Saturday morning through Sunday morning was the 24 hour IARU HF ham radio contest. It ran in conjunction with the WRTC competition. I started about 1 hour after the contest got underway (1300z)  and I finished just after midnight local time (0413z). In between I had a few errands to run and other family items to do so I was off for a few hours during that time. The contest allows for SSB and CW contacts. Because I used the cluster, I am classified in the multi-one category. This category also requires you to stay on a band/mode for 10 mins before switching.

Points to stations in my same ITU call area are worth 1 point, but other ITU call areas in the US are worth 3 points. DX contacts are worth 5 points. HQ stations are worth only 1 point. Overall, conditions weren’t very good. 10m was quiet and 15m wasn’t very strong either. I was hoping 15m would be better as it would allow for a lot more contacts during the daylight hours but 15m only gave me US contacts and South America contacts. 20m was the best band for me this weekend both on CW and on SSB. When i switched to CW I was able to do a nice sweep up the band and log contacts quickly.

I did notice what seemed to be less then normal number of European stations on. I worked the following  number of unique stations which seems very low – 1 Spain, 2 France, 2 England, 5 Germany & 5 Italy.  Just before 0100z I was able to work 4 Asiatic Russian stations on 20m that were coming in strong along with a Hawaiian station. I then switched to 40m and then 80m to work as many stations there as I could. I then switched back to 20m and just before 0315z I worked a New Zealand station on phone and then at 0350 I worked another ZL station on CW. I finished the night up just after midnight local time with 311 contacts.

Some notables beyond what was mentioned above is I worked W1AW/8 a total of 8 times working then on SSB on 10m, 15m, 20m, 40m & 80m and on CW on 20m, 40m & 80m. W1AW/8 was operated by the Southwest Ohio DX Assoc. I worked NU1AW 3 times which I think was operated out of W1AW in CT. 40m and 80m were very noisy. We were supposed to have a bad weather day for the entire day but it wasn’t really bad at all, at least on the ground. The noise on 40m and 80m was high and I cranked the RF down on 80m until I could only hear the CW and my S meter was showing a 9. CW works through the noise much better then SSB. The log shows 53 different DXCC’s worked for the day’s effort.

The logs have been sent in to the WRTC competition for them to use and the IARU for my contest log submission. They have also been uploaded to LoTW and eQSL and I’ve even written out the QSL cards for those I wanted to send out. I finished up the QSL cards this afternoon after I returned from the largest hamfest in the area (about 1 hour away). Below is my score summary followed by a map of the contacts based on grid locators.

Next up is the NAQP RTTY contest that starts Sat afternoon and goes through Sat night. You can work 10 of the 12 hours that the contest is on so I’ll probably run it from 2pm local to midnight local time. Get on and hand out some Q’s.

Score summary:

Band  Mode  QSOs    Pts  Zon   HQ
 3.5  CW      11     13    0    1
 3.5  LSB      5      7    2    2
   7  CW      21     45    4    1
   7  LSB     15     31    5    5
  14  CW      90    212    2    7
  14  USB    139    361   21   22
  21  USB     28     60    5    1
  28  USB      2      2    1    1
Total  Both   311   731   40   40

Score : 58,480

Map of contacts (click to enlarge):

73,
K2DSL

Field Day is a great event (aka contest) for a lot of reasons. It’s a total club (K2BAR) effort and we all have fun. Here are the highlights as I saw them.

We had the following set up: an all-band station using a vertical, a 15/20m station setup with a tribander on a tower we put up, a 40m station using a wire antenna, a 80m station using a wire antenna, a 6m station using 2 loops on a mast and a GOTA station using a wire antenna.  The weather was warm but it didn’t bother me at all.

Setup seemed easier then the previous 2 FD events I have been at. We put up 1 tower and a bunch of antennas. We were ready with plenty of time to spare before the contest started. We had plenty of food and drink around and plenty of operators to work all the stations. As things got rolling, I started on the 15/20m station. 20m was very noisy (the band, not any local noise) and was wall to wall with stations on top of each other, sometimes with 2 operating on the exact same frequency. It was rough going and finding a free frequency to call CQ on was a lot of work. So after a while I switched to 15m and the band was much quieter but still very active. We closed out the first day with more contacts on 15m then 20m.

I stayed overnight and around 2am popped into my car for about 4 hours. 20m was dead and I wanted to catch a couple of hours of uncomfortable but needed sleep, especially because I was before 5am on Sat morning. I woke up before 6am and there were fresh hot coffee cups waiting to be sucked down so I grabbed one and a choc donut. I changed my clothes and got back onto the air. 20m was workable and by the late morning, we had 20m with more total Q’s then 15m for the first time since we got on 15m on Saturday. Late in the morning I flipped to 15m and it seemed to start hopping again so I made a few Q’s before someone else sat down. I went over to 40m and got on there for a bit.

