I read in the July 2010 QST that I had come in first in the ARRL RTTY Roundup for SOLP in the Hudson division and that the Troy Amateur Radio Assoc N2TY sponsored a plaque for that division. That means I won my first plaque for any ham radio contest I participated in. I had received paper certificates for various finishes in other contests, but never before had I won a plaque. Below is a picture of the plaque which arrived yesterday and it is actually better looking then the picture shows but the best I could snap with a flash. Thanks to TARA for sponsoring the award. I also received a paperc certificate 1st place SOLP in Northern NJ. I happened to have come in 1st in NNJ regardless of power.  Images are clickable for a larger view.

Plaque for Single Op Low Power Hudson Division:

Certificate for Single Op Low Power Northern NJ:

73,
K2DSL

Friday night and Saturday was the 2010 running of the RAC Winter ham radio contest. There was also the OK RTTY contest during the same 24 hours, but like last year I opted for the RAC contest. It’s really an enjoyable contest since it is just before the holidays, everyone seems to be in a good mood and all the ops are a bit less rushed and wishing each other, at least on SSB, happy holidays & a happy new year.

Started out on Friday night on 40m & 80m working both SSB and CW. Noise wasn’t too bad and anyone I could hear I could work. Called it an evening with exactly 100 contacts – 72 contacts were stations in Canada worth 10 or 20 points (VxxRAC call signs) and 28 stations were US based worth 2 points. I didn’t work any DX on Fri.

Saturday morning I got on around 1400z (9:00am) on 20m. Activity was on and off all day Saturday as I did various other things. I did end up spending more total time on the radio then I thought I would which means my wife is in better shape with what needs to be done for the holidays then I imagined. 20m was fine all day with enough new activity that if I stepped away for a bit and came back there were new stations to work on both SSB and CW. I spent all but a few minutes of the entire contest in S&P mode and didn’t bother with trying to hold a frequency and run, though the bands weren’t crowded and my 100w probably wouldn’t have been covered up by another station.

Like last year the Croatia CW contest was going on at the same time and the exchange is the same RST + serial number as the RAC contest so I’m sure I worked a few stations that were in the Croatia contest and I’m sure they worked stations in the RAC contest. I only worked 11 DX stations in the entire contest and I know on phone they were in the RAC contest but not sure about the handful of DX CW contacts logged.

I switched to 15m at 1645z (11:45am) and for the rest of the daytime hours I switched back and forth between 20m and 15m. I tried 10m a couple of times and didn’t hear anything at all – contest ops or otherwise. On each band I’d swap back and forth between CW & SSB mode.  Last year I had a score of 75k points with 247 contacts and I noticed this year that I passed last years score just after 1800z (1:00pm) with just 184 contacts. Without digging in to why, the obvious reason would be I worked more stations in Canada (worth 5x or 10x points of a non-VE station) and had more Canadian sections in total across the multiple bands.  I also noted that this year, when I hit 247 contacts matching last years total, I had a score of 110k vs 75k for the same number of contacts in 2009. That’s a 45% increase in points for the same number of contacts. Seems drastic to me but that is what the numbers show.

Around 2100z (4:00pm) I started to check 40m for stations that were either dedicated to just a single band or had multiple ops working.  I started checking 80m about 2230z (5:30pm) and again found good activity, especially new Canadian stations, that I hadn’t worked on Friday evening. We were heading to a party but it didn’t start until 7:30 so I was able to work up until the end. I finished things off with  273 Qs (247 in 2009), 2340 contact points (1678 in 2009) and 53 sections worked across 4 bands (45 in 2009). The score this year was 124k vs 75.5k last year which was a pretty sizable jump in the final score.

Here is the score summary for the contest and the log has been sent in as well as uploaded to LoTW and eQSL.

 Band  Mode  QSOs    Pts  Sec
  3.5  CW      33    272    5
  3.5  LSB     56    584   10
    7  CW      43    300    7
    7  LSB     13    144    6
   14  CW      47    294    8
   14  USB     55    502   11
   21  CW       7     48    2
   21  USB     19    196    4
Total  Both   273   2340   53

Score : 124,020

I worked a total of 183 different stations with 2 stations being worked on 4 bands and 1 station, VE6RAC, being worked on 4 bands on SSB and 4 bands on CW for a total of 8 contacts each worth 20 points. I worked 13 additional stations on 3 bands.

