Celebrating 70 years of freedom with Special Event Stations

Within the YNOMY DX Group an idea was born at the beginning of this year to place special attention on this year's WW2 liberation celebrations as we have been living in peace here now for 70 years. 

70 years ago the allied forces liberated The Netherlands from Nazi rule, ending the second world war five years after it started. The southern part of The Netherlands was liberated in the autumn of 1944, while the northern part was only liberated in the spring of 1945.

On May 4, 1945 the German forces formally capitulated to the British Field Marshall Montgomery. The capitulation was effective the next day.

We therefore celebrate the end of WW2 for the whole of the country on May 5 every year ("bevrijdingsdag").

We were thinking of activating a range of special calls during the month of May with a group of operators. The range P*45FREE (PA-PH) was chosen after some debate. We also planned a group activity in the middle of the month with a special group call PA45FREEDOM.

We asked around and were able to organise a team of 9 operators that were supportive of the idea and willing to play a role in it by applying for and activating one of the special calls. The team consists of PA1WBU, PA3BAS, PA3FYG, PB7Z, PD7YY, PE1BVQ, PE4BAS, PG8M and myself.  

So we are moving from an idea to a whole range of special event stations that will be active during the month of May 2015.

In the mean time we have designed a special QSL card and are in the process of designing an award. This electronic award can be obtained free of charge when an OM or SWL has collected 45 points. Each P*45FREE counts for 9 points and the PA45FREEDOM call counts for 18 points towards the award.

Hope you will have a chance to work several of our stations.

PACC results visualised

For me data makes (far more) sense once it is visualised. So I spent some time with our PACC log data to transform it into pictures.

The easiest way of course is by totaling numbers of QSO per time slot, band and / or mode. You can display this in all sorts of nice graphs.

There is another way to do it, and it is one I really like: showing the actual QSOs mapped on the planet earth. This took quite some time as the N1MM logger we used during the contest does not log / retrieve the location of the station worked. Using HRD LogBook as intermediate I retrieved this data from QRZ.com.

Now with some minimal programming I was able to show the contacts plotted on the globe per time slot, per band and per mode. I made several maps with different segmentations of the data.

I liked this animation I made best - it shows our progress over time (with 1 hour increments). The colors of the data points represent the bands and the shape represents the mode used.

PACC 2015 - experiences of the YNOMY crew

Cross-posted from the YNOMY blog site
YNOMY is a team of 3 active OMs from around Arnhem - PD7YY, PG8M & PH0NO

Pre-contest preparation

We prepared ourselves a bit better than last year (which already was a lot better than the first year). We got ourselves a nice temporary special call PE55E and we constructed and tested a number of different wire antennas well before the contest (last year M was still working on the 160m antenna a few hours into the contest).

Pre-contest modeling of our wire antennas

M had arranged a proper location at a camping ground near to where he lives and - importantly for this contest - in our province of Gelderland. The place definitely was an upgrade of the cold and windy hut we were in last year. It even featured WiFi so we had online cluster info in N1MM.

Our shack during PACC 2015

M started the installation of the antenna park together with his station manager on Friday. They installed the three main poles - 12m, 18m and 12m high - that were holding the wire dipoles for 160m (supported by all three poles), 80m (inverted v from the center pole) and 40m (inverted v from the nearest pole).

Low band wire antennas

We tested this setup before (more info in this post). Modelling showed this setup results in more gain on 160m and less gain on 40m than last year. As we would be running 3 to 4 times the power of last year on the low bands we weren't too focused on getting the maximum gain though.

Final preparations 

Saturday morning NO and YY arrived to complete the contest station,  adding an end fed for 20m, a hex beam for 20-15-10m and a yagi for 10m. As NO had to leave Sunday morning before the end of the contest - taking the hex and the yagi - we set up an extra 5/8 vertical for 15m we built and tested just 2 weeks before the contest.

Our beams: portable hexbeam and home brew 3 element yagi

When we finished setting up the station we had 7 antennas at our disposal - quite an impressive set-up for a temporary station. We were running 300-400 watts PEP into them via an icom 756P3 hooked up to a pc running N1MM.

