2011 Report For Doug Gorman
2010 Frequency Measuring Contest

Update 2011-03-25

The contest is named after the late Doug Gorman MBE ZL2IY who filled various roles for NZART including that of General Secretary and Officer Commanding AREC. This year the Wellington VHF Group Branch 74 offered to take over the contest from long time organizers, Upper Hutt Branch 63.

The transmitter used was locked to a GPS disciplined HP E1938A ovened hockey puck crystal and provided 50W of power to an auto tuned high performance NVIS antenna. This antenna is a 28 metre per leg cantered doublet fed with 600 ohm open wire feeder erected 9 metres high at the centre over a ground plane of seven galvanized wires. The actual transmit frequency of each test signal was measured to 0.001 Hz (one millihertz) using a counter with a 10 second gate time during the unmodualted part of each transmission. The measurement uncertainty is the absolute value of +/-1 count +/- reference error. As the reference error of the GPS standard is about 0.1 parts per billion or better, the total uncertainty of each transmission was less than +/- 1.4 mHz.

Some comments from contestants:

Randall ZL2RJP: Appears that my LO or band crystals jumped during the contest ... mutter, mutter.

Rolly ZL1ASN: Good interesting fun irrespective of my results!

David ZL1DX: The contest was great, the signals very strong with plenty of time for the participants.

Dave ZL1MR: No matter what the outcome it was good fun.

Wayne ZL2BKC: This is my first frequency measuring contest and I really enjoyed the challenge.

Peter ZL4LV: Equipment of my own design and rather old but let the results speak for themselves.

Chris ZL1BOE: As in the past it was great fun!

Ralph ZL1TBG: Received your sigs between -60 and -70dBm.

Neil ZL2TNG (past DGMFMC organiser): Very different being on the other side, not so stressful!

John ZL4HD: Great stuff!

My thanks to everyone who participated or helped behind the scenes. It has been a fun first contest in the new format and while there may be a couple of small changes needed to the rules, feedback has been very positive. Congratulations to Wayne ZL2BKC for an excellent result. This was Wayne's first FMC and it's pleasing to see a Wellington VHF Group member take first place in the first FMC run by the Group.

Papakura Branch 65 won the Branch Award hands down with an outstanding level of participation with seven entries and three excellent scores. Even if Ian ZL1AOX's second entry was excluded Papakura would still have it. Ian ZL1AOX did enter twice with but two different receivers, antennas, and measurement set-ups. This has been allowed - this time.

73 John ZL4JY