Highs, Lows, Hots, (mostly) Colds…The Dangerous Allure Of Portable Ham Radio Contesting (ARRL Sweepstakes SSB 2022)

It starts off innocently with Field Day. C’mon, just do a little GOTA, you will be fine… Here, I’ll walk you through it. Just say the call sign when I tell you to. C’mon. Just do it. Don’t be shy. Get-On-The-Air. You know, GOTA. We are all doing it. Everyone’s doing it. That’s right, just sit here and take the mic. Go on, take it! Now just push the button when I tell you….Good. Ok, wait for the qrz… Wait for it… Wait for it. Wait….GO!! In a wave of sweet panic, you scream the call sign into the mic. And for a second, nothing…that anticipatory pause. But then… You hear it. The speaker crackles and you hear him say the call sign back to you! An imaginary crowd leaps to their feet and roars in the space between your ears. He heard you. You. YOU! Through the deafening cacophony of noise. You got through and made that contact! You sit frozen, uncertain how to proceed. And that thrilling rush of your first time. That first contact. Hearing another station repeat back the club call sign you were goaded into saying. Ok. Ok. Hey. Listen. LISTEN! Now, just say three alpha echo mike alpha. Now. Just say it. JUST SAY IT!!! And you do. You finally take a breath again. Your muscles relax. And boy it feels good. Real good. Real real good…The hook is immediate and complete. Just one time is all it takes. The radio ensnares you now. If I could just do it one more time. I will be fine. Really. Just one more qso. Just. One. More. I promise….And thus your lifelong desperate chasing of the ham radio dragon begins…

Which is exactly why AA1F and I are back at Salisbury Beach, camping in the extended off-season with temperatures about to plummet into the mid-20s overnight. We set up two different temporary living quarters for our portable radio contest stations. The 2022 ARRL SSB Sweepstakes begin at 4pm local time. We have about an hour to set up before the sun sets by the time we arrive.

Having just been here a couple weeks ago for the CQWW phone contest, we chose the same campsite. With only a handful of other campers, we were able to commandeer an entire section of the park, and set up our antennas the same way we did before. The 40M OCF is shown below.

As expected, the 40M OCF dipole antenna would cover 10, 20, and 40 meters well, with SWRs dipping below 1.5 across these bands. Whereas for my portable SOTA and POTA operations where ease of use makes the endfed halfwave antenna design ideal, when it comes to single antenna portable contesting, I prefer to use the off-center fed dipole. This one from Frequency Devices has worked great for me for years now. This would be AA1F’s antenna.

I would be using this 80M OCFD, by Antennas By K8MSH. It should be obvious why we like to set up in the extended camping season, given this 135 foot antenna traverses several unoccupied campsites. Notice at its feedline that it is not much more than 15 or 20 feet from the ground. The 40M antenna was somewhat higher. Both antennas were strung out horizontally, a variation from my preferred method of supporting the balun, and configuring more of an inverted V. I personally think this is the best antenna I have in my entire collection.

The 80M OCF would be readily usable across all HF ham bands except 160M. Although, I have tuned it up and made contacts on 160M with it (rarely) as well. Its SWR curve of frequencies from about 1MHz to more than 30MHz is shown below, with SWRs on the vertical axis. Each vertical blue line represents the bandwidth of each HF ham band (and also includes citizen’s band).

AA1F and I distribute band pass filters. He takes 40M and 10M. I keep 15M, 20M, 80M, and 160M. My goal is to get a triple digit qso count. Although I have participated in quite a few ham radio contests, I am not particularly good at contesting. I rarely make more than a few dozen contacts. The reasons for this are multifactorial, but sharing bands is definitely one of the reasons. Being able to chase propagation throughout the day and night is an important part of scoring well. I would definitely have an advantage over AA1F this time.

As I was setting up antennas, AA1F was setting up his temporary apartment and radio shack. An ice fishing tent set upon a ground tarp would be his home base, whereas I set up shop in the van.

A couple of TV trays, a chair, and the trusty Yaesu FT-891 made up his shack. You can see the handitalkie. AA1F and I would communicate with each other on our usual VHF frequency. It was not laziness that kept us apart. It was the need to minimize opening up our secure little spaces to the soon-to-be-frozen tundra that would rob every last precious bit of heat every time a door opened. Once tucked in, we would be largely staying put.

