Did a little analysis on this weekends ARRL SSB Sweepstakes.

The exchange for sweepstakes is not short and goes something like this with a fictitious op:
Me: CQ sweepstakes from kilo-two-delta-sierra-lima kilo-two-delta-sierra-lima sweepstakes
Op: kil0-seven-zulu-yankee-xray
Me: kilo-seven-zulu-yankee-xray thank you 123 alpha from k2dsl check zero-seven northern new jersey
Op: k2dsl thanks 234 bravo from k7zyx check 98 new mexico
Me: QSL – QRZ sweeps from kilo-two-delta-sierra-lima

When calling CQ on 80m, my best 10 minute rate was 1.8 QSOs logged per minute using the above as a template for what we each said. That equates to 18 QSOs logged in 10 minutes. My best sustained 60 minute rate included the above 10 minute rate and was 1.32 QSOs logged per minute or 79 QSOs logged in 60 minutes. You don’t really have a moment to even take a drink.

I had voice recordings for my call and for CQ. Next time if I’m going to put in a good effort, I will look to record the repetitive portion of the report and have it played back vs spoken by me each time. I would say the other other ops call and serial number and then press the button to say “alpha from k2dsl check zero-seven northern new jersey”.

In analyzing the sections which I logged, the top 5 sections by number of contacts are:

The following sections had only 1 contact logged:

There were 6 DE stations logged and that would mean almost every operator in the state of Delaware was active in the contest. I logged 5 WV stations which seems a lot since West Virginia is usually not as well represented when looking for states/sections. The same goes for the 4 different WY stations logged as Wyoming is usually one you’re desperately searching for. I also logged 3 VI (Virgin Island) stations but one of those was from Guantanamo Bay when I was calling CQ for a short time on 20m.

Lastly, here’s a screenshot of a map showing the contacts made in the 2010 SSB Sweepstakes (click to enlarge):

73,
K2DSL

Sweepstakes is a fun contest. 24 hours long (out of 30 hours total) working any station only once and looking to work all 80 US/Canadian sections. Running low power and no cluster/spotting so I need to find all the stations on my own. I wrote the below during the course of the contest.

Got on Saturday at the start and worked 20m for a bit before it got dark. 15m even had some activity and it was quieter and less crowded then 20m which is typical of a busy phone contest. Switched to 40m when it was well past sundown and ran up and down the band logging all the stations. Switched back and forth to 20m until it was dead. Switched back and forth between 40m and 80m and had a nice run for a bit on 80m on Saturday night. Even 80m was busy and I was up high on the band, but there wasn’t a lot of noise on 80 Saturday evening. Called it an evening at 12:45am (0545z) with 207 Q’s and 61 of the 80 sections logged. What I couldn’t log tonight was Maine and Western PA which could be a problem since 80m is the best band to get those on so maybe I’ll get lucky tomorrow with those two. I heard a Maine station but he was S&Ping when I was too.

2nd contact Sunday morning was Maine on 40m leaving just WPA as a needed nearby section which I found right at 9am (1400z) on 40m. Also got South Carolina early in the morning on 40m. Scanning the band early on 80m and 40m I’m hearing mostly stations I’ve already worked.  At 9am (1400z) I switched to 20m. Within the first hour I was able to log a handful of needed sections as the west coast started to get on the air.

Around 10:30am (1530z) I switched to 15m and there were some stations on and VE8EV from NWT in Canada was booming in and was easy to log. Usually the Northern Territory is a tough one. I heard VE6AO from Alberta Canada on 20m but he has a pile up and found VE6UK on 15m  so I logged all the RAC sections at 10:45am (1545z). After working 20m and 15m though it’s still the middle of the day, I moved to 40m and there was plenty of activity. Worked a bunch of stations and even called CQ for bit.

At 2pm (1900z) I need just MS (Mississippi) and ORG (Orange California). No idea if using the cluster would help here. It might since I’m doing a lot of S&P vs run. Maybe I’ll get lucky in the remaining hours? At 2:50pm (1951z) I found ORG on 15m leaving just MS! On 40m I heard a MS station but it was calling another station and I couldn’t get his attention.

