At this time of year my location has only a few hours of twilight.
I worked EY8MM in Tajikistan, who had good signals today.
Noise levels are so low now that I use the Arctic King in both transmit and receive.
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This morning I got up early and checked 160 meters for activity.
I immediately heard ZL3IX at his sunset and worked him for a first QSO between TF and New Zealand on Top Band.
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The picture is taken from DX Atlas by VE3NEA and shows the Gray Line at the time of our QSO.
ZL3IX QSO TF4M
I then called CQ and was answered by ZL3NW and later KL7HBK and FK8CP for another first QSO between New Caledonia and TF.
ZL3NW QSO TF4M
And a little bit later the Gray Line was enhancing signals into New Caledonia.
FK8CP QSO TF4M
W8JI also called me with a strong signal and I was pleased to learn that he has heard about the Arctic King 
This audio file contains all these QSOs.:
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I believe that band conditions were rather poor, signals were weak and some of these QSOs were extremely difficult.
I made a few recordings of other stations :
KL7J:
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JT1CO :
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KL7HBK:
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The Mongolian station had good signals but I was unable to raise him.
What a wonderful morning and an omen of things to come.
Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite
The Arctic King is a relatively simple structure, but there are some aspects of the design that are not immediately obvious.
An inverted L antenna mirrors another inverted L antenna working against elevated radials, positioned right on the edge of salt water for more than 180° of the horizon.
At present the vertical wires going to each inverted L are tied together in the feed point box. This makes the antenna work as a T antenna against elevated radials.
In this mode – i.e. vertical wires working in Common Mode (CM), the antenna is fully resonant around 1838 kHz – a little bit high on purpose – ball park resonance was adjusted roughly by adjusting the length of the elevated radials and fine tuning of the resonance was done with a coil connected to the center point of the elevated radials inside the feed point box and one terminal of the UNUN transformer.
There are no tuning devices in the box, i.e. the resonance adjustment of the antenna is entirely separate from the matching to the feeder.
At resonance the feeder matching is accomplished with an UNUN 4:1 i.e. 50:12.5 ohms, and the UNUN additionally provides the DC path for the entire structure to a buried ground system.
I mention somewhere on my web site that initial testing comparing this antenna with my old tx antenna for 160 meters showed a 15 dB increase in signals, but I have now done some more testing and in the salt water direction the difference is in the region of 30-40 dB.
The primary purpose of the Arctic King is being a vertically polarized antenna, but by separating the two vertical wires inside the feed point box, the antenna can be fed in Differential Mode (DM) as a low dipole antenna – again resonant on the frequency of choice at 160 meters.
This would create a high angle of radiation, useful for local contacts like EU.
When the time comes to accomplish this, resonance will be determined – my measurements indicate 1770 kHz in DM and the resonance will be shifted with a capacitor connected between the two vertical wires inside the feed point box.
If the resonant frequency is high in DM, a coil will be installed instead between the vertical wires to adjust resonance, and the resulting R will then be matched to the feeder.
(note that in CM, these resonance adjustment components will ´disappear´ in CM, since they are effectively shorted out )
The interesting thing that was discovered during modelling was that once the elevated radials were raised to around 4 meters above ground, the dimensions of the top loading wires became non-critical.
This fact made it possible to calculate first the dimensions for the DM (dipole),then use those dimensions for the CM (vertical T ) and then adjust the CM antenna (the vertical) for resonance by adjusting the lengths of the elevated radials without affecting the resonance of the dipole.
I installed 8 conductors + shield from the shack into the feed point box to control relays and make measurements.
Current will be measured on each vertical wire and on each elevated radial and the balance will be adjusted as necessary.
In addition, the vertical will also be made to work on 80 meters in both CM and DM.
On 80 meters the feed point will be at a very high impedances, this is the reason for the separation of wires from the wooden structure and the large insulators.
The Arctic King is a unique antenna professionally designed by Villi, TF3DX and I am certain that in due time, he will publish a paper detailing the Arctic King design.
Three operators arrived from Reykjavik to operate the contest. Yngvi – TF3Y, Kiddi – TF3KX and Oddur – TF3OO along with a Sveinbjörn – a Gourmet Chef who had planned the feast for weeks.
Conditions were rather poor, not a single sun spot during the weekend made conditions on HF rather poor and in addition there was some Auroral activity affecting the lower bands.
Despite this 4525 contacts were made in 48 hours of operation.
You may listen to the activity from TF4X:
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The menu was fantastic. On Friday we had Tom Ka soup with Halibut followed by Real-Vanilla ice cream and cake, on Saturday the menu was Pigeon breast, Elk meat with carrots boiled in orange juice and Sunday we had icelandic mountain lamb fille, with baby tomatoes braised in olive oil and Maple Syrup garnished with fresh Timian.
The Arctic King awed us with the performance – 1270 QSOs were made on Top Band and this was only matched by 20M where 1306 QSOs were made using an array of Rhombic antennas.
We used Win-Test contest logging software which performed flawlessly on 5 computers during the entire contest.
We used a feature of the software called Targets Tracking, which showed us real-time graphs on the screen of our progress compared to last year´s effort. Right from the beginning things were going much better than last year and this was very inspiring throughout the 48 hours.
This graph shows the over-all difference on an hourly basis compared to the effort of 2008.
This graph shows the hourly over-all rates compared to 2008. 2008 in grey, 2009 in violet.
This picture shows the zones worked on all bands.
The Icelandic record in the Multi/Single Category was set by TF3IRA in 1980 at the height of the Sun Spot Cycle.
That record stood at 2,169,760 points. They made 3004 QSOs and they worked 85 zones and 231 countries to accomplish this.
