Posts by: TF4M
I have received my 5BDXCC plaque. To the best of my knowledge, this is the third 5BDXCC awarded to icelandic stations.
The first were TF3Y (30 M and 17 M endorsements) and TF3DC (30 M endorsement).
This is the first 5BDXCC with a 160 M endorsement awarded to a TF station.
51st Scandinavian Activity Contest 2009 – TF4X
Update 06 December, 2011:
The SAC Contest Committee, in their wisdom, have refused to acknowledge the fact that TF4X had the top score in Scandinavia in the category and only marked the certificate as 1st Place – Iceland…
All attempts at diplomacy failed, although the Contest Committee became divided over the issue.
I have therefore marked the Certificate accordingly myself. A simple and elegant solution.
It is a little known fact that TF4M/TF4X and socially mature TF stations have since 2009 boycotted the SAC to bring pressure onto the Contest Committe in this matter.
If you have wondered about the absense of the top TF stations, this is the explanation.
It has now become crystal clear that the top TF stations will never again take part in the Scandinavian Activity Contest.
It is easy to win a contest, when the competition is absent.
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previously published in 2009:
Yngvi, TF3Y operated TF4X in the 51st Scandinavian Activity Contest on CW over the weekend.
The day before the contest, he made around 800 contacts to get acquainted with the new shack.
The score is higher than last year´s winning score in the Single Operator – 20M category.
Yngvi, TF3Y operating TF4X
At this point it looks like TF4X has the highest score in this category – this may of course change as scores get submitted…
UPDATE: The results have been published and TF4X is the winner of this category!
| Single Op./Single TX/Single Band/14 MHz | [SINGLE-OP 20M] |
Pl. Call QSO QSO-p Mult Score Op. --- ----------- ----- ----- ---- --------- ------ 1. TF4X 1.037 2.426 60 145.560 TF3Y 2. OH7WW 771 1.882 55 103.510 3. SM6A 632 1.577 63 99.351 SM6BGA 4. SM3PZG 489 1.175 55 64.625 5. SM7ZDI 503 1.244 51 63.444 6. OH3I 390 992 47 46.624 OH9MM 7. OH2AAZ 466 1.089 40 43.560 OH2BSI 8. OH3LB 424 940 43 40.420 9. SA3C 403 894 43 38.442 SM3CZS 10. OH2VZ 325 723 44 31.812 11. LA1QDA 364 792 36 28.512 12. OH2BCD 289 638 44 28.072 13. SM2CVH 298 637 44 28.028 14. SM7N 298 733 35 25.655 SM7NDX 15. SM3RL 297 657 35 22.995 16. SMØQ 274 604 37 22.348 SMØOGQ 17. SM1ALH 137 315 30 9.450 18. OH1ZE 123 261 32 8.352 19. OZ1IKY 123 291 25 7.275 20. OH6MBQ 92 213 32 6.816 21. OH3MC 99 241 28 6.748 22. OH1FJ 98 224 26 5.824 23. LA6GX 99 202 21 4.242 24. SM6WET 76 195 20 3.900 25. OH6NPV 70 155 22 3.410 26. SM3DFM 46 112 22 2.464 27. SM5DQE 33 76 14 1.064 28. SM6WZH 27 66 13 858 29. SM7DAY 21 51 16 816 30. OH2BN 13 30 10 300 31. OH7WV 11 25 10 250 32. SM6LTO 1 2 1 2
I made some recordings of the contest with my Beverage antenna system and the PERSEUS SDR.
You may download a file (147 MB) of the last few minutes of the contest spectrum on 20M CW and play back the spectrum using WinRad on your own computer.
In order for WinRad to be able to play back recordings made by the PERSEUS software, you will have to download the PERSEUS DLL for WinRad and extract the files to the WinRad directory.
If there is demand, I can provide larger files of the last hour of so on 20M during the contest.
The station performed as expected, except we discovered, when I operated TF4M on 80M, that the 80M antenna is located too close to the JA rhombic, causing 80M operation to trip the protection circuits on the amplifier on the 20M station.
I operated TF4M on 80M for 45 minutes out of the 24 hours and made 50 contacts.
Without bandpass filters in place, this discovery would have followed the total destruction of the 20M transceiver. As it were, there was no damage, although the JA rhombic was picking up 50W or so from the 80M antenna….
The first indication of a problem was that I could hear faint noise coming from the 20M operation when listening on the TX antenna – there was no trace of any noise using the Beverage system.
I cascaded two sets of bandpass filters on both 80M and 20M stations, but I could still hear faint interference and then we noticed the faulting of the 20M amplifier when the station was switched to the JA rhombic.
I will solve the problem by relocating the 80M transmit antenna.
Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite
4U1ITU – ITU HQ
The International Radio Club in the International Telecommunications Union, Geneva counts as a separate country in the DXCC program.
Their call sign 4U1ITU is activated regularly, but has been absent from 160 Meters until now.
It took an hour of calling to get their attention through the EU Wall, no easy task since their signals were quite weak with hordes of stations calling.
