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CQWW SSB 2009 M/S effort
Conditions were a lot better than last year, especially on 10m, where we had a very good EU opening on sunday, and a rather good one to NA. Excellent 15m, eventhough the NA runs were not as impressive (rate/strength) as usual. Big mess on 20m, lowering the high run possibilities. Thus, we are missing QSO ... Nothing much to say on the lower bands, besides the fact that we still need to improve the 40m and the 80m. We are glad with the multipliers counter, our best so far ! This year, to try to avoid some RFI problems between stations, we removed our 160m shunt fed tower for a V160E from Titanex 100m away from the station, and renew our beverages splitting system. Both made some improvements, but some problems remain. We will need to fix them in the near future. For 2010, we are planning to upgrade the station. We have a limited space,but more can be done. Congratulations to P33W and CN3A teams. Good job guys ! On behalf of the FY5KE Contest Team, Herve F5HRY Listen to your QSO with FY5KE here CQWW SSB 2008 M/S effort
We thought that z9 was the place to be at the very low bottom of the solar cycle. We can now say that it is not ! As probably all the other teams in this area, we had to suffer from very bad conditions on the upper bands (which would start at 14 MHz ...), each QSO being a struggle. For the first time, we did not run (or less than half an hour, and if "run" is the appropriate terminology) on 10m. The top band was a good one this year, let's remain positive ! No doubt that our major M/S competitors in NW africa will be far ahead. First time we used our brand new K3's. Quite glad with them, eventhough switching from good old "analog" tranceivers to state of art digital machines may be disturbing, especially regarding the RX audio. CU next year, hopefully with an upgraded antenna setup (yes we can ...). On behalf of the FY5KE team, Vy 73 Herve F5HRY CQWW SSB 2007 M/S effort
Comments : Powered by Win-Test 3.17.0 http://www.win-test.com It still was a very hard job to set up the station and beverages (high temp and high humidity). We have set up a 4-square on 40m this year in addition to the existing 20-m high 2el yagi, hoping that it could help us improving our score on that band. This new antenna was made using 4 Dx-Wire fiberglass masts and a home made Collins hybrid phasing system (F1HAR, F5HRY). The dummy load was built with a 50-ohm non-inductive resistor designed to support 1kW when immersed into an oil bath. Unfortunately, we didn't find any non-conductive oil in Kourou and we tried to substitute it with some Demineralised Water. SWR was not perfect on 40 but it was just enough to do the job ! This new antenna enabled us to increase worked Q and DXCC, compared to 2006. As usual, we installed 6 beverage receiving antennas which worked as great, as expected. The lowest point is actually to being able to localize the ground rods because of the dense vegetation which covers them now. In addition, the tropical rains caused a driving in the ground of the rods. Despite of the help of a GPS, it is necessary to clean out the area where the rod is supposed to be with a machete, and to carefully look around for something which could be the ground rod ! In spite of lots of efforts in filtering (RX and TX filters, stubs), we suffered some inter-band interferences which handicaped the runners in their labor. It was necessary to be attentive to the band openings, especially for the very capricious 10. The main band was 15, on which we achieved third of the total Q and the best rates (6 hrs over 250 Q/hr). We finally achieved more Q, but less mults, than 2006. The overall claimed score is a bit lower than last year, and is under the amazing score of CN3A ! Congrats, guys ! Thanks everybody for calls and points, and CU next year ! ARRL DX SSB 2007 SOAB effort
Comments : Unfortunately, it was not possible for the usual team member to be gathered all together to take part to the ARRL SSB in multiop this year. This is the reason I decided to try a SOAB effort. A fantastic week end, in spite of the propagation which was not as good as last year. Only 6 QSO on 10m on Saturday with Florida. Sunday was really better, with a first short opening which was sometimes giving the impression to operate meteor scatter on VHF followed by a good second one. For some reasons, it was not possible to build the station before Friday in the morning with the result that I started the contest with a lack of rest. Add that it is 35°C with 95% of humidity in the shack (no airconditioning), the last part of the nights were quite hard and I didn't resist to stop and sleep a bit. Also some trafic breaks to fix various problems like a damaged mosquito screen to be replaced or a power supply delivering a low voltage which resulted in a TS850 failure... SOAB non assisted, really ! Thanks everybody for the QSOs and see you in the CQWW ! CQWW SSB 2006 M/S effort
