Well yet again it is June, and time to put on our station for the RSGB NFD contest. We were unable to enter in 2006 as it clashed with Bracknell Methodist Church's 50th anniversary, where we put on a demonstration station instead. But we really had to enter this year, even though we were depleted to just two operators for this CW event. For a detailed account of NFD and Bracknell's participation in it first read my previous reports, linked from the menu on the left. This page describes our 2007 entry in NFD - though you will see that little has changed from previous years.

Preparation

Well not much preparation was really needed. All the kit was still available as used two years ago, so it was just a quick check that it was still in working order. Of course we had to arrange permission to use the site, a couple of emails to the local council, and also to register our entry with the RSGB HF Committee, another email. The old Zenith laptop was booted up and remarkably still worked - though we did find at the last minute it refused to do so as its memory card had slipped out of its socket, soon fixed. Batteries were checked and charged then all was done.

Equipment Details

As in previous years, we used my Elecraft K2, powered from 4AH gel cell batteries. We had a couple of these and also a couple of 7AH ones just in case we ran out. The antenna was our 204ft inverted vee doublet supported by John's light weight aluminium mast - the ease of erecting this has to be seen to be believed, it can literally be done single handed. The open wire feeder was coupled via a switchable 1:1/4:1 balun and tuned with the Elecraft internal tuner. As in previous years it matched perfectly on all bands.

Saturday Afternoon

This year we aimed to start operating at the very start of the contest, at 4pm (1500z) and decided to meet on site at 2pm to allow plenty of time. The team consisted of myself G3YMC, John G3NCN, Bill G7PVZ and his four legged friend Sadie. We chose our operating position away from the mowed public paths of the park - the remaining grass was quite long so we chose an area with slightly shorter grass. John's camping trailer was soon erected, followed by the mast and then the aerial was unwound and erected. It all went together very easily, just as it has in previous years, and in just over an hour the station was all ready to go. Even Sadie enjoyed it, and had great fun tripping over the guys and wires!

Of course there is always that last minute hitch. This time the 9-25 way D adaptor for the serial link interface to the laptop had got damaged in transit and we found a couple of wires had broken inside it. We had also forgotten to bring any water, a vital ingredient. I popped back home to resolder the adaptor, at the same time dropping John off at the local supermarket to grab some bottled water. The adaptor repair was unsuccessful, obviously I had mis-soldered it, so the serial link would not work. Oh well, we would have to manage with manual band changing, no big issue though we did need to take care to always remember to do it.

The station in action It was 4.15pm by the time we had sorted out the gremlins and were finally ready to go. A quick tune over the bands showed that 10m was open to Europe with strong sporadic E signals. Excellent! So we spent the first hour or so down there taking the opportunity of the double points on that band. We also spent a little time on 15m. A little later Bill arrived back with his wife Jennifer M3JAC who had prepared a large pile of sandwiches and other goodies to keep us going. We were not going to starve! In due course we moved down to 20m, where there were plenty of Russian stations to work, some of which seemed to have difficulty hearing us. Then down to 40m for a short while until it got dark, when 80m and 160m became the bands for most of our QSOs during the night hours. Around 3am, when we had exhaused those bands, we moved back down to 40m which proved nicely open, including a few very strong USA stations which we proceeded to work. We finished as planned at 4.15am (0315z) with 343 QSOs in the log.

John G3NCN on the key

Above is a general view of our operating position. The complete station is shown in this photo, showing how compact it is. John G3NCN is operating the K2, the balun is towards the back and the ancient laptop is to the left. The rig is powered from one of the two 4AH gel cells - it is interesting to note that the first battery kept us going for a full 9 hours into the contest, we had oodles of power!

After closing down the station it was soon dismantled and packed away. Bill arrived back around 5am to see us away and lend a little hand. Home at 5.30am, another NFD is over!

The results               160m  80m   40m   20m   15m   10m  Total Valid QSOs:     76   90    89    41    11    36   343 Total Points:  572  328   318   145    42   256  1661 Claimed Score: 1661 points This is a slight decrease on our 2005 score. In general we are pleased with the result, HF conditions were not that good at sunspot minimum and in addition there was an X-class solar flare on the Saturday morning which reduced the potential for DX contacts. It was compensated by a good sporadic E opening on 10m which allowed us to have quite a few QSOs on there in the early evening. We lost out by not spending more time on 160m, or maybe activity on the band was less this year. In the published results we were yet again in second place. Maybe one of these days we will achieve our ambition of winning the QRP section! 73 Dave G3YMC

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