BATTLE STATIONS:
QRPTTF ’04 FROM TIJERAS, NM

We'd met a few times at local hamfests, worked each other dozens of times in QRP events, and exchanged lots of e-mail, but we'd never operated together.

This was going to be the year to change that. With Field Day coming up in June, QRPTTF on April 24 seemed like a good opportunity to check out a site and finally operate together. KK6MC and AA5B would be going into battle together!

Coincidentally, that was the theme for this year's NorCal QRP To-The-Field:

Battlefields. The goal of the sponsors was to get QRPers to operate from historic battlefields. Tijeras, between New Mexico's Sandia and Manzanita mountain ranges, has been the site of numerous skirmishes over the years, mostly because it's a funnel point between Albuquerque and everything east.

Here's some information from Paul, NA5N, about a few of the encounters:

General Sibley and his Confederate Army arrived at Albuquerque on March 5,1862. Early that morning, federal supply officer, Captain Enos ordered all the federal stores loaded into wagons to evacuate Albuquerque. What they could not carry in some 80 supply wagons, they torched. When the Confederates arrived, the federal store buildings were still ablaze. Sibley sent a company of Texas Mounted Volunteers into Tijeras Canyon to apprehend the fleeing supply wagons on their way to Ft Union. They caught up with the trailing wagons near Carnuel, now Tijeras, and had a shootout. Of course, the main wagon train ahead heard the gunfire, and about 300 Union cavalrymen backtracked to defend the trailing wagons. The Confederates assumed the wagon train had no military escort, so they were quite surprised when 300 enemy forces came over the pass and began firing. Needless to say, the Texans decided in short order they were outgunned, and retreated back to Albuquerque. There are no reports of injuries, but it is listed as one of the official "skirmishes" between the Union and Confederate forces in New Mexico. The skirmish occurred about where the exit is for NM14 at Tijeras on I-40, but some of the Texans had ventured farther into the canyon before retreating. Heck, there were probably a few shots near KK6MC's back yard.

Going further back, an advanced guard of Coronado's men also had a skirmish with Indians near present day Tijeras and Torreon. Onate was attacked when trying to occupy the pueblo there in 1598.

In 1850, Col. Alberts was surveying the pass for the new territory and was attacked by Indians . . . which actually turned out to be Mexicans posing as Indians, fearing the survey would take away their land. Two soldiers were wounded in the attack.

Anyway, back to the contest . . . We had a lunch meeting or two to talk about the best antennas for portable operations here in New Mexico. Seriously compromised antennas were ruled out right away; there would be no Buddipoles, shortened / loaded verticals on fishing rods, or Hamsticks. Those antennas certainly have their place in many QRP field operations, but we were getting ready for a contest, after all, and wanted to have as good a signal as possible. However, we didn't want to spend too much time and money on the antennas. For reasons that are discussed in another article in this issue of the Sojourner, we decided to use full-size dipoles and inverted Vs for QRPTTF. The 50-to-60 foot tall pines on the site also were a significant factor in choosing dipole or inverted V antennas.

For the week before QRPTTF, we went into QRP mode. The QRP radios were put into service, batteries were charged, and all QSOs were made with the radios we intended to use for the contest: K1, QRP++, and NC20. It's important to get into the QRP mindset.

Several days before the contest, we drove out to the site to make sure it looked okay (not too muddy from recent rains, dirt access roads in decent shape, etc), then stopped by the U.S. Forest Service ranger station in Tijeras Canyon to let them know what we were planning. Even though a permit wasn't required, we felt better knowing we had the rangers' blessings.

Both of us tried to pack neatly the night before, but ended up dumping lots of stuff into boxes and bags. Gel cells shared space with Nutri-Grain bars, rolls of RG8-X were tossed in with spare clothing. We'd sort it all out later. It's the same chaos every time, so why fight it?

