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

This past weekend was the CQ WW RTTY ham radio contest. I was running 100w into my G5RV antenna and not using the cluster for spots. It started Friday night @ 8pm local time (0000z Saturday) but it wasn’t until 10:30pm that I could get on the air. I spent about 90 mins making contacts on 40m & 80m and called it a night with 50 Q’s in the log.

Saturday I was able to spend most of the day participating. I started out on 20m and checked 15m from time to time. 15m wasn’t great but it was better then in recent contests so there were mults available to work. I even managed to get three 10m contacts including one to Galapagos Islands. I imagine if more folks were on 10m we could have seen more activity there. I flip-flopped between 20m and 15m working stations S&P style. With high power stations, finding and maintaining a run frequency in the 20m band was rough. At least with filters, adjacent stations can be blocked out, but with so many stations, they sometimes overlapped. I’m sure there are tricks to knocking out 1 station overlapping another but it is quicker to move on and come back. Saturday afternoon the EU stations were coming in nice and strong. I didn’t see any JA stations but they are usually not strong and in S&P without the cluster I might just pass right over them.  In the early evening on Saturday switching to 40m turned up some more stations including some strong EU’s. At 8pm local, 0000z I needed to head to a party for 5 hours. Once I got back around 1am I got back on for 90 mins and worked 40m & 80m stations. I ended up heading to bed Saturday night with about 360 Q’s.

Sunday morning I woke up and for a short time got on the air to and logged about 25 contacts on 20m and 5 on 15m before I needed to shut things down and head to a NY Giants football game. It was a real bad game and it then took about 1 hour extra to get home, so I wasn’t on for almost 8 hours on Sunday during the prime DX time. Once I got home I scanned through 15m and logged a few before switching to 20m and again S&Ping for a bit. I decided to call CQ on 20m and found a spot though it only produced 15 US stations in 15 mins. I switched to 40m for 30 mins and worked mainly US and Canadian stations before switching to 80m with 30 mins left in the contest. I did some quick and productive S&Ping on 80m, again working mostly US & Canadian stations. With 20 mins left I picked an 80m frequency and called CQ. I worked 27 stations in 20 mins, again mostly US & Canadian station, but there were 2 stations from the Ukraine at the very end that I could put in the logs. it was a productive run to wrap things up and I ended up with 491 Q’s.

Here’s a map view of the contacts made over the weekend (click to enlarge):

Here’s the score summary:

  Band    QSOs    Pts  Cty   ZN  Sec
   3.5      68     88    7    6   21
     7     108    169   24   10   34
    14     248    504   53   18   36
    21      64    135   27   15   10
    28       3      7    3    3    1
 Total     491    903  114   52  102

 Score : 242,004

I had a real good time in the contest. I made less contacts in 2010 then in 2009 but I also spent less time operating this year, including a large chunk of time on Sunday. I wish I had better antennas to hear all the stations that seem to hear me better then I hear them. Some day… I can dream.

73 & Good DX!
K2DSL

This weekend, besides my International Space Station (ISS) contacts (see earlier posts) I ended up logging contacts in 3 different ham radio contests.

Washington State Salmon Run
Saturday and Sunday was the Washington State Salmon Run (aka QSO Party). I ended up making a few contacts each day coming out with 11 SSB contacts with WA stations in 6 counties.

North American Sprint SSB
Saturday evening (0000z to 0400z) was the 4 hour NA SSB Sprint. After you make a contact with a station, they need to QSY (change frequencies) and you get the frequency to call CQ for the next contact. After that contact, you need to QSY to another frequency. It means a single station doesn’t just call CQ over and over on the same frequency. I got going not long after the start and worked 20m for the 1st hour before moving to 40m and switching back from time to time to see if there were any new stations on 20m. At the 3rd hour I switched to 80m and made a few more contacts before calling it an early night. I was up since 4am and just after 11pm I needed to hit the sack. I imagine the last hour of the contest saw activity move to 80m but I was beat. It is nice to work the SSB contests and the folks that I typically just send dits and dahs or diddles too. Even though the sprint is a very fast paced contest, every single op took the time to say hello or nice to hear you. It’s a competitive “sport” but everyone is extremely friendly and courteous.  Here’s the score summary for the NA Sprint SSB:

 Band    QSOs    Pts  Sec
  3.5       7      7    3
    7      26     26   13
   14      20     20   12
Total      53     53   28
Score : 1,484

BARTG Sprint 75
The third contest this weekend was another short one but another fun one. The BARTG Sprint 75 is a 75 baud (vs 45 baud) RTTY contest. 75 baud is faster then 45 baud and with a short exchange of just a a serial number, the exchange happens really quick. I actually was so busy with the IIS (International Space Station) that I didn’t realize the contest was underway. I joined the contest about 90 mins after it started on 20m and other then 1 lone 15m contact, all activity was on 20m. There was a fair amount of participation but plenty of room to grab a frequency and run for a bit, which I did, though I don’t think I logged more then 4 or 5 contacts in any one run before I needed to S&P for a bit.

After working the contest on and off for 2 hours and 15 mins, I stopped a little early to get ready for another ISS pass and was lucky enough to make my first voice contact which is a huge thrill. It was a fun contest though and I like the fast pace that 75 baud brings with it. 2 hours and 15 mins and contacts made with 25 DXCCs from

 Band    QSOs    Pts  Cty   Sec  Cnt
   14      52     52   25    7    3
   21       1      1    0    0    0
Total      53     53   25    7    3
Score : 5,088

All contacts loaded to eQSL, LoTW, QRZ and the logs sent in for the contests.

73,
K2DSL