This weekend was the Makrothen RTTY contest and the PA QSO Party. Started out with the RTTY contest which featured three 8 hour time slots. I was able to work some of each of the 3 time slots.  I ended up with 134 contacts on 20, 40 and 80 meters. It is a funky contest in where the points for each QSO are calculated as the distance between my and the other contacts grid square. I ended up with 552,332 points. It looks like the 134 QSOs were made into 116 different grid squares.  A big QSO for me was a Montana RTTY which I needed for LOTW WAS and it is already confirmed – thanks WC7V ! I popped over to the PA QSO party on Sunday for a bit and when I came back to the RTTY contest, the bands were pretty empty.

Saturday afternoon, after some RTTY contacts I popped into the PA QSO Party. There were time slots for the QSO Party on Sat and Sunday In the end I had 126 total QSOs on 40m and 80m.  Of the 67 counties in PA, I was able to make a contact with someone in 50 of them. I heard other counties on the air, but they weren’t calling CQ when I heard them and maybe if I needed just 1 or 2, I’d ask the op on the frequency if I could piggy back to make the contact, but that wasn’t the case. The folks I had contact with were really terrific. They were very friendly and appreciative of the contact.

Also, at the beginning of the 2nd break in the Makrothen RTTY contest was a 3rd contest – the NA Sprint RTTY. I looked for a bit but didn’t see anyone so I went back to the PA QSO Party. I didn’t go back and look to see if something finally started up so I’m not sure what I missed. It would have been my first “Sprint”.

73,
K2DSL

It’s been a couple days since the contest ended. Lots of work to do AFTER the contest too. I exported the file from N1MM and loaded it into a temp Ham Radio Deluxe (HRD) database. I then use a program from WD5EAE called Ham Radio Deluxe Utilities (HRDU) which allows me to process the file against QRZ.com to pull in as much data as QRZ has. There was only 3 calls signs which QRZ didn’t have and I could find on hamcall.net 2 of the 3. The 3rd was a mistake. I corrected the call of the mistake.  The next day, in checking eQSL, I saw that I received a QSL from someone that wasn’t in my log. I looked and found another incorrect call (missed a letter probably when I clicked it in the input window) which I could correct before submitting my log. I think I’ll wait a bit more before sending in the logs to see if any other inconsistencies pop up.

I also posted on 2 or 3 mailing lists (reflectors) and received a pretty substantial number of personal responses from folks offering their congrats on a respectable score for my first contest.  Folks also offered excellent suggestions for some questions I posed. The biggest question was around my call sign. A bunch of folks came back to me as K2DS and not K2DSL. I came to found that when using certain logging software, it checks from a list of known contesters which I’m not in yet. So it showed me as not in the list but K2DS was. I think there’s a couple instances where I might have gotten logged as K2DS. The recommendation from the experts was to keep putting my call sign out there until the operator comes back with the right call sign. THEN I should should send my report. Some times I sent just K2DSL K2DSL … and then my report.  Live and learn.

Also on these lists, there is lots of talk about optimizing your macros and sending things efficiently. Sometimes it is discussed to the point of obsessive, but for me, it is all a learning experience so whatever I can take away from it, I’ll be able to use in future contests.

After the contest, I’ve probably spent 3+ hours cleaning up the data, tagging the records with the appropriate grid locations, uploading to eQSL and LOTW, discussing the contest via email, etc. Still all worthwhile!

73, K2DSL

This past weekend was a big ARRL VHF contest that the club (Bergen Amateur Radio Assoc – BARA) I’m a member participates. It was actually 1 year ago with this particular one that I experienced my first contest. The club usually sets up on a mountain top not too long a drive from where we live and operate for 2 days on generator power from this hill top. The weather forecast called for thunderstorms so the club decided to cancel the mountain top event. In the end, no thunderstorms.

So instead, as we did in the early summer contest, we went to K2AMI’s house and operated with the club call sign of K2BAR. The conditions weren’t good and the contact count was down just a little, but the grid square count (used in VHF contests) was down a lot compared to a similar contact count a few months early. So the bands didn’t cooperate, but the contesting was still fun.

Saturday and Sunday was also the WAE (Worked all Europe) SSB contest. Before I went over to help out with the VHF contest I made a bunch of contacts. You only contact European stations when outside Europe and inside Europe they can only contact DX stations. It was fun and not too crowded so getting through on my 100w and dipole wasn’t too much work. I made a total of 57 contacts with most being Sat before leaving for the day. A few more Sat night and a few on Sunday, but it was primarily the same group of stations calling CQ most of the contest. Nothing exotic for me with the exception of a contact in Iceland which I think is my 1st contact there.

The WAE contest also uses QTCs which I need to read up on. I *think* I just give 10 previous contacts to the other station and you get points for it. I ignored them during the contest but want to read up on them in case other contests start to use them or when the next WAE contest rolls around.