We met at the site at 6:15 a.m., Saturday. There was a dusting of snow on the ground, a few flakes still falling, and the beginning of a gorgeous sunrise (see photos 1 and 2). This seemed closer to FYBO conditions than QRPTTF. We scouted the area and picked a couple sites just a hundred yards from the road, both with ponderosa pines more than 50 feet tall. Because of the drought and fire danger the past few years, the park service had done a very good job of clearing\ out the undergrowth, low branches, and dead brush. The place was in great shape.

We had the first antenna up by 7 a.m., thanks to the EZ-Hang slingshot system, but couldn't test it right away because of the first of two minor visits from Murphy: The batteries in the MFJ antenna analyzer were dead, and we had no spares. We pressed on anyway.

The next two antennas went up just as easily, and by 8:40 a.m.. we had the stations ready for the contest:

20 meters:
NorCal NC20, 7 A-hr gel cell, inverted V with apex at about 50 feet.

40 meters:
Elecraft K1, 5 A-hr gel cell and solar panel, inverted V at about 50 feet.

10 / 15 meters:
Index Labs QRP++, 3 A-hr gel cell, MFJ-971 tuner, 35-ft doublet sloping from about 45 feet to 35 feet.

We knew that the 20-meter station would see a lot of action, so we'd brought along a W9XT memory keyer to handle the sending of the CQs and exchanges. Unfortunately, its battery was dead, and we hadn't brought a spare. Oh well, sending everything by hand is fine in this contest, and we could use the practice.

The first hour went pretty well: We had 41 QSOs and 29 SPCs on 20 meters, 6 QSOs and 5 SPCs on 15 meters, and 8 QSOs in 6 states on 40 meters. It was a very good start! This year's QRPTTF rules allowed only 6 hours of operating during the 9-hr event, so we took a half-hour break at the end of the first hour. Most of our other breaks after 1-hour operating periods were 40 minutes, which would allow us to operate the whole last hour and maybe pick up some good contacts on 40 meters as the sun dipped closer to the horizon. During breaks, we snacked, brought the dupe sheets up to date, told stories about the stuff we'd just worked, and tried to warm up.

Even though it had stopped snowing, the air was still cold all day. Not too surprising, considering that we were at 7,500 feet elevation!

We pressed on through the day, 60 minutes on, 30-40 minutes off, working through the generally mediocre conditions. We never heard a peep on 10 meters, even though we tuned the band and called CQ at the bottom of every hour as advertised on QRP-L.

The 15-meter band sounded like it was in pretty decent shape for this point in the solar cycle, but there wasn't a lot of activity from the QRPers. We worked AL0HA with a good signal from Hawaii at 2028Z, but were disappointed to hear him calling lots of CQs with no answers the rest of the day. We worked folks on 40 meters all day long, but not in great numbers. The noise levels were fairly low, propagation seemed good throughout the western U.S., but few QRPers were listening. Where were they? Between 14059 and 14061 kHz, as usual! Write this down, folks: Spread out! And that means moving to other bands, too. Working the same SPC on another band counts as an additional multiplier, so working even just a few stations on a different band can really boost your score.

Other than the dead batteries in two accessories and a loose screw in one of the cw paddles, we had no problems. There were no interference problems between stations, the weather stayed cool but not too windy, there were no solar events, the radios behaved, and we continued to put callsigns into the log.

Final numbers:

40 meters: 36 QSOs in 13 SPCs.
20 meters: 153 QSOs in 45 SPCs,
15 meters: 49 QSOs in 21 SPCs.

We worked stations as far away as Switzerland and Australia, using power levels and antennas that most people would think better suited for tinkering. Amazing stuff, this ham radio business, and it's still a kick no matter how many times we do it.

Talking to people far away while using a "normal" radio and tower-mounted antennas is impressive. Doing it with QRP and simple wires is borderline magic. Doing it in the glorious outdoors is simply enchanting.

Photo 1: With light snow still falling, sunrise begins over the pine trees at 7500 ft.



Photo 2: There was a little snow on the ground and a nip in the air, but plenty of great sites for stations.



Photo 3: KK6MC operating the 40/15/10-meter station on the tailgate of his 4x4.



Photo 4: AA5B, with two sets of headphones, at the 40/15/10-meter station.