Hit 500 Q’s at 8:29pm (0129z) but no MS yet. I did some CQing in hopes a MS might come back to me but that didn’t happen. Near the end of the contest I was calling CQ on 80m and mentioning I needed MS and one of the ops said there was a MS station at the bottom of 80m so I quickly tuned around and found him but there was a huge pileup so I went back to CQing. With 2 mins left in the contest I went back and he was still there and he came back to me on my 1st call. I logged a N4OGW with 2 mins left in the contest as my last contact and my first sweep!! Wow!!! I will send in for a Clean Sweep Mug.

What allowed me to spend time this year vs the last 2 years was there was no home NY Giants game so I didn’t head to the stadium which usually takes about 6-8 hours out of any contest if that happens. So my # of contacts and total score reflects being able to spend much of Sunday on the air.  Here’s the score summary:

  Band    QSOs     Pts  Sec
   3.5     275     550   25
     7     102     204   13
    14      93     186   32
    21      69     138   10
 Total     539    1078   80

 Score : 86,240

Thank you to all the ops that gave me each of the sections and especially to N4OGW who gave me the clean sweep with MS with 2 mins left in the contest!

73,
K2DSL

I was looking forward to a weekend of CW ham radio contesting and trying for a sweep. I’ve not felt well for over a week but a visit to the Dr earlier in the week turned up nothing.  Not feeling better on Saturday I went back and after some chest x-rays it shows I have some pneumonia, Antibiotics and rest and hopefully I’ll be ready for the WAE RTTY contest and the ARRL SSB SS the following weekend.

73,
K2DSL

Here are unfortunately some disclaimers related to my participation on this years CQ WW SSB ham radio contest. Disclaimer #1 – Friday afternoon at work my wife called to tell me 1 of the ropes holding up my G5RV antenna broke and it was laying on the ground. Oh well, not great news, but the previous weekend I actually put up a 3 band (10m, 15m & 20m) dipole with K2ZB so I had something in the air.   Disclaimer #2 – When I got home from work on Friday I got sick and remained sick (101.5+ temperature) throughout the weekend. I really only operated 2 short stints each on Saturday and Sunday afternoons in the early afternoon.

Friday when I got home I went in the back yard to see what happened and one of the ropes holding one leg of the G5RV had broken. It was dark and cold so I decided to just leave things alone until the sun warmed things up on Saturday. But I wasn’t feeling right on Friday and stayed in bed all night not even turning on the radio. I woke up Saturday morning feeling better and grabbed some material to go work on the G5RV once it warmed up a bit. I worked about 60 minutes on 15m and 20m using the tri-band dipole  before things warmed up enough. I was still feeling ok in the late morning when I went out and got the G5RV back up in the air which took about 2.5 hours to pull up some new ropes into the tree and then get the G5RV attached and back up where it belongs. I then operated for about 2.5 hours using the new tri-band dipole before feeling I needed to head back to bed. 15m was easier for me as the stations were spread out more without so many overlapping stations. I was even  able to work a handful of 10m stations, all south of me and towards South America (see the picture below). In the early evening I came down, made 2 contacts on 40m and went back to bed.

Sunday wasn’t much better for me and I was still sick with a fever. I got on just after noon (1600z) for about 20 mins working a few stations on 20m before I went back to bed for 2 hours. I came back downstairs at 2:30pm (1830z) and was able to stay on the radio for another 2.5 hours. I started on 15m and worked a bunch of stations before switching to 10m and working 8 stations, again all in South America. I then went back to 15m and then to 20m where I worked most of the remaining stations I logged before calling it quits for the contest and heading back to bed.

I worked 1 new DXCC when I logged S79K on 20m just 5 mins before I was done. S79K is in Seychelles above Madagascar on the west coast of Africa. It was also my longest contact in the short time I was on the air. 148 Q’s, 23 different CQ Zones and 58 different DXCCs.

Below is my score summary and then maps of the contacts made (all bands and then by band). I’m disappointed I was sick but glad I was able to get on and even log a new one.

  Band    QSOs    Pts  Cty   ZN
     7       2      4    2    2
    14      50    130   34   16
    21      78    203   39   19
    28      18     52    8    4
 Total     148    389   83   41

 Score : 48,236

Map of all the contacts made in this weekends CQ WW SSB contest (click to enlarge):

Map of the 20m contacts (click to enlarge):

Map of the 15m contacts (click to enlarge):

Map of  the 10m contacts (click to enlarge):

73,
K2DSL

A couple weeks ago was the NA RTTY Sprint and I saw in the ARRL Contest Update that the Log Check Reports were available so I requested mine and received it within a few minutes! My purpose for posting this is not to criticize or blame anyone but to point out that there are cases where you are copying what is being sent isn’t good enough.  I ended up with the following errors in the LCR:

EXCHANGE CHECK RESULTS
———————-
QSO #3 K0YR : T0M Mn should be TOM Mn
QSO #14 K6UFO : MOR Ca should be MORK Ca
QSO #32 W1UJ : JAZ Ma should be JAY Ma
QSO #38 K6UFO : MOR Ca should be MORK Ca

100.0% of your non dupe QSOs had their exchanges checked.

