CQ World Wide DX Contest QRP Style!

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In the first years of my ham career, I used to be quite an avid "search and pounce" contester, not really for the competitive element, but for the opportunity the various contests offered me to add new DXCCs, US States, islands and other interesting locales to the logbook. The solar activity was still at its peak, and oh the feast it was, putting in the log one new DXCC after the other! I remember 10m bustling with activity and me feeling like a kid in a candy store!

Nowadays, I'm not the avid contester I once was. Most contests nowadays bring nothing new to me. Still there are some contests that I stay at home for though, they are the IOTA Contest and the CW editions of CQ World Wide DX and CQ WPX contests.

Last weekend was the weekend of the CQ WW DX CW contest. I was participating with my usual setup with 100 Watts and a HyEndFed 10/20/40 wire antenna, and worked some nice new stations on 40m and 20m including PY0F on Fernando de Noronha and PZ5T in Suriname. But after a while the search and pounce just got boring. I've worked the US and Caribbean stations on 40m before, and it just doesn't have the magic it once had. At one point, to bring back some excitement, I decided to continue QRP.

More and more these days the callsign PA7MDJ/QRP can be heard in the "ether". Some time ago I became a member of QRP ARCI, and recently I also bought an LNR Precision Mountain Topper MTR-3B transceiver. The MTR-3B is a small, lightweight, 40/30/20m CW-only QRP-transceiver, originally designed by famous QRPer Steve Weber KD1JV. It's really a wonderful little high-performance QRP rig, and it will replace my much heavier Yaesu FT-817ND on future SOTA activations.

So, I left the shack and instead comfortably settled on the couch with my Mountain Topper, and continued my participation in the CQ WW contest. The couch set-up was complemented with a Palm Pico Paddle, and a small 9.9V 2100mAh LiFePo4 battery to power the MTR-3B. The rig was connected to the same HyEndFed antenna mentioned above. With the MTR-3B connected to 9.9 V it delivers a power to the antenna of approximately 2.5 to 3 Watts. I wondered what I would be able to do in the contest with this little power.

The QRP "Couch set-up"

As expected I was easily working some European and Russian stations on 40m, then much to my surprise succesfull 40m contacts followed with entities like Asiatic Russia, the Canary Islands, Algeria, and Morocco. Then at one point on 40m I managed to work the first US East Coast station! And more followed, New York, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida! Unbelievable, I'm sitting on my couch with a transceiver about the size of a deck of playing cards working the US on 40m with less than 3 Watts on a wire antenna! Suddenly the magic was back!

On 20m the next day with the same QRP "couch set up" I also managed to work Senegal on 20m and Kazakhstan on 40m!

This was an unbelievable succes, and QRP has brought back the excitement in contesting! This time I just sent in a checklog, but next time I might consider entering the contest in the QRP category.

International Vintage Contest

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Today I spent some hours on the 40m band making SSB contacts in the International Vintage Contest. The International Vintage Contest, organized by the Rimini section of the Associazione Radioamatori Italiani (ARI), encourages ham radio operators worldwide to dust off their vintage transceivers, transmitters, and receivers, and to make contacts with it during the 10 hour long contest held each year in April. This year's edition marked the 10th anniversary of the contest.

I really love vintage rigs. I own one myself, a Yaesu FTdx-100 of over 45 years old. The FTdx-100 was built in the late 1960s and is the predecessor of the legendary FT-101. It's a hybrid type transceiver, partly solid state, but still with tubes in both the driver and final stage of the transmitter. I love the soft glow of the tubes, and making contacts with my FTdx-100 always gives me such a special feeling. The rig, to me a piece of Japanese art, the embodiment of pure Japanese technological craftsmanship, is still fully operational, and occasionally I like to go on the air with it. The Vintage Contest was a good excuse to turn on the "Time Machine" (as I affectionately like to call my FTdx-100), warm up those vacuum tubes, and send some electrons through them again.

Looking at the participants today though, and in the results of previous editions, it looks like the Vintage Contest unfortunately doesn't enjoy too much fame outside of Italy. I participated in the contest "search and pounce", and of the 11 contacts, 10 were with Italian stations. I hope this blog entry will help a little giving this wonderful contest some more publicity. It's a great chance to operate your own vintage equipment and at the same time make contacts with it with other fellow vintage-rig owners. I'm already looking forward to next year's edition, hopefully then with some better propagation conditions than today. It would be nice to participate in CW, but I'll have to look into building or purchasing a keyer to connect to the FTdx-100, as otherwise I will not be able to use my Kent twin paddle key with it. Another option would be to practice using a straight key (I do all my CW with iambic paddle keys, and I have minimal experience with a straight key).

More information on the International Vintage Contest can be found at http://contestvintage.beepworld.it/index.htm.

Below is a video made earlier today of my FTdx-100 receiving the CQs of an Italian contest participant (actually IQ4RN, the station of organizer ARI Sezione Rimini).

Original FTdx-100 advertisement brochure