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Site Equipment |
At VE6fi we usually run Multi 1 or Multi single in contests although we have run Multi-multi whenever we have had sufficient operators. We have transceivers for a two permanent stations setup and rely on contesters bringing one or two more transceivers at contest time. A typical three station setup would be:
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10 & 80 meter Station - Yaesu 1000MP and homebrew 3-500Z amplifier. On 10 meters one would use a 6 element monobander. On 80 meters one would have a choice of four directions on a four vertical phased array, a three element delta loop facing the Caribbean or a 80 meter slopper |
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20 meter Station - Yaesu 1000MP and homebrew 4-1000A amplifier. For antennas one would have a choice of a five element 20 meter monobander, a four element 20 meter monobander or a tribander all pointing in different directions. |
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40 & 15 meter station - Yaesu 1000D and another 4-1000A homebrew amplifier. For antennas on 40 meters, one would have a choice of a five element 40 meter monobander pointing on Europe or Japan or a log periodic antenna pointing at the Caribbean. On 15 meters one would have a choice of a 6 element monobander for Europe and the Pacific and the use of the log periodic antenna pointing on the Caribbean. |
We would do a minimum of antenna rotating during a contest but would do a lot of switching between antennas. The switches are located beside each operating position.
We do not use any antenna tuners in the system as all the antennas come into the shack as 50 ohms. If matching is required, it is done close to the antenna. We do not use any antenna tuners to match the input to the amplifiers. All of the amplifiers have their inputs tuned such that they are a 50 ohm match.
The tuning settings for all the amplifiers are marked on the amplifier front panel. Since we are using peak reading power meters it is easy to peak the output signal while we are operating.
Most of our transmission line that run to our monoband antennas are equipped with stubs (thanks to K1ttt) which benefit us in the following way:
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Attenuate the second harmonic from our transmitted signal. |
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Protect hard to reach baluns when 2 KW is mistakenly put on the wrong antenna (tiredness, to many antennas or distractions) |
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Provides a DC path to ground for static discharge on the antennas and provides a path to ground for lightening at the base of the towers which are all 100 to 500 feet away from the building. |
Our transmission lines have their outer conductors grounded at the base of the towers. At this time we have only a few gas tubes on the transmission lines. This is one of our concerns and we are looking for a stock of 800 volt gas tubes. We have a ground at the building entrance and do have a project planned for a ground window and a ground field at the location where all the cables and the control cable come into the building.
We use CT by K1EA for our contest logging software. The computers are networked via serial ports or by a DOS hub. We try to use computers that boot to DOS and try to avoid the Windows version of DOS if we can. After the contest we keep track of all of our logs by BV7 software (by DF3CB). We have some 100,000 contacts in the log. Denis Ve6AQ, our on site QSL manager who will answer all QSL cards that we receive.
Amplifiers
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AL 80A |
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Harris RF 3200 Auto tune amplifier |
Rotators
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40 meter Beam Rotator |
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This site was last updated 11/13/05