Number of bad exchanges = 4
These QSOs will be removed from your score with no penalty.

CROSS CHECK RESULTS
——————-
QSO #36: QSO not found in log of N7ESU
QSO #51: QSO not found in log of K0AD

81.3% of your remaining good QSOs were cross checked.

There were 2 bad cross check QSOs removed.
NIL Penalty of 2 QSOs will be assessed.

So when I got home from work I pulled up the MMTTY log file that was captured from the contest. The MMTTY log file records all the sent/received information.  So I looked up each of the above and I found, based on what I received, what I logged is correct but of course, what I printed/logged in a RTTY contest is all I really have to go on. Again, hopefully none of the ops mentioned here take this the wrong way and there is no blame. It’s just part of contesting. Here’s what I copied/sent for each of the above exchanges, unedited other then to remove any blank lines.

QSO #3 K0YR : T0M Mn should be TOM Mn
CQ NA K0YR TESTZL
<101010 00:10:12 TX>
K2DSL K2DSL
<101010 00:10:16 RX>
K2DSL TU 007 T0M MN I
<101010 00:10:26 TX>
K0YR TU 003 DAVID NJ K2DSL
<101010 00:10:34 RX>
TU K0YR QSY ET
The actual received/logged name for me was T0M (with a zero) and not TOM (with the letter O). It was just sent once in the exchange and with RTTY it is point & click to add the exchange to the log.

QSO #14 K6UFO : MOR Ca should be MORK Ca
<101010 00:42:58 TX>
CQ NA K2DSL K2DSL CQ
<101010 00:43:04 RX>
DE K6UFO K6UFO
<101010 00:43:08 TX>
K6UFO 014 014 DAVID NJ K6UFO
<101010 00:43:16 RX>
K2DSL 35 35 MOR MOR CA CAUFO
<101010 00:43:25 TX>
TU
Received MOR MOR vs MORK seems odd. I looked at the 2nd contact and it was MOR MORK.

QSO #32 W1UJ : JAZ Ma should be JAY Ma
<101010 01:25:17 TX>
CQ NA K2DSL K2DSL CQ
<101010 01:25:22 RX>
W1UJ W1UJ
<101010 01:25:26 TX>
W1UJ 032 032 DAVID NJ W1UJ
<101010 01:25:34 RX>
X K2DSL 052 JAZ MA W1UJ
<101010 01:25:40 TX>
TU
Print/logged JAZ. Maybe if the name was sent twice, it might have printed Jay for one of them, but that didn’t help for MOR(K).

QSO #36: QSO not found in log of N7ESU
<101010 01:36:48 TX>
CQ NA K2DSL K2DSL CQ
<101010 01:36:54 RX>
DE N7ESU N7ESU Z
<101010 01:37:01 TX>
N7ESU 036 036 DAVID NJ N7ESU
<101010 01:37:09 RX>
K2DSL DE N7ES 029 JIM ID K2DSLEE
<101010 01:37:25 TX>
TU
Sure looks like we had a good exchange. Same goes for the next one.

QSO #51: QSO not found in log of K0AD
<101010 02:30:50 TX>
CQ NA K2DSL K2DSL CQ
<101010 02:30:56 RX>
K0AD K0N
<101010 02:31:02 TX>
K0AD 051 051 DAVID NJ K0AD
<101010 02:31:10 RX>
K2DSL K0AD 76 76 AL M
<101010 02:31:18 TX>
TU
Again it looks like a good exchange. For both the NIL entries, I was calling CQ and they came back to me and sent their exchange after I sent mine so you figured it would be in the log.

To me it is extremely interesting to review the LCRs to see what occurred and hopefully learn from the mistakes. I have a macro set up to send my name once or twice depending on the condition I’m receiving the other station. Of course, how they are receiving me might be different but I use that as the barometer for what I send. Maybe I’ll always send my name two times and when logging an op on subsequent bands, just send it once.

