Category Archives: Contests

SARTG RTTY Contest

Contacts, Contests

While away on vacation in North Carolina and using a 20m dipole up 25 ft between 2 trees, I participated in the SARTG RTTY Contest for two of the three 8 hour time slots for the contest. I couldn’t participate in the final slot because I was traveling back to NJ.

I was trying to get N1MM and MMTTY to work with my SignaLink USB but I couldn’t get things to jive in the time I had before the contest started so I used Ham Radio Deluxe and DM-780. It worked well enough even though it’s not a contest platform.I’ll have to work on getting MMTTY to work and I think N1MM will be fine once that is worked out.

So with my 100w TS-2000, my 20m dipole up 25 ft and my SignaLink USB connected to the Internet via my Verizon Blackberry EVDO phone, I made a total of 106 contacts. Besides many in the US and Canada I made contacts in the contest with operators in Algeria, Argentina, Asiatic Russia, Austria, Belgium, Bermuda, Bulgaria, Cape Verde, Cuba, Czech, Germany, France, Hawaii, Italy, Martinique, Mexico, Morocco, Portugal, Slovenia, Switzerland, and the Ukraine. But the highlight for me was New Zealand (ZL4A) which shows at 8,800 miles from where I was in NC. All that on 100w and a little wire strung between trees. Absolutely amazes me.

This is such fun stuff!!

73, K2DSL

IOTA Contest

Contacts, Contests

This weekend was a 1 day IOTA (Islands On The Air) contest. It lasted from 8am (1200 UTC) Sat morning through 8am Sun morning. I made a total of 43 contacts all on 20m, many outside of the US including the Ukraine, Canada, Belgium, Madeira Islands off Portugal, Scotland, Germany, France, Honduras, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Columbia, Bahamas and a couple to Hawaii. I looked on 40 and 80 and there was no one there that I could hear.

As the bands were opening to Europe around 7pm ET (2300 UTC) I had to leave to go to a party with my wife. Crummy timing! When we got home around midnight, I made a few easy contacts before heading off to bed as the band was empty and only a few were calling CQ. I woke up in the morning around 7am ET with 1 hour left in the contest but 20m was quiet and I didn’t find anyone on 40 or 80.

A fun contest and it was nice to get some new countries in my log.  I used N1MM for logging in the contest and when I was done, imported them into Ham Radio Deluxe. I’m also testing out a utility by WD5EAE which is working well in automating tasks when importing into HRD and automating the processing of logs into ARRL’s Logbook Of The World (LOTW).

73, K2DSL

Busy weekend – contest and hamfest

Contacts, Contests, Misc

This was a busy weekend. Starting Saturday at 8am ET, the IARU HF contest started. Bands were very noisy but during the day/evening on Sat and for 30 mins on Sun morning I made 111 contacts. Countries outside of the US (though I got Hawaii again) were: Brazil, Cayman Islands, Canada, Argentina, Netherlands, Italy, Slovenia, Serbia, Ecuador, Brazil, Costa Rica, Austria, Czech Republic, Madeira Islands, Cape Verde, Canary Islands, Trinidad & Tobago, St Pierre & Miquelon, Aruba & Columbia. There were some very large pileups to cut through and my 100 watts, it was persistence vs pure power that paid off.

After making a couple contacts on Sunday morning I set off for the Sussex County hamfest. It is the largest hamfest I’ve been to so far. Took a while to just walk around. It had the usual assortment of crap that I can’t believe people would even look at let alone buy, but there was a lot of really interesting stuff to check out. One fellow had a Kenwood MC-60 desk mic I’ve been looking at picking up which he said was used twice but it looked a bit more used then that though it had the original box and instructions. He wanted $100 for it which is the same as or a bit more then you’d pay on eBay so I walked away.

I also saw the Midland 13-898B CB base station I had when I turned 13 yrs old and another vendor had the Turner Plus Three microphone I used with it. The vendor with the CB said I could take it for $5 but I wasn’t interested in bringing home something I didn’t need even it it was $5.

Saw lots of BARA club members and some other folks I also know.  Spent about 2.5 hours there and took off to head home and process the log from the contest.