The sleeping quarters were a zero degree sleeping bag on top of a backpacker air mattress with a high insulation score. We would both be sleeping in multiple clothing layers including our jackets, hats, and gloves. We each had a portable propane heater to take a bit of the chill off. And it was the presence of these propane heaters that precluded us from trying to pack in to the same sleeping quarters. As wonderful as the warmth these devices provide is, propane heaters are truly scary. Sleeping inches away from a heater that has an open flame and produces noxious gas while depleting ambient oxygen is not for the faint of heart. Nor does it make for a good nights sleep. Each pound of propane would last four hours on the low setting.

Back in my digs, I had the Yaesu FT-991A running off of a 15ah Bioenno LiFePO4 battery. This was attached to the cheapo Evolve III Maestro $60 computer running N1MM+ logging software. If you look closely, you can see the steam coming off of the goulash that AA1F cooked for us several hours ago. Things were cruising along swimmingly for most of the night, and it was looking like I was going to make my goal of one hundred or more contacts. Nellie, our dog, was tucked into a couple of sleeping bags on her dog bed which was taking up more than one half of the cot I would be sleeping in. Ultimately this meant I spent the night sleeping on half of a cot, but that would be later after my cheapo computer had a major meltdown, halted my Salisbury beach radio operation, and nearly kept me from reaching my Sweepstakes goal.

It was around 1:30am. The van was freezing and the heater really could not keep up. The coldest part of the night was upon us, and the mid twenties weather was starting to take its toll. I had 84 contacts, and I was not sleeping until I reached 100. AA1F was behind me by about 10 qsos. I had spent the earlier evening draining 15M and 20M of contest exchanges until propagation dried up. Even after the midnight hour came and went, 80M was still busy. AA1F and I were occasionally chatting back and forth with our VHF FM HTs. I reached a point where every time I tried to transmit, my 991A would power down. I would need to change the LiFePo battery. I saw some commotion with a flashlight by AA1F’s tent and I called him on the handheld to make sure everything was alright. Well, I must have hit the frequency just right because I watched the mouse jump around my screen and then the cursor disappeared. Simultaneously an automatic update started despite the fact I had installed all of the updates before I left the house, or so I thought. By the time the computer restarted, I no longer was able to control it with the touch pad. The little cursor arrow had disappeared. Which meant my ability to restart N1MM+ and be able to keep track of dupes–duplicate operators that would not count toward points if contacted a second time–was gone. I could not find a way to get it to open without some sort of touch pad or mouse controlling the arrow. I tried to fix the computer, but I was making it worse. Ultimately, I gave up and (kinda) went to bed. My goal of triple digit contest qsos was now destroyed. I swallowed the sick feeling that I may have lost my entire log.

The highs and lows, the hots and the colds of ham radio…

To cut to the chase, when morning came we packed up fast and went home. I plugged a mouse in to the cheapo computer. It worked. I fixed the things I had broken in the name of repair, clicked on the N1MM+ software and it opened up immediately refusing to acknowledge the stress it caused me a few hours earlier.

And then, like the radio junkie I’d become, I thought, well, despite having less than 3 hours sleep and being more than a bit disgruntled by the disintegration of my technical equipment overnight, maybe, just maybe, I should get on the air and try for. Just. One. More. Contact. I promise. Just one more. Or more specifically, 16 more contacts so I could get in to double digits… But what is the difference between one more and sixteen more? I mean, its kind of a philosophy isn’t it? I mean 16 could be one if you just used some modular arithmetic scheme, right? And I know I said I was never touching the damn radio again, but what I meant was after I got over 100 contacts. Of course that’s what I meant. Look its just 16 more. Barely any. Won’t take but a minute. Or hour. Or a couple hours. Look its the antenna. Its the radio. Its the cat. No, the dog. I’ll eat later. C’mon, I just got one. Only 15 more. That’s it. 15 more… Just. Fifteen. More. I promise…

(I made 101 contacts during the 2022 Sweepstakes. All of the 80M contacts were made at the campground. All of the 40M contacts were made at my qth. The rest of the 16 “extra” contacts were split between 20M and 15M. Well, really 17 extra contacts, because one was a dupe, and you know, I can’t have a dupe. And I know I said I was stopping at 100 contacts. But I got a dupe. So I needed to get just one more for one hundred and one contacts. Just. One. More. Trust me! I promise…)

A finally warmed up,

KM1NDY