Contest operation

We manned the station for 24h by sleeping in shifts. The camping provided us with two extra sleeping places conveniently located outside the noisy shack.
M was our CW operator while YY and NO took care of the phone contacts.

M on CW logging in N1MM with YY following the proceedings closely

As the weather was much friendlier than last year we had no calamities (as blogged about in this post). All went rather smoothly. Conditions on the high bands seemed a bit better than we remembered from last year. We will have to compare our logs to see how this worked out.

A better preparation allowed us to operate with minimal switching times between operators. We used our experiences from last year to choose the right band and mode at the right time and we had more power at our disposal on the low bands (300-400w as opposed to 100w last year).

This has resulted in far more contacts and more multipliers than last year. We logged approx. 800 contacts last year during our first real try in this contest and came in 6th place. This year we set our goal at 1000 QSOs and surpassed that by a considerable margin.

We will add more information about our results once we have taken the time to run our log through the PACC log robot and compare our results in more detail with the results of last year (numbers, multipliers, dx per band).

Lots of power supplied

A power hungry mobile amplifier
For my portable operations I sometimes use an RM transistor amplifier. It is a very simple amp and probably not the cleanest one around - although I have had no complaints as long as don't use compression on the lower bands. Recently I bought a dummy load and was able to measure the output. It delivers 300-400 watts from 10m-160m depending on the band (less on the higher bands).

I power the amplifier with a separate car battery - the wiring in my car does not support the high currents and I do not want to run the risk of draining the battery I need to get moving again.
This works well even when I now and then want to use the amplifier at home (I usually refrain from using more than 100 watts as my neighbors have complained of RFI in the past).

However with our PACC contest coming up I was looking for a power source that could last longer than the car battery does. We used the amplifier last year during the first hours of the contest and we think it could help us score better this year if we have it available for 24 hours.

A proper power supplier
I have not measured the peak current yet but I would expect it to be around 50A. I could of course buy a decent switching power supply of say 60A to have a bit of head room. However they don´t come cheap.

ATX PSU in use for LiPo charger

In the past I converted an ATX power supply of 400W from a desktop PC to a bench power supply (3.3V, 5V, 12V). It delivers 15A max @12V which is nice for recharching my LiPo and LifePo batteries. Thinking along these lines I stumbled on server power supplies being used as 12V power sources. The best information how to use these I found in the realm of remotely controlled helicopters and cars. That is quite another hobby but one I met before when I was looking for the best portable batteries in power/weight. They seem to have similar challenges as ham radio operators.

The DELL server PSU capable of delivering a whopping 175A

One power supply that attracted my attention was from a DELL server that could deliver 175A @12V. That is what I call head room :)
I found it for sale as a refurbished part in the Netherlands for a good price so I ordered it earlier this week and it arrived just before the year ended. 

Using the information online I am now preparing it to power up. For this you need to connect the right pins so the PSU thinks it is correctly installed in the DELL server. According to the information online it is even possible to increase the voltage supplied using a potentiometer between certain pins. Sounds all very nice to me..

I still need a few parts to complete the job and when done I will add the details to my Projects page.

4,5 hours of antenna work

This morning I went out with PD7YY and PG8M to test our low band antenna set-up in preparation for the PACC contest in February.

It took us a lot of time to get the set-up right mainly because we were too ambitious in our attempt to support 3 different dipoles (inverted v style) from one center pole.

If you have 6 wires running from a rocking fiberglass pole with a couple of guy wires to add to the complexity, you will end up with a nice spaghetti.

So we will change our plan and support only 2 antennas from the center pole.

We did manage to tune our new full size 160m dipole and even worked on 10m with it...

More about this experience on the Ynomy blog: low bands preparations

Ynomy is born

So.. who is Ynomy?

Ynomy (pronounced something like Why Not Me?) is a new radio club consisting of PD7YY, PG8M and myself. 

For some 4 years now we regularly meet each other in the Region 6 (Arnhem) monthly club evening. We share a passion for ham radio (duh!) but also for /P activities from interesting locations, for DX chasing and for contesting.. well, at least participating in the PACC contest.

In 2013 the idea to participate in PACC with our region's club call (PI4ANH) was born. PD7YY and PG8M participated using the club station with very minimal means. I had social obligations and entered the contest only for a few hours on Saturday evening / night on 80m. 

