I’ve been away on vacation for the past couple of weekends so I haven’t been on the air. I tried for ST0R in South Sudan before I left but the pileups were insane. They are still there for another 2 days so maybe tonight or tomorrow I can try and log 1 contact with them.

When I got home I had a small package of QSL cards from the bureau as well as a larger envelope from the ARRL. In the larger envelope was a certificate for the 2010 IARU HF Championship indicating I came in 1st place in the Northern NJ section for multi-op.  I operated using the DX Cluster which put me in the multi-op category and since there was only 1 other multi-op submission, I came out on top. When I look at the others in Northern NJ that submitted logs, they had some mighty impressive scores.

My parents will be in town this weekend so it looks like the next contest activity for me will be the weekend of Aug 20th and the NAQP SSB contest and maybe some time in the ARRL RTTY Rookie Roundup if I can find some rookies to give out points to.

73,
K2DSL

What more can a fellow ask for – a 10 hour RTTY ham radio contest with everyone running 100w. Even with others having stacked arrays I feel like there’s a shot at me getting into run mode, calling CQ and not getting squashed between 2 high power stations. The NAQP runs for 12 hours but single ops can operate for up to 10 hours. It started Saturday at 2pm ET (18:00z) and I was all ready with anything I needed to get done completed well before start time. The night before I was setting everything up to make sure it was working and noticed an issue with N1MM and call stacking where you can work more than 1 station without calling CQ as long as you get multiple calls on your last one. After thinking it was a config issue on my end, I downgraded and the problem stopped and it reappeared if I upgraded N1MM to the latest release, so I left it at an earlier release and notified the N1MM development team there might be a problem.

Sat afternoon came and I was in the chair at 2pm ready to go. 20m was fine with maybe a slow start as folks might not have been rushing to get fired up the second the contest started. I spent all afternoon on 20m popping over to 15m many times to find absolutely nothing happening there. I logged a total of 7 stations on 15m which is sad. I noticed lots of western US stations active throughout the contest but didn’t hear/find a lot of western Canadian stations. In fact there was relatively little Canadian activity that I came across though there were still those same stations I often work during contests. So 20m was the day band and though I checked 10m two or three times, if it’s even possible, it was more dead than 15m. I figured maybe I’d get lucky and copy 1 station but nothing was heard.

I would alternate a lot between finding a run frequency and doing S&P. When running I had a few European stations call which is nice. The ones that called me were all coming in nice and strong and an easy copy. There were even a few EU stations that were running and calling CQ and it’ll be interesting to see how many Q’s the DX stations logged when the results are compiled. Running worked for a while but eventually got to transmitting CQ on repeat without anyone coming back so I’d switch to S&P and find some new ones. Infrequently early in the afternoon I’d check 40m and log 1 or 2 stations but most folks were on 20m until later in the day.

As the afternoon wore on there was more 40m activity and I’d bounce back and forth between 40m & 20m. 20m had activity the entire contest or at least the 10 hours I was on which is good because I hadn’t heard and logged a Hawaii station until 0330z (11:30pm) and it was the only Hawaii station I heard. As darkness came (sounds so ominous) I spent more time on 40m again running and S&Ping. Noise wasn’t bad at all and signals were very strong. Though I have dipoles for 10/15/20 I use the G5RV for 40m & 80m and it was working well. I don’t think there was a station for the entire contest that I could get any copy on that I couldn’t get into the log. The Q’s and mults on 40m went up pretty quickly.

Activity on 80m started late and maybe if it started earlier I would have logged more contacts and multipliers. Something to consider next time is to start 1 hour later or take a 1 hour break and work an additional hour from midnight to 1am ET to try and get some additional time on 80m to gather more mults. Of course if everyone works the 1st 10 hours that wouldn’t help things either. 80m had strong signals and because the exchange is constant, once someone worked you on another band, they know your exchange so 100% copy becomes less important and repeats aren’t necessary. As long as the 2 stations that previously worked can copy the callsign, it’s usually a good contact and that makes 40m and 80m contacts go quickly regardless of noise or less than optimal conditions.

In the middle of the contest I noticed an email from one of the N1MM developers with a patched version that should correct the issue I encountered. I downloaded it knowing I could always re-install the version I was using, ran a couple of quick tests and it seemed to resolve the issue. I let the developer know and used it for the remainder of the contest without encountering any difficulty. Amazing support and such a fine piece of software being developed by a skilled group of volunteers.

It was good to see some calls I hadn’t seen in a while and particularly that of WA5ZUP. I was actually getting concerned that something might be wrong since I hadn’t seen John in a while. I ended up missing the 4 states of MT, RI, ME & MD where MT would be a 20m or 40m contact and the 3 east coast stations 80m and maybe 40m contacts. On the Canadian side I didn’t log 7 Providences. I guess it’s a “close to WAS in 10 hours” type of contest for me.