My wife and one of my daughters came by to help us have someone under 18 make a contact which gives additional points. I took my daughter to the 6m station which was available, tuned around and found a station we hadn’t worked. I told her to say Kilo 2 Bravo Alpha Radio and she did it perfectly. The other op came back with his reports and she gave 4 Foxtrot Northern New Jersey and he said QSL. She did it perfectly. Well, she’s 14 and not 6, but I was still impressed.

When I came back to the 15/20m station, 15m was again ahead of 20m and the ops were doing well so I went back to 40m. We ended up with 1003 Q’s on 40m eliminating the few dups that were logged. On 15/20m we logged 654 Q’s and on 80m we logged 359 Q’s. On the other stations (misc, 6m and GOTA) we logged 105 Q’s for a grand total of 2121Q’s which I don’t think counts the handful of fun satellite Q’s we made or the few solar powered Q’s made.

Teardown seemed to be much easier then previous years and I think because we did really have a lot of folks to help. Once things were broken down they were loaded into the rented UHaul and taken to the garage where we unloaded things quickly. After getting home, hitting the shower felt great. I fell asleep about 9pm and didn’t wake up until the alarm went off at 6 for work.

It was a great weekend. Lots of fun, lots of operating, lots of friendship. I can’t wait until next year.

73,
K2DSL (operating as K2BAR for Field Day)

Randy, K5ZD, put out another request for volunteers to assist with entering paper logs that were submitted for the 2010 CQ WPX SSB contest. I let Randy know I was willing to help out and he sent me a scanned log for OK2PBG with 161 logged Q’s.

Randy suggested using a program called LM which I didn’t have installed on my new notebook so I downloaded it and fired it up. It is very efficient for entering in paper logs once you figure out the little tricks, especially around the time of the QSO. You just need to enter the last digit of the time and it takes a good guess at what it should be based on the previous Q’s time. You only need to mess around if the time is more then 10 mins after the previous time and you just highlight the other numbers in the time, one by 1, and adjust as needed.

I am a decent typist so I banged out the first log quickly and sent it back last night. This morning Randy sent me another log for HP3FTD and before heading to work I fired up LM, entered in the base info (call, name, power, class, address, etc.) and entered in the first batch of Q’s in no time. I will finish it up tonight when I get home from work.

I find it interesting to do this. Since this is a recent contest I am seeing many calls I have worked myself. It is also interesting to see the contacts made from other locations in the world. It is like having a one way mirror view of what each operator was hearing as they worked the contest.

I am just glad the 2 ops logs I got sent have very good handwriting. I do wonder though, if they both supplied an email address, couldn’t they have done the same thing I am doing now and entered their log into LM and sent it in? Yes, they could just have email, but I bet they have a computer.

73,
K2DSL

On Saturday, while I was in and out running errands and performing chauffeur duty I was on the radio trying to make another contact with E4X ham radio DXpedition in Palestine on Phone or RTTY. Well throughout the day I tried and tried but I didn’t log another contact with them, but at least I am in their log once.

In between trying to log E4X, I started to make some contacts in the Alabama QSO Party and in the end I finished up with 72 contacts with 43 different operators.  There were some pretty active rover/mobile stations participating and if I was around more I probably could have logged more counties.   In the end I finished up with 35 different AL counties in the log out of 67 counties in the state.

Here’s my N1MM score summary:

  Band  Mode  QSOs    Pts  Sec
   3.5  CW       5     10    0
   3.5  LSB      1      1    0
     7  CW       9     18    4
     7  LSB     12     12    4
    14  CW      33     66   26
    14  USB     12     12   11
 Total  Both    72    119   45

 Score : 5,355

73,
K2DSL

I had very limited time this weekend to do much of anything with ham radio but was able to get in some short bursts on Sat & Sun to log some contacts in 3 different contests.

Saturday I logged 21 Q’s in the SP DX RTTY contest and a few Q’s in the first part of the Florida QSO Parry.

Sunday afternoon I logged 2 SSB Q’s with Nebraska stations in their QSO Party and ended up with 36 total Q’s on SSB and CW in the Florida QSO Party.

No big numbers or exotic contacts but always fun.

73,
K2DSL

WA7BNM maintains a ham radio contesting web site which is probably the key reference for what contests are going on. http://www.hornucopia.com/contestcal is the main site but I typically view http://www.hornucopia.com/contestcal/weeklycont.php for the upcoming week. A change that WA7BNM has recently implemented shows a graphical representation of when the contest is active using UTC. It gives a quick overview of what contests are active during what times.