Not sure if I’ll get any additional operating in between now and the beginning of the year and the RTTY Roundup with the holidays coming up, so I’ll wish everyone a happy holiday season and a happy & healthy 2011. Folks told me sunspots will appear in 2010, so lets hope they only were in a deeper sleep then previously forecast and they will come out from hibernation in 2011.

73 & good DX!
K2DSL

I knew I had minimal time to operate this weekend and the conditions for me were not there when I was on the air. Fri night when the ham radio contest started I occasionally turned the radio on and scanned the 10m band for any sign of life but didn’t find any. 10m at night for me seems to have a high noise level which didn’t help but there were no signals that I could hear so after Fri night I had logged zero contacts.

Saturday I was away all day and when I returned Sat night, it was the same as on Friday night – noise and no signals. In 2 or 3 scans of the band I heard nothing – not even local operators. At the end of Sat night I had logged zero contacts.

Sunday morning I got on and the noise was low but there still wasn’t much activity but at least a station or 2 to log. Off and on throughout the day as I was in and not doing other things (holidays and vacation coming up quickly), I took a listen on the band and would log whoever I could hear (and they could hear me). 10m is amazing in that I could hear a station and within 1-2 mins they could be completely gone and I not hear a thing. In order for me to make contacts with my 100w and 10m dipole, I need to be at the radio and constantly scanning 10m in hopes of catching someone in those 1-2 mins I could hear them. As the sun set (ok, well no sun on Sunday as it was raining hard all day) the noise level increased and I stopped checking the band.

I at least ended up with some “DX” on 10m. Some of those DX stations were in the 1000+ contact range as they need to hand out serial numbers. Towers and power is what they have.

Here’s my score summary and a map of the 15 contacts made on Sunday. The 1 CW contact I made was with W2AW which is a contest call used by N2GM, a fellow BARA club member and one heck of a CW operator!

  Band  Mode  QSOs    Pts  Cty
    28  CW       1     4    1
    28  USB     14     28   11
 Total  Both    15     32   12

 Score : 384

Click the map for a larger view.

73!
K2DSL

I didn’t have a lot of time to operate in the TARA RTTY ham radio contest, but here’s what went down.  Fri night I got on for a bit at the start and it was slow to get going. It wasn’t like a big contest where the RTTY portion of the band exploded in signals.  In fact, I was wondering if the contest actually started and went and checked their web page. 40m and 80m were pretty noisy without a real lot of activity for what I could hear. I ended up making 39 contacts before calling it an evening with just 3 DX contacts out of the US/Canada. This is compared to 103 contacts last year logged on Friday night in the same contest.  After needing just 1 more section in the recent ARRL SSB Sweepstakes and getting it just 2 mins before the end of the contest, I laughed when I logged a Mississippi contact as my 22nd contact in the TARA event.

I started Saturday morning again at 8:15am (1315z) and operate for 2 hours mainly on 20m. Then I had things to do like taking my daughter for her to practice more driving/parallel parking before her upcoming drivers test. I then snuck in about few more mins of operating before heading out for a couple hours to help a nearby ham friend try and get a replacement wire antenna up in the air. The high winds/storm this past week took down a branch which took down his antenna. It was COLD out but we got both ends up and connected to his coax. After I got home and defrosted, I got on the air for the end of the contest working the last 90 mins on and off as I ate dinner, etc.

Looking at my 2009 TARA RTTY Summary, I worked many more hours last year and the total Q’s shows it with almost 2x the number of logged contacts. Oh well, you can’t always improve on your total score each year as other things come up. RTTY contests are my favorite and even a part time effort in one of the smaller ones is fun. Thanks for all the contacts!