Comments : Besides few technical problems, basically caused by heat and humidity under these latitudes, we had a great time this year in French Guyana. Highlights were the 160m and the 10m (unexpected to be that good with a low SFI), and the overall worked multipliers. Lowlight was the 40m, the band we still need to improve seriously. As usual, the 6 beverages set worked as great as possible, even up to 10m from time to time, when signals were strong enough. This RX diversity at FY5KE makes possible what wouldn't be without : low bands RX (noisy at 5° latitude),high rates using a dual running position (with the Win-Test partner tool), multi direction RX (while we only have one TX antenna per band). This overall claimed score is a bit more than 2005 previous one. We had a real fun fighting against the red part of the graph of the Win-Test objectives window (see http://docs.win-test.com/wiki/Menu :Windows). And, definitly, the struggle paid ! CU next year. ARRL DX SSB 2006 M/S effort
Comments : Very hard conditions on 10m, needing to look for any possible (even weak) opening. Struggle paid, at least for a few mults. 20m closed much earlier than the previous years, meaning more low bands actvity, which our log clearly shows. 80m worked well, confirming the 2 phased verticals as a good choice. Great 160m, 57 multipliers on SSB would have been a dream few years ago ! Amazing signal from K3LR on that band. CU during the CQWW SSB. CQWW SSB 2005 M/S effort
Comments : Another M/S effort from French Guyana, with Fabio I4UFH joining us for the first time. Rather happy with the result, as 10m conditions were really unstable. Hard job on the multipliers, which are always an impressive struggle from FY, especially to europe on the lower bands. The 80m sloper was replaced by a pair of phased 1/4 wave full size verticals, using 10m of aluminium tubes toped by DK9SQ 10m fiber poles. For sure, a good choice ! We are still working with our 6 amplified beverages, a real help for us, up to 15m this year (10m signals were usually to weak). No real high rates due to over crowded 20m and 15m bands, but a +/- similar result in terms of QSO than in 2004. WPX SSB 2005 SOAB effort
Comments : First participation in the WPX as SOAB. Good conditions Saturday, worse Sunday especially with the NA on 15 and 10. Congratulations to D4B for his new record claim and his amazing score ! ARRL DX SSB 2005 M/S effort - Final result : #2 World
Comments : Another M/S effort from FY5KE, after having played M/2 last year. We thought that the predicted (and lived) bad conditions on the higher bands would favor us. They did, but not enough to balance the low bands ... FY is still very far away from the US ! Worked no NU and LAB this year. Only one NWT and YT on 20m. Congratulations to the VP5B team. Good struggle ! Thanks to all, CU next year. CQWW SSB 2004 M/S effort - Final result : #3 World
The operators for the 2004 event of the CQWW SSB were F1HAR, F5HRY, F5MZN, F6EPY, F6FGZ and F6FVY. A moral and logistical support was provided by Jacques FY1FL, whom has to be grandly thanked. The station was mostly the same as last year, we just fixed the problem we had noticed between the 20m and 40m beams. Six beverages (US short, US long, EU short, EU long, JA and AF) including home brewed preamps were installed. Conditions on the high bands were much better than expected, which is rather not appreciated in FY, due to good W <-> EU paths ... We found the 40m (and the low bands) to be not as good as 2003, but we made some band changing mistakes during the first night. However, we were glad to work our first JA on 80m (JF1IST), which is kind of a big challenge from FY ! We noticed 2 short blackouts, one being 1147z on saturday. We suffered some technical problems with a PA (nice smell of burned plastic from the RF switching relay ...) and one of the TS850, but nothing dramatic. For the first time, we had a telephone line for the DX Cluster, which appeared to be RF proofed with dozens of ferrite beads ! The very last version of our contest logging software Win-Test, including the propagation forecast linked to the excellent HamCAP by Alex VE3NEA was a real help to take pertinent skeds. The final score is lower than last year, but the 20 Mpts is still beaten. Congratulations to the CQ9K team which seems to be ahead. ARRL DX SSB 2004 M/2 effort - Final result : #2 World
First attempt in the M/2 category after winning the M/S one in 2003. Definitly a lot of fun, despite some "newcomers" errors ... We learned a lot, but still have some hard job to do to improve the design of the M/2 station, as well as the operating techniques. Our goal was to be as close a possible to the terrific Signal Point PJ2T station. We missed it by a large number of QSO, but we still see their poop. Hope still remains at FY5KE ! Highlight of the contest was to be called by a VY0 station in NU, which almost made the operator fall from his chair ... 6 bands WAS (except KH6 and KL7 of course) was cleared in the week end, which is a first ever for us. We didn't run enough 10m, where we found some EME signals. 160m was excellent from time to time. 73 Herve F5HRY ARRL DX CW 2004 SOAB QRP effort - Final result : #1 World and new World Record
Potential new world record (previous 1.9 M points) despite unstable conditions on the higher bands. I am still surprized with the 70 QSO/25 states worked on 160m with 5 W ! A frog visited the shack on the first night, as well as numerous insects attracted by light. It's hard to manage a pileup while some unidentified flying cock-roach (or whatever !) travel across the shack, not really knowing how and where they will land ... when the operator is in the path ! ARRL 10 meter SSB 2003 SO HP effort - Final result : #1 World
