be part of something hot -- the b4hq iaru hf 2003 story
by michael chen, bd5rv/4
chen ba4rc operating b4hq at his own station.
ba4rd doing b4hq ssb from ba4rz
dave ba4rf is busy with cw pileup
it was a hot and exciting summer. one day in early july, dave, ba4rf, called me on the phone: "how about contesting as a hq station in iaru hf?" "wow," i said. "why not?"
founded in 1998, the jiangsu dx club has become the most active dx community in china. we were known in the major contests as b4r as well as in the bi expeditions. in iaru hf, people surely need zone 44, but a multiplier like crsa would be another enticement to all the contesters around the world. a chinese hq station hasn't been in this contest for more than ten years. what about earlier? i don't know, as i've never heard of any story about hq operation in this contest within the mainland of china.
so dave's idea was really what all of us were thinking. but we didn't want to move to beijing to operate by1pk. here in nanjing we had several stations available for a contest operation. each had beam antennas and ready-for-use station equipment. why not ask hq to move? when telephoning chen, ba1ham, secretary general of crsa, about acting as hq in the contest, he said "no problem".
chen also issued the special call b4hq for better identifying ourselves. this proved to be more than useful in the pileups. we couldn't wait any more!
overall, four stations were engaged for b4hq. they were: by4rsa, ba4rc, ba4rf and ba4rz. each site had a writelog-ready computer for logging and rig controlling. telnet-based dx clusters can be accessed. all the logs were synchronized by an internet writelog server, so a broadband internet connection was kept in ba4rc, ba4rf and ba4rz. for by4rsa, we applied gprs.
operating conditions station
antenna
equipment
by4rsa
create714x, a3s, and dipoles
ft-1000mp with go2kw amplifier (running at 1kw)
ba4rc
5ele ba4ed monobander for 10m
4ele ba4ed tribander
ts450s with tl922
ba4rf
4ele ba4ed tribander for 10,15,20m
2ele ba4ed monobander for 40m
dipoles for 80m
ft1000mp with go2kw amplifier (running at 1kw)
ba4rz
4ele ba4ed tribander for 10,15,20m
jrc245 with homebrew 1kw amplifier
we posted a message on our club's mailing list asking for operators, and soon got intense responses. huang, ba4ed, joined us with his yl from shanghai. deal, ba4tb, and wen, bd5hag, from wuxi and hangzhou were both our club members. kenneth, bd4rr (va3rrw), also a member of jsdxc, flew thousands of kilometers to operate from canada. besides, we had other 5 local operators: chen, ba4rc, ken, ba4rd, dave, ba4rf, dragon, ba4rx, and me. team b4hq was born.
we allocated band and mode according to each station's working conditions and had our operators arranged. we also tested our stations before going on the air. then,the only thing left was a go.
station, band/mode, and operator station
band & mode
operators
by4rsa
160m cw 160m ssb
40m cw 15m ssb
ba4tb, bd5hag, bd5rv
ba4rc
10m cw 20m cw
ba4rc, ba4rx
ba4rf
80m ssb 80m cw
40m ssb 15m cw
ba4rf, ba4ed
ba4rz
20m ssb 10m ssb
ba4rd, bd4rr
at 2000 local time on july 12, the contest began. the power of amateur radio stations heated the ionosphere from all over the world. b4hq was warmly welcomed by pileups. people were spotting us on every running frequency. sometimes we could raise our running rate up to 250+/hr in a short while. it was great fun.
we ended up with 3545 qsos and a final claimed score of 2.86m. this was the best score we had ever achieved in this contest. i knew this wasn't much compared to the big guns in eu and na, but it set our record for iaru hf.
summary band
cw qs
cw points
phone qs
phone points
total qs
total points
mults
160
1
1
0
0
1
1
1
80
30
76
3
11
33
87
9
40
355
1221
245
612
600
1833
52
20
590
2547
513
1934
1103
4481
74
15
637
2119
916
2973
1553
5092
77
10
123
355
132
376
255
731
21
total
1736
6319
1809
5906
3545
12225
234
claimed score: 2,860,650
thanks to chen, ba1ham, and the crsa for allowing us to do b4hq. also thanks to all who called us in the contest. we do hope to do this again next summer. see you in the pileups!