The contest exchange is name and state and my favorite was Dopey from Oregon. I logged a Bambi too which had me write in my 3830 submission: I don’t know about the rest of the Dwarves but I found Dopey in the contest. No Snow White but there was a Bambi. Maybe we should have a Disney themed RTTY contest?

A really enjoyable Saturday contest and can’t wait for the next one! Thanks for all the Q’s. Here’s my score summary from N1MM:

 Band  QSOs  Pts Mlt
  3.5    49   49  24
    7   129  129  41
   14   181  181  42
   21     7    7   4
Total   366  366 111

Score : 40,626

73,
K2DSL

Many of the contests, specifically those by the ARRL and CQ Magazine, provide Log Check Reports (LCRs) after the results are all compiled and completed. The 2011 ARRL DX CW contest results were just posted and I opened up my LCR as it helps to point out areas to focus on. Well, I had no errors with 266 contacts. No call sign errors and no report errors.

Now, it might not be a huge number of contacts but it’s not just a handful either. As those that might follow my posts would remember, I don’t really know morse code well. Some might say I don’t know it at all. I do know CQ, my call, TU, 5NN, etc but I can’t yet decode call signs and exchanges so I use CW decoding software. In my case I usually use DM780 to decode the incoming signal and N1MM to send out my info and log the contact. I can tell by ear at most any speed if someone is coming back to me or if they misheard my call sign and sometimes even my report. It’s a start and I do have a desire to learn morse code but I don’t have the time right now to put in what is needed and I don’t feel it would be beneficial to do it half ass. So for now, this is what works, and apparently pretty well.

Yay for me!
K2DSL

Well, I don’t know if the ham radio contests themselves are small, but my participation in them this past long holiday weekend was rather small.

First was the RAC Canada Day Contest where though you can work anyone, it’s primarily a Canadian contact that gets the most points. It’s 24 hours and runs over their Canada Day which was July 1st (starting the evening of  June 30th). We had stuff going on at home but I was able to make a few contacts. I only operated SSB/phone and didn’t do any CW during this one. It was nice to chat with our neighbors just north of us. I didn’t hear anyone on 40m and didn’t work much at night when I would Here’s the score summary:

 Band    QSOs    Pts  Sec
  3.5       2     20    1
   14      55    466   11
Total      57    486   12

Score : 5,832

The other contest was the DLDX RTTY contest which occurs over 24 hours starting the morning of  July 2nd and finishing the morning of July 3rd. I didn’t have a lot of time to work this contest either but got in some time on and off during the day on July 2nd (my birthday). Like RAC contest where working Canadian stations gets you more points, the DLDX contest gets more points for working station in Germany. I didn’t have an easy time early in the morning but late in the afternoon things were easier and I could work stations on 1 call. Running wasn’t very productive except for short bursts so most time I was S&Ping the band. Didn’t hear much of anything on 15m.

Here’s the score summary for the DLDX RTTY contest:

 Band    QSOs   Pts  Are   DXC
 3.5       1     15    1    0
   7       8     50    2    5
  14      71    800   21    9
  21       2     15    2    2
 Total    82    880   26   16

Score : 36,960

Had a nice long weekend which means hopefully a short work week too before next weekend. This week starts the JX5O DXpedition to Jan Mayen Island about 400 miles NE of Iceland. Hopefully I can snag them on at least one band and hopefully a few band/modes will be possible.

73,
K2DSL

As in past Field Days, I operated with my club BARA – Bergen Radio Amateur Assoc at the Bergen County – as K2BAR at the OEM Facility parking lot in Paramus NJ. Friday night I captured the ARRLs transmission of the Field Day Bulletin at 9pm. It was transmitted in PSK and I grabbed it on 80m. It was a bit stormy out so I had a few spots where the transmission was garbled by a lightening strike, but 2 other club members also copied it so together we have the full copy.

We met Sat morning where all our equipment is stored, loaded up a box truck and set off for the site a few miles away. There was already a group of folks there shooting ropes for wire antennas, setting up tables for stations and other areas where we would setup operations. We unloaded the towers, antennas and generators from the truck and started to get the main tribander tower and antenna up and secured. It went up without any issue. We followed that with a short tower for 6m with 2 loop antennas on it. The 40m station had a 40 m dipole up between trees and the 80m station had a 80 wire antenna up in the air. We also had a GOTA station where a couple of club members setup some HF & VHF equipment with a nice vertical and a wire dipole. They had their station setup and working before anyone else.