It also looks like there’s some customization (stored locally on the computer you use) for which contests to view if you wanted to filter out contests you weren’t interested in. Thanks to WA7BNM for maintaining a web site with great information I visit multiple times a week.

73,
K2DSL

I didn’t expect to operate at all this weekend, but just before dinner with some time to kill, I got on and made some EA RTTY contacts. After I get back from dinner I made some more contacts before heading off to bed with 98 Q’s.  Woke up early and with everyone else still sleeping I got on the radio. In between getting ready for the day and some errands, I ended up with 170 contacts.  Conditions were ok though 15m was a bit light but that could be it is Easter and folks weren’t operating.

Score summary:

        Band    QSOs    Pts   Cty  Sec  Mis
         3.5      19      63    2    6    2
           7      53     180    9   11    3
          14      87     137   27    9   10
          21      11      21    4    0    4
       Total     170     401   42   26   19

       Score : 34,887

73 and good DX,
K2DSL

It is now the next day and the noise from this past weekends very active phone contest is still in my head. The WPX is very enjoyable because it is an everyone can work everyone contest providing good DX opportunities as well as US contacts. The weather was pretty clear all weekend but a bit chilly and there might have been some light rain Sunday afternoon but nothing that would impact operating.

An extra enjoyable tidbit in a phone contest is being able to, even just for a moment, speak with ops I so often make CW and RTTY contacts with. A quick ‘Hey David’, ‘There’s s familiar call’ or a ‘Nice to hear you’ always makes me smile. A few times the op even took a moment out to have a short conversation. One specific example though there were a few is when KT6YL in the middle of a good pileup she had going stopped and said hello and how nice it was to hear the voice of someone she has made many RTTY contacts with.

I felt the overall conditions this weekend were good and provided for a lot of fun and a reason to stay on the air. A single op can work 36 of the 48 hours so I figured the easiest way was to look at being off those 12 hours between about 12:30am local time and 6:30am local time Fri/Sat and Sat/Sun and that is what I pretty much did.

Friday after a couple long weeks (and weekend) at work I sat down and recorded some audio on the computer to use in the contest when calling CQ.. At 0000z (8pm local) I got rolling on 20m for 1.5 hours and then 40m for 1 hour and then  80m in S&P. After working the stations on each band I spent time moving between the 3 bands and ended the first evening with 121 Q’s at 12:30am / 0430z.

Saturday I woke up and put some coffee on to get things going. I started on 40m and was able to shortly log Japan and Australia on the 1st call to each of them and within a minute of each other. After scanning through 40m I went up to 20m and started working there. I did hear a Kuwait station but the pileup was huge. Before long it was wall to wall noise on 20m. I kept popping over to 15m where it was quieter and more manageable. Saturday I checked 10m a few times and didn’t find anything until later in the day when HC8GR on Galapagos Islands said they were on 10. I couldn’t hear them but I could hear some others. Almost any 10m station I could hear seemed to have no issue hearing me so it is obvious I am weaker on the receiving end of 10m on the G5RV. As dusk approached I started to move to 40 and switch between 40 and 20. 20 seemed to do well into the evening so I popped back there for any new ones. I called CQ a bit on 40 and 80 and though the rates weren’t very high and it was mostly US stations they helped with the totals. I called it quits about 12:45am/0447z with a total count of 453 Qs.

I woke up Sunday morning and made some 80m contacts and then moved to 40. It didn’t seem as active/open as it was on Saturday morning. Because I wasn’t using the DX cluster, I might have not come across the stations unless I could hear them while tuning the band. I moved to 20m
and was already seeing some impressive serial numbers being sent by the big operators. Most of the day was again spent between 15m and 20m with occasional checks on 10m. Probably the highlight on Sunday came at 0523z and was a 10m contact to V5/DL5XL in Namibia Africa.  That is my longest 10m contact by a long shot at 7100+ miles.

On Sunday I called CQ mostly on 40m and even during the afternoon I was able to get numbers, though maybe not a lot of DX, in the log. I did a little CQing on 15m as well but it wasn’t as productive for me. Ah to have a KW and a SteppIR up 100ft :-) But with what I have for power, antenna and location, I’m very happy with my performance. I also qualify, probably for the last time in any contest that has this category, as a rookie. I did well as a rookie in 2009 and I did much better this year so we’ll see how my score stacks up with other rookie SOAB LP entries.

I worked 71 DXCC entities, 24 of the 40 CQ zones and 44 of the 50 US states.  The 671 contacts were with 502 different stations.

Below is my score summary from N1MM.

  Band    QSOs     Pts  WPX
   3.5      70     189   31
     7     217     462  112
    14     216     479  147
    21     149     335   82
    28      19      52    8
 Total     671    1517  380

 Score : 576,460

73 & good DX,
K2DSL