ARRL 160 Meter Contest

Call: W2GD
Operator(s): K2TW, KU2C, N2OO, W2CG, W2GD, W2NO

Station: W2GD

Class: M/S HP
QTH: SNJ (West Creek, NJ)
Operating Time (hrs): 26

Summary:
QSOs Sections Countries
Total: 1121 75 31 = 259,594

Club/Team: Frankford Radio Club

Comments:

This was the inaugural operation for the Sandy Hook Team from a new coastline QTH near Tuckerton, NJ. Security concerns following the horrific events of September 11th have rendered the Sandy Hook Coast Guard Station unavailable for the foreseeable future.

Our new QTH is immediately adjacent to Barnaget Bay, about 60 miles south of Sandy Hook, 25 miles north of Atlantic City, and 5 miles West of Long Beach Island. It was formerly the home of a Public Coast Marine Station. Assets include a 300 foot Rohn 55G tower surrounded by salt marsh, 24 acres for erecting beverages, and a station building with plenty of AC power, heat, and running water.

Over the preceeding two months, inbetween CQWW and SS weekends, Team members K2TW, NO2R, W1GD, W2CG, W2GD, and W2NO staged three work parties to install a baseline group of antennas specifically for the ARRL 160 event. We wanted to put something reasonable on the air to evaluate the site's strengths and weaknesses.

Antennas at the outset of the contest were as follows:

Transmitting: Delta Loop fed vertically with apex at 155 feet, Sloping 1/2 wave dipole, top end at 190 feet.

Receiving: 1000 foot terminated NE beverage, 580 foot terminated West beverage, and~700 foot unterminated South beverage.

During the contest period we added an unterminated 580 foot NW beverage and a second 1000 foot NE element which will be phased in the future. We also plan to add additional beverages to the East and Southwest.

Station Hardware Position One: IC781, IC765, ICOM 2000A 1.5 KW Position Two: IC765, Alpha 87A 1 KW

This operation unfortunately had two major weaknesses, inadequate operator staffing and a non functioning computer network. We ended up operating part time, just 26 hours total, opting to do antenna work during the available daylight hours on Saturday. During station setup Friday we discovererd our computer network configuration was not working and we could not reliably connect to any 2M packet node. To minimally fill the void we set up a web telnet session to get DX spots but it was a totally manual work around...no interface to our CT logging software.

the contest seemed to get off to a reasonable start:

HOUR	CUM	TOT
22	99/36	99/36
23	93/14	192/50
0	75/8	267/58
1	81/9	348/67
2	67/1	415/68
3	65/4	480/72

 

It felt pretty good to have EU and SA calling in the during the first few hours...as well as working some west coast stations well before their sunset....good indicators that the station was getting out....since band conditions in general were not very good. Conditions seemed notably better to the west coast the second evening, but Europe never sounded great, although a few stations were loud both nights. We unfortunately discovered we have line noise on our European beverage, but hope to remedy the problem before the CQ160 CW weekend in January. Working KL7Y and VK6HD were highlights the second night. We did not hear any JA stations.

Here's our continental breakdown:

Congrats to the K2TOP and WB9Z teams for their FB M/S efforts and to VY1ZMM and W4AN for unbelievable S/O scores.

We hope to be QRV for the Stew Perry and definitely for the CQ160 CW in the months ahead.

73,
John W2GD