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This was country #173 worked on 160 Meters.
Update: The Postman delivered the QSL card on January 6., 2012.
Rob GM3YTS & Gav GM0GAV are active from Malawi between 31st October and 13th November 2011.
They use the call sign 7Q7GM and battle high noise and frequent power cuts.
I have called them for hours on end on 160 Meters without any luck. It was also clear that their noise level must have been very high, as they did not answer any of the dozens of calling stations.
Last night the noise on their end must have subsided and once more the Arctic King showed his power.
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My totals now stand at 172 Countries Worked and 166 Countries Confirmed on Top Band.
I have become interested in low temperature cooking for a while – Sous Vide – and after recent success with Leg of Lamb which was cooked at 55°C for 32 hours, I decided to try even longer cooking times.
In the absence of a regulated water bath, I simply put the pieces of meat into special cooking bags and put the bags into the middle of my oven set at 55°C.
This is the result after 74 hours of cooking – the Leg of Lamb slices were absolutely perfect – like no meat I have ever tasted, practically melted in my mouth, but the smoked pork was a bit over done for my taste – rather dry. This may be due to previous processing – smoking and salting.
This is the meat straight from the oven – 55°C for 74 hours.
sliced leg of Lamb straight out of the oven
Smoked pork straight out of the oven
The sliced leg of Lamb after searing them on a frying pan 25 seconds each side
The sliced leg of Lamb
The Pork
The Pork – yes, the knife is a Masahiro…
Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite 
Yngvi, TF3Y piloted TF4X in the CQ WorldWide SSB Contest in the Single-Operator, Single-Band, High Power Category.
TF3Y@TF4X
When the dust settled, the score was as follows:
3124 QSOs
93 Countries
25 CQ Zones
for a final score of 571,710 points.
Due to the recent sun spot minimum more or less since 2003, there has been little activity on 10-Meters and almost no activity from my station.
Yngvi´s score was 5 times higher than last year´s top score in this category from Europe and his QSO total is similar to what Multi-Operator stations in the US and top stations in the Caribbean accomplished this year.
KC1XX had 3061 QSO’s, the K3LR super station had 3033 QSOs on 10 meters and W2GD made 3356 contacts on 10 meters from P40W in Aruba to give a few examples from the contest this past weekend. TF4X´s 3124 QSOs compares very favorably considering the difference in propagation in the frigid north to what stations further south experience.
Most of the contest was recorded, both the audio and the 10 Meter Band spectrum using a Perseus SDR.
Here is a recording made on Sunday:
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Andrey, DL/KL1A sent me a link to a recording he made of TF4X in the Contest.
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Yngvi wrote in his Soap Box comments :
“Had a great time. Ten showed a bit of life but still big room for
improvement, e.g. no JA’s. Being able to transmit to many Rhombics
while selecting others for reception is a big plus. The performance
of the station was excellent apart from a 40 min. electricity outage
due to a fault at the power company. Thor’s station keeps improving
year by year. Due to poor conditions in the past few years there has
not been much activity from the station on ten meters. We now have
proof that the Rhombics do a great job on that band as well. “
It’s not all work and no play, we also take time to enjoy good food and wine, it has become a tradition that my visitors contribute to the food over the weekend in exchange for the use of the station.
On Thursday I put a leg of Mountain Lamb into the oven to slow cook for 24 hours at 60°C – it turned out absolutely magnificent – I will be using this method often in the future.
Yngvi generously brought a very nice aged T-Bone steak 5cm thick which I prepared in my gourmet kitchen for Saturday’s evening meal.
The raw T-Bone steak ready to cook
Ready to eat!
Perfect ! – details of cooking method provided on request. 
The best T-Bone in the Arctic.
Sunday morning we had Spinach Shakshukah and in the evening slow cooked chicken…all dishes washed down with conservative amounts of fine wines.
Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite
Despite generally poor conditions on 160 Meters due to the recent Aurora, I heard TL0CW in Bangui, Central African Republic last night.
He is staying in Bangui for only one week from the 25th of October, so it was important that I make the QSO since TL is quite rare DX.
Rudi, DK7PE is on a one man DXpedition around the world and has visited 152 countries and operated from 127 countries!
I was unable to raise him last night, but tonight his signals were slightly stronger and I became convinced I would eventually get through the pile up of stations from Japan, Asia, Europe and the USA who were calling him by the thousands.
At times it was quite obvious that he was having reception difficulties due to QRN, since he would not come back to any of the callers.
It took about two hours of calling to get through, thanks to the magnificent signal of the Arctic King.
This is my 160 meter entity number 170 worked – I now have 166 entities confirmed.
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A massive Aurora graced the southern sky last night, October 24. around 2300 UTC.
I used a variation of Tony´s Magic Cloth technique on some of the photos.
I took a bunch of photos. They may be viewed in this album:
172 Photos
Below are the photos I selected for further processing by DxO Optics Pro.
Click on the photos to view larger size.