This year we did a proper attempt to set a good score during the PACC contest with a full blown temporary contest station. We used the PI4ANH club call again this time.

Next year we will be back during PACC determined to improve on our score of this year. We have decided we need a better contest call and for that reason we have requested a temporary special call: PE55E. It is one that is easy to pronounce and it is a short call on CW (note that a special call in PA needs to have at least two numbers and can only be claimed for one month).

As we see ourselves organising more joint activities we decided we needed a name - a carrier for all the temporary calls we will be using. This of course has to be Ynomy.

Ynomy has a website of its own (still under construction at this moment) where I hope a lot of interesting experiences will accumulate - like our future DXpeditions to P5 and numerous highly wanted and at the same time very comfortable islands (sun, beach, cocktails and radio fun). 

Two IFF activities during my holiday

I am just back from a holiday well spent in southern Tuscany (the area is known as Maremma). The reason to mention my holiday here is that I took my radio with me and got to operate it as well.

I decided to keep my radio stuffed away on the camping and only operate it on two planned off-camping /P activities. This way I minimised the impact of my peculiar hobby on the time I had with my family. I have to add that I do not enjoy digital operation as much as voice (and when in a tent on a very quiet camping I am not comfortable working voice). This tips the scale even more in favour of limiting the radio-activity to off-camping /P trips.

The place I stayed was surrounded by no less than four IFF recognised nature reserves - all within 40 minutes drive. I was thinking of activating three but in the flow of my holiday ended up with two time slots large enough to go out /P.

IFF-660 Monte Labbro
The first activity was from nature reserve Monte Labbro (IFF-660). The mountain itself is know for its ruins of a tower built by Davide Lazzaretti, leader of the Giusdavidic Church.

Monte Labbro in view

Preparing my visit I had checked Google Maps and expected to be able to get to the top of the mountain. When I arrived there however (via a very rough cobble road) it turned out the last part of the route was a footpath. Without proper support I was not able to set up my station on the top and decided to stay with my car, just below the top of the mountain. This might have influenced my rx and tx as the mountain blocked approx 90 degrees (north to east).

Setup on Monte Labbro IFF-660

Weather was okay with cloudy skies at the start of my activity around 16h local time and the sun appearing later in the afternoon. Radio conditions were far from okay however. IFF requires that you log 100 chasers to make an activity valid. In my experience this is very do-able as there is a large chaser community out there. This time however I struggled and only logged my 100th contact after almost 4h, changing bands (and antennas) six times in the mean time looking for an opening. I stayed for another 1,5 hours logging 58 contacts when 40m picked up. I even got to work some stations on 6m, amongst them my fellow club member PG8M - which I found the most remarkable event as 6m is not known for its reliability (understatement). I logged two other fellow club members on holiday: PD7YY in OZ and PE1WBU in LA.

I worked on 6 different bands using end feds and my c-pole for 40m on my 17m mast. I logged 158 contacts (146 different stations) from 35 DXCC. DX included W1, A7, EA9, R9 and PT7.
 

Monte Labbro - view to the top - weather improved substantially during my activity

IFF 702 - Bosco SS Trinità
My second activity was one week later from IFF-702 - a relatively new reference. When I was checking it out before my holiday it had actually not been activated according to the WWFF database. By the time I got there a log had been uploaded - so it had been activated once. 
Conditions were still far from good (being in between trees might have played a part) but this time I logged 199 contacts. This was in a 6h period, so a low number in my experience. I have to add that I lost 90 minutes setting up and later breaking down my inverted V for 40m and 80m. I decided to use them after my somewhat disappointing results at IFF-660. Setting these two inverted V's up in between the trees turned out to be a challenge. I did log 68 contacts on these two bands (exceptional if you consider that QRM was S9 on 40m and S9+ on 80m) - so it was worth the effort.

I worked on 5 different bands using end feds and my inverted V's for 40m and 80m on my 17m mast. I logged 199 contacts (182 different stations) from 38 DXCC. DX included W1, VE1, 4Z and PY1.

View to the Convento Trinita from my operating position

Thanks to Max IK1GPG and Steve IZ5GST for their information about IFF / activating in Italy.