We beat the 29 year old record handsomely as can be seen in the summary.
It is interesting to note that Yngvi, TF3Y and Kiddi, TF3KX were operators when both records were set.
Highlights of the operation was working a Pile-up of JA stations on 160 meters – this is the first time in history that JA/TF QSOs are made on Top Band during this contest.
KH6 (Hawaii) was worked on 80 meters for the fourth time in TF history that I am aware of. Prior to this, only Boggi – TF3TF (SK), Yngvi – TF3Y and Gudmi-TF3SG have worked Hawaii on 80 meters.
It was interesting to note some extremely strong poor signals that obliterated parts of the bands along with some strong EU stations that seemed to be completely deaf. It took me 46 minutes of constant calling to raise one of these stations on the low bands. It is absolutely necessary to have separate receive antennas for the low bands (160/80) to be able to operate there with any kind of efficiency.
A very successful weekend is behind us and a what a good omen of things to come.
Our SoapBox comment to 3830 was as follows:
Comments:
This was the first CQ WW with TF4X being active. TF4X is a
special call issued to the TF4M station. The latest addition, the
phenomenal Arctic King 160m antenna took us by surprise. Almost as
many QSO’s on 160 as on 20. Numerous new Beverages and zero noise
level on RX. The strength of the station is displayed by low band
performance. First time JA pileup for us from TF on 160m in CQ WW.
Propagation was relatively good as we had little Aurora and definitely
better on the Saturday. According to the raw score the 29 year old M/S
record from TF was broken by 1.1 million points.
Today I sent my application for 160M DXCC to the ARRL.
This will be the first 160M DXCC in Iceland.
Band conditions are still poor and the band is quite noisy, but even so I made a few QSOs to JA this afternoon.
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A milestone was reached this afternoon.
I worked JH7PFD for QSO number 500 with Japan on Top Band.
I can hear and work JA stations on Top Band the entire day, from 1200Z to Sun Rise in Japan at approximately 2110Z – this corresponds to their hours of darkness.
This is even more interesting, since this seems to be the case even under disturbed conditions, previously considered utterly impossible.
This is, of course, entirely thanks to the Arctic King.
The resonance of the Arctic King was made slightly high to enable accurate adjustments of system resonance to be made at the feedpoint.
A small choke was inserted in series with the elevated radials with the resulting SWR curve shown.
Resonance is adjusted completely separately from matching the resulting resistance (R) which is done with a 50 ohm to 12.5 ohm UNUN transformer.
The Radiation Resistance at resonance is 17.5 ohms (+/- 0.5ohms), which accounts for the slight SWR (1.4:1 at feed point) at resonance.
Modelling gives approximately 75% radiating efficiency and less than 1dB in ground losses.
The great Arctic King is built right on the edge of the sea.
This accounts for his extremely strong signal and low angle of radiation towards more than half of the horizon.
In addition, the salt water impregnates the ground around the King and ensures excellent ground conductivity and very low ground losses.
I would like to clarify that the Arctic King is only used for transmitting – I receive with an array of Beverage antennas ranging from 170 meters to 400 meters long in various directions.
I would also like to clarify that the downward angles of the top radial wires and the in-land angle as well, were dictated by the shape of the small peninsula that the Arctic King is built on and on the availability of large wooden poles.
Slightly better performance would have resulted if it had been possible to have the top radials horizontal and in-line.
Such poles are not easy to come by in Iceland, in fact the King – the 27m pole – is the largest pole in Iceland.
The Beverage antenna pointing towards Japan is the shortest Beverage in my arsenal – 170 meters long.
I intend to build a larger Beverage towards Japan to decrease the beam width and reduce the noise level even further.
Today was not spectacular.
I heard JA7OEM while still in broad daylight and worked him on the first call.
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Later I spent a long time listening for FK8CP who was barely readable today and then I called CQ for a while.
The band was quite noisy and some Russian contest caused a bit of QRM across the band…
I have observed that a lot of the weekend warriors have limited receive capability.
They come on a busy frequency and immediately start calling CQ and it is quite obvious that they are most likely using their transmit antenna to receive with…it´s quite sad really.
This is the main reason that I would really like to see 160 meters free of contesting – except for the Stew Perry, of course…. and free of SSB too, while I´m at it.
Nevertheless, a few JA stations were added to the log, some incredibly weak signals which were quite difficult to copy, I have a feeling that my receive antenna system is being tested with QRP signals from Japan…
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Start Slide Show with PicLens LiteToday there is a light breeze and I took some photos of the King.
I called CQ on 160 meters between 1700 and 1800 local time, still in daylight and was called by 9M2AX and we had the first QSO between West Malaysia and Iceland on Top Band to the best of my knowledge.
I was also called by Jack, VE1ZZ and 24 QSOs were made with Japan during this fine hour.
One or more of the JA stations was QRP.
You may listen to the contacts:
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Kyo, JR9OPJ made a recording of our QSO
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I later called CQ between 1945 and 2051 leading up to JA sunrise with another 54 JA stations being worked for a total of 78 JA stations worked in one day.
Considering that working Japan from Iceland on 160 meters was considered impossible until I built my antennas, I am quite pleased.
The highlight of the evening was when VK6ANC called immediately followed by VK6VY.
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JA3FYC who worked me with only 5 Watts, sent me a recording of the QSO
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I would like stations who call me using QRP to understand that I do not log their calls with /QRP.
I would also prefer they do not indicate QRP with their call signs as this makes things harder than necessary.
It is difficult enough to pull the call signs out of the noise, without the added complexity of /QRP, when stations call with low power.
All recordings on my website may be downloaded if desired from tf4m.com/audio
