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Written by Administrator
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Sunday, 04 November 2007 |
For historical reasons, the DX section calls itself the Calgary DX Club. The DX section promotes and encourages DXing, contesting and casual station operation on the HF, VHF and UHF bands. Members are involved in SSB, CW, ATV, RTTY, PSK, packet and other digital modes.
The DX section operates club station VE6AO during major contests, normally in the multi-single or multi-two categories and occasionally, multi-multi. The two main stations consist of Yaesu FT-2000's and Alpha 9500 amplifiers. Heil boom headsets with HC-4 cartridges are used along with footswitches on SSB and Mircoham microkeyer USB interfaces to connect the radios to the computers and Bencher paddles for CW. Auto band-switched Dunestar 600 filters, using Top Ten band decoders, keep the inter-station interference to a minimum.
Antennas on the first 100 ft tower are three independently rotatable Bencher Skyhawks for 10/15/20 @ 101ft, 60ft and 30ft and two Cushcraft 402 CD for 40 meters @ 110ft and 50ft.
A WX0B 3 position stackmatch is used to phase the 3 tribanders and a 2 position stackmatch
phases the two 40 meter beams.
Tic Ring rotors turn the middle and lower triband yagis as well as the lower 40 meter beam. An Alpha Spid rotator turns the top tribander and 40 meter beam. Five sloping broadband half wave dipoles for 80 meters on the south tower can be selected using a remote coax switch in the shack. A ring of 30, 100 ft radials are attached to the ground system to support shunt feeding of the tower, through a series capacitor, as a vertical on 160 meters.
Antennas, rotors, radials and phasing boxes on the second 100 ft tower are identical to the first for 10/15/20 and 160 meters. Two XM240 2 element 40m yagis and another ring rotor are under constuction to make it identical to the first. An 80m dipole 4 square using a Comtek phasing
box has been built for this tower and will be installed after the 40m beams.
Another 2 port WX0B stackmatch allows the selection of one, or both of the two stacks of 3 tribanders on 10/15/20 meters to operate with up to all 6 tribanders in phase. This configuration works really well as evidenced by the high placing in many recent HF contests.
The two towers can be operated as phased verticals on 160 meters using a WX0B phasing box.
Currently an array of 13, 2 position Daiwa antenna switches and a 2 by12 position MFJ antenna/radio selector switch, allows the two main stations to manually select any of the above station antennas. The next step will be to simplify antenna selection by incorporating auto band selection of dedicated antennas for the two main stations.
A sloping half wave dipole is also available for 40 meters along with an AR88 multi-band
vertical that covers 10 to 40 meters including the WARC bands. A 40 M four square has recently been constructed and plans are underway for feeding the two towers as phased verticals on 80 meters.
The third station is equipped for VHF/UHF weak signal operation using an FT-847 and KW amplifiers on 50, 144 and 432 Mhz on CW/SSB and FM. Antennas include a horizontal 5 element yagi for 6 meters, a 13 element yagi for 2 meters and 15 element yagi for 432 Mhz. This station can also be used on HF with a System One tribander on a 50 ft tower. This tower also supports an inverted V for 80 meters. Hygain Tailtwister and Ham IV rotors are used on the two small towers.
There are also additional VHF vertical antennas on the 100 foot towers; a folded dipole for 2 meters at about 80 ft, a high gain 2 meter vertical at 110 ft, and a few other verticals at ~ 50 ft for packet, APRS , IRLP etc. A dual band 146/440 vertical sits atop the mast on the 56 ft tower. A horizontal 439 Mhz yagi and 902 Mhz wire mesh parabolic antenna are fixed mounted towards the club ATV repeater site.
The station has 5 networked computers for logging using N1MM contest logging software. The operating positions normally connect up to the local packet cluster through a cable Internet connection, thereby providing DX spots on the computer logging software for the band in use. Wireless networking is available in the building and web cams monitor the doors to the shack.
A guest operating position is equipped with a computer, Dunestar filter and 220V socket for members to bring in their own transceiver and amplifier. Another tribander can be raised on a crank up tower trailer that goes up to about 60 ft, to support this station, or it can be manually patched into any of the existing antennas.
A laptop docking station provides monitor, keyboard, Internet and mouse connections for
another guest operating position with another 220V socket.
VE6AO is open to any member (under supervision if they don't have HF privileges) for casual operating, DX’ing, special events or contest activities. Amateurs visiting Calgary are encouraged
to contact The DX Chairman or the Station Technician for station tours and/or to operate the station while here.
DX Section normally meets on the first Monday of each month at the Calgary Sports Car Club. Check out the CARA meeting schedule for details and exceptions.
In June 1998, CARA applied to the Calgary Community Lottery Board for a grant and received $15,000 which was used to purchase and install the first 100' commercial guyed tower. Later grants have allowed development of the stations to their current state. CARA thanks the Calgary Community Lottery Board for its generosity and the Alberta Government’s Liquor and Gaming Commission’s charitable gaming program.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 20 February 2008 )
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eWeather
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Calgary, Canada
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Temp:
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9°C
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Wind Chill:
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7°C
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Humidity:
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58%
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