Score summary:

 Band    QSOs    Pts  Cty
  3.5      43     43   25
    7      29     29   11
   14      60     60   21
   21       4      4    1
Total     136    136   58

Score : 7,888

73,
K2DSL

This past weekend was the 2010 CQ WW CW ham radio contest. The contest started Fri night and ran 48 hours through Sun night but I wasn’t able to operate for large portions of the contest. I didn’t operate at all on Friday night so I got started Saturday morning. I got started on 20m and after the first couple of hours I had 116 Q’s, 56 countries and 14 zones. I switched to 15m which wasn’t anything spectacular but there were more stations and more mults to be worked. I took a real long  break to go practice parallel parking with one of my daughters who is getting ready to take her driving test next month.  When I returned I worked 15m some more and then switched between 15m & 20m before going to 40m around 4pm (2100z). I worked 40m for the next couple of hours with a couple quick checks on 20m to work anyone new that was still there as well as a couple quick checks to 80m, mostly to work multipliers. I was done at 8pm (0100z) for the night as we were heading out to a party. Ended up Saturday with 154k points from 289 total contacts with 5 on 80m, 76 on 40m, 153 on 20m and 55 on 15m.  From some others, I heard 80m was good on Sat night but I was out and must have missed it.

Sunday morning I woke up and grabbed some coffee and fired up the ham radio at 7:15am (1215z).  I worked 20m for the 1st hour and then switched to 15m and was very surprised by what I heard. 15m was booming in early and EU stations were the strongest I had ever heard. As quick as I could turn the dial to the next station I could work them on the 1st or 2nd call. It was unbelievable! I worked 15m until 10am (1500z) when I had to leave and in the hour and 20 mins I had on 15m I worked 68 stations and that includes time for me to get ready to leave. I was heading off the NY Giants football game and I was considering blowing it off and staying on 15m, it was that good! I don’t know how long 15m stayed like that but it was great while I was on.

After the football game I got home and could spend a little more time on the air. I got on at 5pm (2200z) and for 2 hours I made a 33 more contacts between dinner, etc.  The contacts were spread across 20m, 40m & 80m with some new mults in there to boost up the score. I ended up with a lot more Q’s then I thought I would have knowing I wouldn’t have a real lot of time. Conditions on 15m Sun morning definitely helped as well as all those fine ops out there that can pull my weak signal out from the noise.

Here’s a map of the contacts made this weekend (click to enlarge). Unfortunately there weren’t any out to Australia/New Zealand. I don’t think I worked any new DXCC entities either.

And here’s my score summary from N1MM:

  Band    QSOs    Pts  Cty   ZN
   3.5      10     22    8    4
     7      98    267   47   14
    14     201    573   76   23
    21     123    340   71   14
 Total     432   1202  202   55

 Score : 308,914

Thanks for all the Q’s and good Dx,
K2DSL

I get asked a lot, both as comments on this site or via direct emails to me on how I create the maps of the contacts I make and embed within posts.  I’m going to describe how I do it using the software and systems I use on a daily basis. There might very well be other programs or methods to do this but I’m just explaining the steps I take. There might also be additional tricks or enhancements that Google has added that I’m not yet aware of, so please comment on this post if there are new tricks.  This is a long post as I’ve tried to go into detail on many of the steps and include a few screenshots where it seemed appropriate and if viewing this on the home page, click to view this post on its own to see all the steps. When I want to run through the steps below after a contest, once the data is cleaned up, it is less then 5 mins from start to finish to create and crop the image I use in my posts.

Here’s an example of a map recently generated  and what follows is how I create it(click to enlarge):

First is getting the data loaded:
I use N1MM for contests but that doesn’t really factor into the maps. After a contest, I export 3 files from N1MM – a cabrillo log file which is submitted to the contest group; a summary file which shows the number of contacts, points and multipliers by band; an ADIF file of the contact info which I then import into my day to day logging program.  My day to day logging program is Ham Radio Deluxe (HRD) by HB9DRV.  After each contest I import the entire ADIF file from N1MM and manipulate the data within HRD. I actually create a contest specific logbook and import the ADIF file into the new logbook. I use this logbook just for cleanup and manipulation of the new contest data without having the other thousands of records involved which might lead to a big OOPS if I inadvertently edit or batch update the wrong set of data. After I’m done manipulating the data in the contest logbook, I export it from the contest logbook and import it into my main HRD logbook that has all contact records.

Continue reading Creating maps of ham radio contacts →