on the ground for easy installation and maintenance a one man raising and lowering system is required. I purchased 4 inexpensive trailer winches off an Ebay shop. I had first thought about running the rope over a pulley wheel on the top of the post to minimise the angle and reduce friction on the rope. But for the extra work and expense it was not worth it, so I used the Kiss system.

Each winch is secured to the back of a post with coach bolts. I drilled a 10mm hole through the post at the top of the cable drum and pushed the wire rope through. ( the wire had to be taken off the drum first and pushed through from the element side because of the fixed hook on the wire )   I squirted the hole with ptfe grease to reduce friction on the rope. (The rope cuts its own guide slot in to the wood as it is raised and lowered a few times)

The rope is wrapped around the tube and back on its self and secured in a stainless steel eye that is threaded into the tube.

The luffing action is very easy and takes only a minute or so to raise or lower the element safely. When in the upright position the top mount is bolted up and then the wire is removed and clipped on to the back of the winch out of the way.

73 Paul

Four pressure impregnated  posts were sourced from a local farm outlet store. They are 5×5 (1250mm) inch x 2m long. I made 4 holes with a petrol driven hole borer to a depth of 750mm and spaced them 66 ft apart in a true square measuring across each of the diagonals. I then put the posts in and back filled each with a strong concrete mix taking care to keep each post plum. AIthough the concrete had set by the next day I allowed a week for it to harden before the next stage.

The next job was to mount the stainless steel hardware on to the posts, these were fabricated in a metal shop. I drilled a pilot hole for each coach bolt to help start it’s thread start and avoid any splitting. Slightly oversize car exhaust clamps are used to hold the element and to allow for the ptfe sheet insulator wrapped around the 2.5 inch tube.

73 Paul

Connecting radials to a vertical can be a pain. There are some good commercially available systems but it can work out to be quite expensive when you have to have four of every thing. Here I have made a simple radial connection system out of copper electrical earthing bar. Its fairly labour intensive but with some basic  engineering skill it can be made up for a fraction of the cost.

The bus bar is 25mm x 3 mm copper available from electrical wholesalers, the post is 5 x 5 inch so a strip of 20 inches is cut to length and formed to fit around the post. Four strips of 4 inches are cut to length and formed into brackets that are drilled and then soldered on to the bus bar to create the connection points.

The assembly is then installed on the post and secured with a stainless steel screw through the connection bracket into the post. The Radial wires are then stripped back and crimped  on to  lugs and soldered to keep out water and finished off with pvc tape.  OK, I could of used shrink wrap !

The radials are then connected to the brackets with stainless steel bolts with washers. The next job is to resonate each element so that they are exactly the same athough we used one of the elements in CQWW RTTY a couple of weeks ago and it performed very well, just waiting for Vlad RA4LW to come with the control gear and set it all to work.

73 Paul

CQ WW RTTY 09

Serge arrived from the Ukraine for this one feeling pretty beat after his long journey. He wanted to catch some sleep before the start but only managed a couple of hours after some set up issues with the computers. I have been working hard to get our new 80m 4 square ready for Serge but it was not to be as the control and phasing units are still in Russia with Vlad RA4LW. We had planned on Vlad being here to set it to work but at unfortunately at the last moment a visa issue has delayed his departure. I decided to hook up one element of the new 4sq for the 80m aerial which worked very well with strong runs into NA and some good DX too. Generally tho’ 40m and 20m were the money bands with 15 following up behind but 10m was almost non existant other than the usual batch of South Americans that we always seem to find no matter what. The first night was buzzing on 80 and 40m but unfortunately not to be repeated on the 2nd as the bands just died. Serge decided to get his head down and attack the bands again after some rest. 20M was not too bad during both days but 15 was always a struggle although some good DX was worked at times into the far East but never enough to keep any sort of rate going for long. To sum up then, generally poor conditions on the higher bands with some exceptions. The station worked well with a few issues here and there. Always great to see Serge and maybe learn a little more about RTTY operation from a great guy and op.

     QSO   G   EU   DX   Pts   DXCC  CQ  States
80m  516  13  383  120  1139   56    14  28
40m  953  11  490  452  2347   90    31  48
20m 1179  9   430  740  3089   97    33  55
15m  354  7   180  167  868    82    25  27
10m    8  0   3    5    21     5     4   0

    3010  40  1486 1484 7464   330   107 158

Score: 7464*595 = 4441080 points

73 Paul

These  views are looking down from a 45 foot cherry picker that I use for my electrical business but it also comes in very handy for aerial maintenance at the aerial farm.

As you can see the radial system is being installed, at the moment there are 40 radial wires for each vertical. Most of the wires are 66 ft 1.5mm pvc stranded copper in a pretty blue colour but the white ones are multicore intruder alarm cable that I had left over from various jobs. Some say that its a case of diminishing returns after 30 any way ? May be add some more later !

The wires are pinned down on to the grass with 3mm galvanised garden fencing  wire bent in to a “u” shaped staple and hammered home over the wire. With time the wires will become invisible as the grass grows over them.

73 Paul

This project has been a long time coming, for a while now it was realised that our 80m performance was some what lacking and Sergei UT5UDX suggested that a 4 sq might be the way to go.

As my neighbour keeps her horses in our field I did not want to have lots of guy wires all ove the place so I needed a design that utilised self supporting elements. During a trawl around the net I came across John’s (G4ATA) four sq site. http://www.4-square.co.uk/uk/g4ata/index.html .

His 4 sq design was just what I was looking for so I decided to give it a go and I would like to thank John for his advice and encouragement.

My 4sq design is slightly different here and there but more so with the phasing system and will not be using the Comtek acb-4 Hybrid unit but a home brew system built by Vlad RA4LW, more on this later.

So far the build is progressing  well and  I will update the site as it goes with pictures and basic build info.

One of the four 69ft elements had its first test when it was raised to the vertical last weekend with out mishap. This was encouraging as it prooved the system does work.

The next big job is installing the radial system that I’m not particulary looking forward to.

Hopefully it will be finished for the up coming  CQWW contests in a couple of months time.

73 Paul