I spent most of my time at the tribander station which we operated inside an air conditioned OEM trailer from Montvale NJ. It was powered by a gas generator running outside. The equipment was a great Icom 7700 that can put out up to 200w though we didn’t push it that high. We had a pair of Heil headphones so 2 folks could operate with one doing the transmitting and the other logging or listening. The club still uses CT as the logging program which really is as basic as you can get. The notebooks running XP aren’t connected to the transceivers so there’s no frequency/band/mode info being provided and needs to be handled manually by the operator. It shows dups after you enter a call and it will show the count of contacts as well as the sections worked. The keystrokes are not intuitive but for 24 hours a couple times a year (VHF contest + FD) I can deal with it.

Saturday at the start of the contest I started on 20m which was pretty crowded with a lot of overlapping signals from folks on or near the same frequency. I checked out 15m and spent time there being productive. I called CQ constantly over the entire weekend with very little S&P other then when I would switch bands. 15m was the best 10/15/20 band for us last field day and it was the same this field day. I checked 10m once in a while and started to hear stations on it so I started calling CQ and was getting a lot of activity. In fact, late in the day on Saturday there were more 10m contacts logged than 15m contacts. When I was speaking with the other folks from the club, they never recall logging this many contacts. In fact, 10m seemed open for the entire length of the contest, and we weren’t working just local stations.

I took very short breaks on Saturday and tried to operate as much as possible or at least log for others that were operating. We had a nice lunch of hero sandwiches and a great dinner of pulled pork, beans and biscuits. Other than checking on other stations, I only worked the 10/15/20 tribander station. The 40m station was cooking and 80m was just getting warmed up until early in the evening when the activity on the band started to pick up. The only DX station I worked the entire weekend was on 15m in the early evening on Sat night when a VK4 station from Australia called us and was an easy S9 copy. He could have been on the local repeater he was so clear. I had enough around 1am, mostly because we were getting a lot of noise that made hearing all but the strongest stations difficult. So I went into my car and got some uncomfortable sleep for a few hours. I think we ended Sat with more 10m contacts than 15m contacts and 20m contacts had the least contacts logged.

Woke up around 6am, got cleaned up, filled up the generator with gas and got back on the air. 20m was still not very productive though 15m was and 10m was again. We switched back and forth between bands and had no problem running the entire morning. I did a bunch of operating and during mid morning I was just banging out 2-3 Q’s a min as fast as I could work stations on 15 & 10m. It was great!! I took a short break and KC2SKL Kelly got on the radio. I came back a few mins later and spent the rest of the time logging for her and giving her pointers. It’s hard to get into the rapid fire contesting type of responses vs the friendly lady-like repeater chatter she is accustomed to, but after a little bit of pushing she was really starting to fly and was easily working 2 contacts a min on 10m & 15m. I think once you start and get into that mode, you can see how much fun it is working stations as quickly as possible. We were setting some short term goals to keep focused on making contacts as quick as possible with our final goal being 800 at 1pm ET. We made that goal.

At 1pm we needed to shut things down as the OEM trailer we were operating in needed to get cleaned out and taken away. We ended up with the following totals (dupes removed) for the weekend on that 1 station:

20m SSB - 117 Qs  38 Sections
15m SSB - 424 Qs  58 Sections
10m SSB - 260 Qs  47 Sections
Total   - 801 Qs 143 Sections

Total Q’s for the club for the weekend are approximately (not all counts for satellite and solar are in) 2278 total contacts and we worked all states but Alaska and all sections except SB, MB, NWT & AK.

There were enough people to tear things down and pack up the truck. I was pretty beat and didn’t help too much Sunday afternoon. I got home, showered and crashed before 9pm I think. it’s tough getting old but I’d do it this weekend again if I could.

Field Day is GREAT! Great fun operating, great fun hanging out & great fun working the stations with others. Only 51 more weeks until FD 2012.

73,
K2DSL

As has happened in the past, our club needed to cancel the weekend outing to setup a VHF site on the top of a mountain park because of threatening weather. It is disappointing because when we do all gather to put up a couple of towers and operate for the weekend, we have an excellent time. But because of threatening weather, I understand the concern and decision to cancel the event.

I was invited over a club members house who has a large setup of equipment to operate 6m, 2m, 70cm & 23cm. I popped over there on Saturday around 2pm and stayed until about 7pm. We operated with our club call K2BAR and while there a couple additional ops from the club came and operated. Activity wasn’t fabulous but while I was there we did have a 6m opening to northwest Florida and out into western Kansas hitting a few grids there.

Next big event is Field Day the end of the month and I hope weather conditions are moderate (not too hot) and nothing sever (thunderstorms) blow in. Come on mother nature help us out a bit.

73,
K2DSL