73,
K2DSL

The 2010 JARTS RTTY ham radio contest this past weekend uses the operators age as the exchange. Operators are supposed to send their age and this analysis is based on what they sent being accurate. A YL can send 00 if they desire and I had 1 operator send 00. There was also at least 1 YL and there could have been more that sent their actual age. Any multi-op participants needed to send 99 as their age. I did this analysis for the 2009 JARTS RTTY contest and the numbers haven’t changed much.

I threw out the 00 and handful of 99’s and out of my 300 contacts and that left 287 Q’s. I eliminated the dups so each operators record occurred just once in the data and that brought it down to 219 unique calls, again excluding the 00 and 99 records. Here’s what the data shows:

Youngest logged was 28. I saw in the 3830 reports that someone logged an operator (young lady) that was sending 10 as their age. Very impressive!

Oldest logged was 85. I logged 4 operators at 80+ years old.

Average age across all the contacts was 58 years.

Median age is 60. Median represents, the middle age (what record #110 out of 219) shows. Half the entries I logged fell at or below that and half the entries I logged were at or above that age.

Mode is 62 which means of all the ages I logged, 62 years old was the most popular age.

US average age logged is 60.5 which is above the overall average across all contacts. The youngest op sent 33 as their age.

Canadian average age logged is 57.5 which is just below the average across all contacts. The youngest op sent 41 as their age.

International (non-US & non-Canadian) age logged is 54.5 which is 3.5 years below the average across all the contacts I made.

Again, the numbers from this year which represent a slightly smaller sampling then my contacts last year are very close to being the same with some numbers identical to last year.

73,
K2DSL

This past weekend was the 24 hour JARTS RTTY ham radio contest. Looking back at my old posts, this is the 3rd year I’ve participated in this contest, and my score and time operating has decreased with 2008’s contest yielding the highest QSO count and 2009’s contest in the middle for QSO count. So how did things go this year?

I operated a couple of hours at the start of the contest in what was a very windy evening.  I did a quick scan on 20m where I snagged Alaska and then spent the evening on 40m & 80m. PJ4B operating from the new DXCC entity was in the contest and I worked it without any wait. I also worked PJ4B on 15m as well as PJ4D on 15m during the contest. 80m was noisy but workable and I even had a little run on 80m before calling it a night at 11:30pm (0330z) with 72 Q’s in the log.

Saturday I had to wake the kids up early to go take the PSAT’s. I got on for a few hours after that and before I needed to head out to a high school football game.  The weather outside was still extremely windy. 15m was pretty good this weekend for me. I could work more stations on 15m then I could in the past few weekends. Most contacts were on 15m and 20m. After a few mid day hours at the high school game I was back on 15m & 20m for a couple more hours before I was off to dinner with my wife’s family.

I had checked 10m a few times during the day but didn’t hear anything. A bit before heading out to dinner I checked 10m again and was able to hear LU5FF in Argentina approximately 5000 miles away and worked him without much effort. I spotted him after making the contact and saw a bunch of US stations then jump in. I got home late Saturday evening and spent 30 mins after I got home on 40m & 80m logging anyone I could hear.  I ended Saturday night with 213 Q’s and I didn’t think I’d have much more then that for the entire contest since I couldn’t operate much on Sunday.

Sunday morning I got up and started to get ready to head to the Giants football game at the stadium. The wind had finally subsided at it was relatively calm out with blue skies. I started with a scan of 40m to grab any station I could hear which yielded about 12 quick Q’s before switching to 20m for another 10 Q’s before turning off the radio to head to the stadium.  8.5 hours later after getting home and unloading the car I popped on for a bit at the end of the contest.  The frequency that the radio was on when I turned it on had a VK station calling CQ and I was able to work him for the only VK contact. After spotting him, there was a jump in activity on the frequency. I did hear 1 other VK but he couldn’t hear me and while I listened to other ops try to contact him, they couldn’t be heard either. I scanned 20m for any new stations and then called CQ for a little bit to get some of the S&P only stations. It was dark out now so I switched to 40m and did the same thing – scan and then call CQ. 40m yielded another dozen Q’s. A quick scan of 20m showed little activity so with 15 mins left in the contest I scanned 80m and then started to call CQ which was productive for those 15 mins. I logged a bunch of VE stations in Canada and I finished the contest with exactly 300 Qs logging NP3D (in NY) at the end. I’m surprised I worked 87 Q’s on Sunday when I didn’t think I’d get much time on, but I’m not complaining!