Looking at the contest calendar, there’s a lot of different contests coming up this weekend. There’s multiple QSO parties and a Scottish/Russian RTTY contest.  Running multiple QSO party contests could be pretty darn confusing. Looks like 2 of the 3 QSO contests are RS(T) + State but one uses a serial number. Would be nice if they were the same. Then maybe you could log in one N1MM instance and split things up after the contest.

73, K2DSL

There were 2 smaller contests this past weekend – Russian Radio RTTY contest & the Tennessee QSO Party

The Russian Radio RTTY contest started Fri 8pm ET (Sat 00:00 GMT) and ran for 24 hours. I made a total of 134 contacts and accumulated 40000 points. I went to bed overnight and missed the final couple hours because of a family obligation. I started out forcing myself to use N1MM and MMTTY that is integrated but I still am not comfortable with that combo. The MMTTY portion is just so clunky compared to DM780 and so less productive. About halfway through I switched back to using DM780 and duplicate entry into N1MM. I need to find a better way. I’d like to just use DM780 but the log export stinks for importing into N1MM which I need to do to calculate the proper score and generate the Cabrillo log. I can see the N1MM/MMTTY combo working well if calling CQ, but searching out stations and ‘tuning’ in the digital window is just so unproductive. It isn’t selecting and pulling in the signal, though DM780 still provides a better UI, but having to wait and see if I already logged the station is worse. DM780 buffers while MMTTY is only showing what is selected at that moment.

As for contacts, I got the same New Zealand station as I did during the SARTG contest. I also got a bunch in Wales and western Canada had a bunch.

On Sunday the Tennessee QSO Party took place.  Outside of Tennessee you can only log Tennessee stations and need to note their county. 20m wasn’t getting me anything so I popped up to 40m and made most of my contacts. During the time of the contest I had dinner and then our monthly club meeting so I missed 3 prime hours of the 9 hours it lasted. When I got back from the meeting it was still going on with a few more contacts made on 40m and 80m. 20m was active by the time I got home but didn’t hear any TN stations calling CQ.

The QSO parties are fun and the folks seem so appreciative when you make contact with them.  Even though this was a small “contest”, N1MM is great for phone.  If I can only feel the same for RTTY contests. One of the contacts I made after I got back from the club meeting recognized my call from the RTTY contest. It is a small community of folks. Even heard a couple of familiar stations calling CQ but they weren’t in TN so only TN stations can come back to them. Not sure how effective that is – maybe I’ll emal one of them.

Fun small contests this past weekend. I’m up to just under 1000 total contacts in my log. I should do some quick analysis this week on the log entries so far and see what it shows. Next weekend is a big VHF contest if the weather permits and if not, another QSO party in Arkansas.

73, K2DSL

Saturday from 8am ET to Sunday 8am ET was the SCC RTTY Contest. I participated most of Saturday, went to bed for 6 hours, and woke up Sunday morning and was on the air for another 1.5 hours. In total I made 201 contacts across 20, 40 and 80m bands with 98 multipliers and a score of 47,628 if all contacts are good. If I compare my score with those submitted for the same contest last year, I’d be right about #50 in the single op low power all bands category.

The breakdown by band was:
80m – 4 QSOs
40m – 70 QSOs
20m – 127 QSOs

By location the breakdown was:
United States: 90
Canada: 10
Others: 101

Some interesting countries for me were Armenia, ZC4LI in Cyprus, Grenada and 4 stations in Latvia.

All 80m contacts were in the US and 3/4 of the 40m contacts were US. 1/4 of the 40m contacts were DX stations with the most distant being in Russia just over 5,000 miles based on grid locations.

Interesting to start to see familiar calls in RTTY and non-RTTY contests. For some I immediately recognize the call and location.

I tried using N1MM and MMTTY but after 30 mins of struggling with MMTTY within N1MM, I fell back to DM780 and double entered the contacts into N1MM. I need to get comfortable with MMTTY so I can just use that combination during contests. Practice, practice, practice. The end of Sept is the big RTTY contest and I will hopefully be more comfortable.

73, K2DSL

Last night after getting home from dinner I popped on and made 22 contacts with stations in Ohio as part of their Ohio QSO Party. All contacts were on 40m and 80m. I missed out on the NJ QSO party since I was away on vacation. They are short and fun with the out of state stations only able to log stations within the state that is having the QSO party.

I didn’t fire up N1MM to do the logging which turned out to be a hassle because getting data into N1MM from outside is always a hassle.  I logged the contacts in Ham Radio Deluxe (HRD) which is fine for this type of contest but creating a Cabrillo file is a pain in HRD while easy in N1MM. But getting into N1MM from HRD isn’t easy, which I think, is caused by HRD’s export to ADIF that doesn’t match what N1MM wants on its import, specifically for the Exchange info. I need to use N1MM even if I don’t think I’ll do a lot of contacts since it just ends up being less of a hassle to create the log files needed to provide to the contest team.

Got a mention in N8OIF’s Blog where Ned is discussing some digital modes and a lot of his equipment matches what I have. Ned posts some interesting topics so add him to your list of blogs/RSS feeds to follow.

73, K2DSL