5EL YAGI AND 3EL QUAD. Only 30 hours this year, conditions were not so good... CQWW SSB 2003 M/S effort - Final result : #2 WorldClaimed score
CU during the next one. For the FY5KE Contest Team, Herve F5HRY Rig :
ARRL DX SSB 2003 M/S effort - Final result : #1 World
Second place in 2002 made us work hard on what is the real challenge from FY : the low bands ! It seems that it was a worthwhile job, as both the number of QSOs and mults on these bands have increased. Again a lot of fun, but the language still remains a problem for us, vs the american ops who are playing the same game from the carrabian islands. Congrats to K9PG and W2SC for their outstanding SOAB scores. Glad to be on the first floor of the claimed scores so far. We just hope we didn't make too much mistakes catching the callsigns and the states ... Special thanks to the very few guys in DC, LAB or YT who called us. As usual, the wide "white desert" from NU and NWT (nobody up there ?). For the FY5KE team, Herve F5HRY Rig :
Antennas :
ARRL DX CW 2003 SOAB QRP effort - Final result : #1 World and new World Record
ARRL 10 meter Mixed 2002 SO LP effort - Final result : #1 World and new SA record
ARRL DX SSB 2002 M/S effort - Final result : #2 World
Ops or inband listeners : F1HAR, F5MZN, F6FVY, FY5FU, FY5FY, F5HRY Rig :
Comments : Our firsts thoughts went to a M/2 operation. But the aircraft would have definitly not taken all the stuff we dreamed about ... Thus, a standard M/S was the hard reality ! However, we tried to optimize the running techniques, with at least 2 ops at the same time during the whole contest, and it provided good results. We surely enhanced the rates. As well, this technique helps for real time log checking. Conditions were excellent on saturday, but poor on sunday. On that second one, the higher bands began to open very late, with deeply unstable signals, providing low rates. We worked hard on the low bands during the nights to purchase as many mults as possible (remember FY is quite far away from NA, and 80+160 are noisy !). We are pleased with the number of multipliers worked, eventhough 61 seemed possible on the high bands (no LAB wkd, NWT and NU kept for dreams). Thanks to VY1MB for YT. Last, but not least seen from FY, the high SFI favored the E-W axis (as it did during the CQWW SSB), and our signal was probably too marginal for the side lobes of the NA beams ... We'll have to wait for 3 or 4 years to be more competitive (but never as the northen Caraibian will, definitly !). We are still waiting for some unclaimed high raw scores in the M/S category. We are thinking about VP5B and EA8BH, maybe others. No idea ? ? Next year, we will learn "american". It seems to be a good choice : try to pronounce KG1JGW with no analogy when you were not born in the deep middle west ... CQWW SSB 2001 M/S effort - Final result : #5 World
Rig :
TRX : 2xTS850, 1xTS870, 1xTS450 PAs : AL1500 @1.2kW, TL922 @500 W, AL811 @300W Comments : Fun again with a great propagation (probably too much to run a very good score vs others from FY). Not enough QSO/mults on 40/80m.Congratulations to D44TC for their amazing score. CQWW CW 2000 SOAB HP effort - Final result : #7 World
Station : FT-1000MP / Alpha 87A (TNX NH7A) el tribander at 22 m, 2 el wire beam to north on 40 m (@20 m) strange delta loop on 80, inverted vee on 160 m 190 m beverage to north No activity in any CQ WW CW from FY for too many years made the country / mult so rare that pile ups were huge at times to really slow things down. Maybe be too much for a first time operation from the DX side of the pile up. The 80 m antenna didn't work well and some stations (mostly Eu or Asia) have been called on this band without being able to log this rare mult ! CQWW SSB 2000 M/S effort - Final result : #8 World
Ops or support : FY5FY, FY5FU, F1HAR, F5HRY Run : TS870 / TL922 Mult : TS850 / AL80 Antennas :
Comment : Not enough ops., not enough antennas, not enough mults, no cluster, some problems, up to 37°C in the shack ... but what a fun ! And that's enough to make us feel good ... CQWW WPX CW SOAB HP 2000 effort - Final result : #3 World
All reports sent were 599, unless otherwise noted. Equipment Description : TS870 + Alpha 91b 3 El Fritzel tribander @ 22 m Single Delta loop for 80 + 40 m This was my very first serious operation in a major contest from an exotic and point/propagation blessed place. I must say a big thank you to Pierre FY5FU and Didier FY5FY for opening the Kourou Space Center club station for me, fixing the tribander before and (worse) during the contest. Both of them as well as Marie-Therese (Pierre's wife) and Brigitte (my wife) took care of me with full support of the operation. I tried to do the best use of the club's callsign to honor these great hosts. I think this log can alsoqualify for the TS category, even if I was forced to operate SS (with the loop and a matching box on 10 m) for a long hour on saturday afternoon.
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CQWW SSB M/S 