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Alexey, VE2XAA – Silent Key (SK)

By TF4M On December 11, 2011 · Leave a Comment · In Amateur Radio, Visitors at TF4M

Alexey, VE2XAA became a Silent Key on August 21, 2011 from a heart attack, only a few weeks after his visit to Otradalur, where he operated TF4X in the IARU Contest 2011.

From Hávamál :

Cattle die, and kinsmen die,
And so one dies one’s self;
But a noble name will never die,
If good renown one gets.

It was a pleasure to meet Alexey and we already talked about his next visit to Otradalur.

VE2XAA de TF4M SK ——————————-

Outside of the contest, Alexey operated from my station using the call sign TF/VE2XAA.

Our last QSO was on the 14th of May, 2011 on 20m CW.

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Here is an album of photos I took of Alexey during his visit.

VE2XAA @ TF4X

Alexey, VE2XAA piloted TF4X in the IARU HF Contest 2011.

63 Photos

During his stay, Alexey suggested some improvements to my engineering - I have already begun to implement some of his suggestions.

Alexey had prepared to work the contest on SSB and had recorded his contest exchanges into the voice keyer of the radio. However, he decided to do a CW only effort. The recording was discovered by chance recently.

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I believe Alexey was very pleased with his visit. He wrote in my station Guest Book:

…unic place in the planet, unic landscape with real Elves and unic antenna farm. ….In 10-20 years one more forest will cover the place where it was never before. And on top of the trees the Arctic King with Arctic Quinne will rule their Otradalur Kingdome!

The result of the contest IARU 2011:

total: 1876 QSO, 770400 points, beside contest 2200 QSO. Total for 3 days ~ 4000 QSO.

Main station impression: usually you do not hear the stations calling you. This problem does not exist in Otradalur farm. You hear even 160 m band with full daylight days in July! ”White nights” – is not a problem for Arctic King!

73! Alexey, VE2XAA

Most of Alexey´s TF4X operation was recorded as follows:

VE2XAA@TF4X recording 01

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VE2XAA@TF4X recording 02

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VE2XAA@TF4X recording 03

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VE2XAA@TF4X recording 04

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VE2XAA@TF4X recording 05

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VE2XAA@TF4X recording 06

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VE2XAA@TF4X recording 07

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VE2XAA@TF4X recording 08

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VE2XAA@TF4X recording 09

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VE2XAA@TF4X recording 10

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VE2XAA@TF4X recording 11

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VE2XAA@TF4X recording 12

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VE2XAA@TF4X recording 13

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VE2XAA@TF4X recording 14

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VE2XAA@TF4X recording 15

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Top Band conditions improving

By TF4M On December 10, 2011 · Leave a Comment · In Amateur Radio

Yesterday – 9th of December, I heard BU2AQ, in Taipei, Taiwan on 160M.

Despite numerous attempts, I was not able to raise him to give him a quick report, – we have worked twice before on Top Band.

Listen to his contact with SP3DOI

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Upon checking my records, I found that I have never received a QSL card from BU2AQ, although I have worked and confirmed another station from Taiwan – BU2AI.

My cards for both contacts with BU2AQ will be posted on Monday.

This bodes well for the winter DX season, I am still missing several Asian countries – including China…

Recently received 160M QSL cards

By TF4M On December 9, 2011 · Leave a Comment · In Amateur Radio

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5BDXCC

By TF4M On December 8, 2011 · 2 Comments · In Amateur Radio

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.

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51st Scandinavian Activity Contest 2009 – TF4X

By TF4M On December 6, 2011 · 2 Comments · In Amateur Radio

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.

———————————————————————————————————————-

previously published in 2009:

Yngvi, TF3Y operated TF4X in the 51st Scandinavian Activity Contest on CW over the weekend.

sac_cw

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.

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4U1ITU – ITU HQ

By TF4M On November 11, 2011 · Leave a Comment · In Amateur Radio

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.

7Q7GM – Malawi

By TF4M On November 11, 2011 · Leave a Comment · In Amateur Radio

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.

TF4M new QSL Card

By TF4M On November 10, 2011 · 2 Comments · In Amateur Radio

The new QSL card has been designed.

front

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Arctic Pinnacle Performance

By TF4M On October 31, 2011 · 4 Comments · In Amateur Radio, Food, The Arctic

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.

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TL0CW – Central African Republic

By TF4M On October 27, 2011 · Leave a Comment · In Amateur Radio

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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Cattle die, and kinsmen die, And so one dies one’s self; But a noble name will never die, If good renown one gets.

VE2XAA de TF4M SK ——————————-

Update 06 December, 2011:

Yngvi, TF3Y operating TF4X

front

TF3Y@TF4X

3124 QSOs

93 Countries

25 CQ Zones

for a final score of 571,710 points.

The raw T-Bone steak ready to cook

Ready to eat!

The best T-Bone in the Arctic.

Cattle die, and kinsmen die,
And so one dies one’s self;
But a noble name will never die,
If good renown one gets.