After using DM780 to read/send CW to K5D using the CW KY functionality the Kenwood supports on the same serial connection, Dave K2ZC created a cable for me to connect my PC’s serial port to the key connection on the back of the radio. This is a more standard way of keying supported by programs such as N1MM as well as DM780.

With the new cable from K2ZC I jumped into the ARRL International DX CW contest this past weekend. I would listen on the frequency to get the info and then send my call out and when the DX station came back to me, it was decoded on the screen and I would respond with my report. Because it seemed most of the stations in the contest are using a computer to generate the code, the computer does an excellent job of decoding it and showing it on the screen.

I used DM780 to decode the transmission and N1MM to send/log. It all worked very well and I was able to make 209 DX Qs over the weekend. Not bad for a CW contest and not knowing morse code yet! By the end of the weekend I could pretty reliably recognize my own call, 5NN for a report and TU which is typically the first response back after sending a report.

New logged DXCCs this contest: El Salvador, San Marino and Turkey.

Here’s my score summary from my first CW contest:

        Band    QSOs    Pts  Cty
           7      67     201   38
          14     142     426   60

       Total     209     627   98

            Score : 61,446

73,
K2DSL

This past weekend was the CQ WPX RTTY contest. A single operator is allowed to work 30 hours out of the 48 hours the contest runs. I worked close to 30 of those hours. In the end I made 525 contacts.

I had a difficult time working well in run mode. Stations were packed together, overlapping and often multiple stations (different parts of the world) causing QRM on each other. I guess with a wire antenna, you can’t block out what you aren’t listening for like you can with a beam.  When I did go into run mode, I felt like I just wasn’t getting enough contacts coming back to me and I felt more productive doing S&P. I just couldn’t get any decent runs going of more then 4 or 5 stations before it seemed like I was calling CQ for minutes on end without anyone coming back.

Some of the stats from quickly analyzing the log shows I made a QSo with 46 of the 50 states only missing out on Idaho, Montanna, West Virginia and Vermont. Had a few contacts with both Hawaii and strong Alaska stations. I also logged 4 new DXCCs for me which were Nicaragua, Armenia, Corsica and Belize. Corsica is already confirmed on LoTW.

In the afternoon on Sunday I switched to 15m after seeing some spots in the cluster and made 5 quick contacts with strong signals from Uruguay and Argentina. After I made the 5th contact the band closed on me and I could hardly hear them even though they were just booming in a minute ago.

In eQSL I’ve seen 3 contacts come in which I don’t have in my log. All 3 call signs seem familiar, so either they weren’t patient enough for me to confirm (QRM and they moved on before I could confirm) or I made mistake in commiting the QSO to the log. It isn’t as if I have a contact entered like their call sign but just slightly off, so I’d say it is the former and not the latter.

Here’s my score summary:

 Band QSOs   Pts  WPX
 3.5   93    228   46
   7  135    442   77
  14  279    528  150
  21   18     44    8
Total  525  1242  281

 Score : 349,002

73,
K2DSL

This weekend I put in a very part time effort in the EPC WW DX PSK125 contest. I operated high power for up to 12 hours though I operated much less. I found PSK125 to be a rough go. It is extremely fast in transmitting but I fely the ability to get through a solid transmission was much worse then say RTTY. Ops were sending  CQ many times in a row so you could notice them since it sends so fast and then sending the report multiple times (3 times per line and 3 lines per report) since the copy seemed to be so poor. I also didn’t notice a large number of contest participants so after operating for a bit on went on to other things and popped back in every once in a while to see if there was anyone new to try and contact. I ended up with 25 contacts on 20m, 14 contacts on 40m and 9 contacts on 80m. Total multipliers was 26 across the 3 bands for a final score of 3.120 points.

In non-contest activities, I’ve had a bunch of US contacts related to the LoTW triple play award. Even though I don’t yet do CW, I’d like to get all 50 states on digital and phone and maybe before the end of the year I’ll be CW-ing and can concentrate on that. The past few days, besides the contest and the US contacts, I made 10 DX contacts including another contact with Victoria (VP8YLG) this time on 20m, DR09ANT special event station in Germany, 9A2009OS special event station in Croatia, Bosnia on 80m, a strong station in Austria and a new DXCC logged with J79WWW in Dominica.

In the afternoon on Sunday, I was tuning through a 20m frequency when I heard someone asking if the frequency was in use. I stayed on the frequency and when he called CQ I came back to him. The operator was ND0C (Randy) from Minnesota and he was running 3 watts (!!) in a QRP contest. I was amazed as he was blasting in as if he was on a local repeater. I spotted him on the cluster (wrong freq the first time but then I corrected it) and stayed on frequency a while to listen. Fantastic job Randy!

73,
K2DSL