My raw Score was 81 QSOs giving 469 points , multiplied by 3 for a  claimed  QRP score of 1407 points.

Due to health issues, I decided to take part in the Stew Perry with a casual
QRP effort.

5 thunderous watts from my K3 into 700 meters of coax going to the Arctic King,
complemented with 8 Beverages and 30dB of preamplification.

The Arctic King

Conditions seemed poor, despite promising conditions in the days leading up to the
contest, band was very noisy, not a signal anywhere stronger than a 579 during
the entire period.

Despite bombarding some of the stronger stations with my massive signal, I had
to give up on many of them…not even  a ? in return.   Some stations seemed to
have their keyers on without any break for listening, impossible to even send
my call sideways – perhaps they had actually fallen asleep  on their keyboard – I almost succumbed
myself at 0300 AM.

Other stations would answer on the first call.   Seems that there is some lack of
respect for the Top Band.

Top Band is all about reception, not only transmit power.  This is why I like
the Stew Perry event, it rewards those able to make the longest DX contacts.

Highlight of the event was being called by Jack, VE1ZZ.

Listen to our QSO:

StewPerry2011_VE1ZZ

I just received this email from Jeff, K1ZM who was operating QRP – 5W only from his super station in Prince Edward Island.

you worked me also Thor with my MASSIVE 5w signal.

Happy Holidays from Prince Edward Island in Maritime Canada.

I heard you MANY TIMES and called off and on when I heard you – eventually
I managed to get your attention.

http://www.vy2zm.com

73 JEFF  VY2ZM

Listen to our QSO at the end of this audio recording of a small run I had in a fit of optimism.

The first QSO in the recording is with EI7BA, followed by OE1TKW, GM4ZUK, VY2ZM and GM4AFF.

SP_VY2ZM_QRP

Real Radio at it´s finest !

If my calculations are correct, this QSO was worth 84 points!  (7 basic points x3 x4=84points – a record perhaps?), a distance of 3186 km.

Heard KH7X and ST2AR and several JA stations.

I look forward to taking part in the next event – this time with HIGH Power.

QRP – Never Again…

I think I may have a chance for winning a plaque in

the following categories.

Top Score – QRP Single-Op
Longest distance QSO with QRP transmitter
Aurora Borealis Award
Golden Log
TBD by the BARC Log Checkers (Greatest Optimist?, Strongest QRP Signal… :- ) )

Read the reports on the 3830 Score Rumors list.

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If conditions are good, I may enter the contest QRP (5 W), since I am not able to take part seriously due to health reasons.

The rules are written in a manner which favors low power stations and more points are given for each QSO for both parties.

Today, I received my plaque for last year´s event, where I qualified for three plaques:

1: Aurora Borealis Award - Top Score, > 60 Deg N Geomagnetic Latitude

2: Top Score, Europe

3: Longest QSO, High Power

The rules state :   Only one plaque can be won by any station for a specific contest. BARC will make decisions about which plaque you will win in cases where you qualify for more than one.

As a former sports competitor, I think that a station should be able to collect more than one award, personally – receiving an award for first place in any event, knowing that I was in second place would not give me much satisfaction.

I am of course very pleased that I won the plaque for Longest QSO ( even though I had to sponsor the award myself…) – the most prestigious award in the contest in my humble view – this event is all about distance.

TF4M and ZL4AS worked a 17,774 km path for the longest QSO.   Cliff, ZL4AS lives in the very south east of the South Island of New Zealand, looking at a Great Circle Map, his location appears to be the furthest possible on the planet from TF4M – an amazing DX Contact.

The other plaques were therefore given to the runners up as decided by the BARC committee.

I look forward to taking part in the best event in Amateur Radio with my thundering 5 W signal emanating from the Arctic King!

YOU WILL HEAR ME !

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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.

VE2XAA_20M

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.

VE2XAA@TF4X_VoiceKeyer

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

VE2XAA@TF4X recording 01

VE2XAA@TF4X recording 02
VE2XAA@TF4X recording 02

VE2XAA@TF4X recording 03
VE2XAA@TF4X recording 03

VE2XAA@TF4X recording 04
VE2XAA@TF4X recording 04

VE2XAA@TF4X recording 05
VE2XAA@TF4X recording 05

VE2XAA@TF4X recording 06
VE2XAA@TF4X recording 06

VE2XAA@TF4X recording 07
VE2XAA@TF4X recording 07

VE2XAA@TF4X recording 08
VE2XAA@TF4X recording 08

VE2XAA@TF4X recording 09
VE2XAA@TF4X recording 09

VE2XAA@TF4X recording 10
VE2XAA@TF4X recording 10

VE2XAA@TF4X recording 11
VE2XAA@TF4X recording 11

VE2XAA@TF4X recording 12
VE2XAA@TF4X recording 12

VE2XAA@TF4X recording 13
VE2XAA@TF4X recording 13

VE2XAA@TF4X recording 14
VE2XAA@TF4X recording 14

VE2XAA@TF4X recording 15
VE2XAA@TF4X recording 15

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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.

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!

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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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:

recording

Andrey, DL/KL1A sent me a link to a recording he made of TF4X in the Contest.

Andrey´s audio recording – linked

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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