Here’s a map (click to enlarge) of the ham radio contacts that were made over the weekend:

Here’s the N1MM score summary for the contest:

 Band    QSOs    Pts  Cty   Sec
  3.5      55     110    1   11
    7      61     126    9   14
   14     142     340   31   14
   21      41      97   11    9
   28       1       3    1    0
Total     300     676   53   48
Score : 68,276

73 & thanks for all the Q’s,
K2DSL

This weekend, besides the NA RTTY Sprint, is the Makrothen RTTY ham radio contest. This is an interesting contest because the format consists of three 8 hour segments covering a 24 hour period. Fri night, Sat afternoon & Sun morning make up the 3 operating segments. What is also fun is the scoring is based on the distance between you and the other operator. The farther the distance, the more the points. There’s also a bonus factor for contacts made on 40m & 80m.

Got to operate more this year then last year since the Giants are away and I didn’t need to head to the stadium. First night I started on 40m and switched between 40m & 80m. While calling CQ I had R1ANP (Antartica) come back to me on 40m for 24,762 points! Went to bed with 88 Q’s in the log all on 40m & 80m.

On Saturday after our clubs hamfest when I got back on that afternoon, 15m was dead for me. I made 1 Q the entire day on 15m. 20m was fine though and where I spent most of my time until 6pm when I switched to 40m. I stopped about 30 mins early to eat and prep for the NA RTTY Sprint that was about to start and finished the 2nd day at 210 Q’s.

Woke up Sunday morning and got on the air again about halfway through the final 8 hour segment  which started 4am local time. 20m was doing well to EU and Russia and I worked all the new stations. I then switched to 15m and I was able to log about 13 stations in a row before switching back to 20m. I ended up logging just one 15m station on Saturday and 18 15m stations on Sunday, so 15m was much better for me. I hit 1 million points at 1451z on my 255th logged contact.

Definitely a fun contest with the 3 segments and the distance based grid square scoring. Here’s the score summary for this one and as you can see, even though there were twice as many 80m contacts then 15m contacts, the distance on each of the 15m contacts provides more then a 2x score difference:

 Band    QSOs      Pts
  3.5      39    53500
    7      65   209610
   14     155   724312
   21      19   122636
Total     278  1110058

Score : 1,110,058

The below map shows the location of the contacts. The Antarctica contact with R1ANP is in the lower right corner at a distance of 10,217 miles. The left most spot is with JM1XCW in Japan at a distance of 6,718 miles. The right most spot is UN6P in Kazakhstan.  Click the picture for a larger view.

Thanks for all the Q’s!
K2DSL

In the middle (end of the 2nd segment) of the Makrothen RTTY ham radio contest the fall NA RTTY Sprint started. It’s a 4 hour contest where you make a contact and then the frequency is given to you for the next contact and then you need to relinquish the frequency after your next contact.  The contest just runs on 20m, 40 m & 80m.

I had a bunch of chauffeur needs on Saturday night for the kids, so I ended up operating about half of the 2 hour contest.  Because it started after dark, 20m wasn’t the popular band but I managed to work 7 stations with the other 60 Q’s being split between 40m & 80m.

I ran into 3 operators which obviously didn’t know/understand the rules as they were holding a frequency and just calling CQ after someone worked them. They need to relinquish the frequency after they worked someone when they were calling CQ. I noted their calls and will see if I can find a way to contact them via QRZ later today so they know for next time.

A fun contest format for a nice change of pace.  Here’s the short summary report:

  Band    QSOs    Pts  Sec
   3.5      29     29    7
     7      31     31   14
    14       7      7    5
 Total      67     67   26

 Score : 1,742

73,
K2DSL

Just spent a little time in the 2010 TARA PSK Rumble contest. It runs for 24 hours and started Fri evening and finished Sat evening. I just worked stations before the California QSO Party started up and ended up logging 37 stations all in the US. 29 of them were on 40m and the other 8 were on 20m. I used MMVARI with N1MM for the contacts. I guess there could have been some more activity to make it a bit better and there was a PSK63 contest going on that made it difficult to find the TARA ops. But its fun to work another mode and get some contacts in the log.

73,
K2DSL