2010 NAQP RTTY Ham Radio Summary – Rough Conditions

Contests

Saturday was the 2010 July NAQP RTTY contest where a single op can operate 10 of the 12 hours. I picked the first 10 hours so I operated local time 2pm to midnight. I started out on 20m calling CQ for the first hour and did ok. I then switched to S&P for 1 hour going up/down 20m getting all the other CQ’ers as well as checking 15m and 10m. 10m was completely dead and 15m wasn’t much better. I made a total of 6 contacts on 15m and they were all in that second hour of the contest. Whenever I switched back to check a quick listen, I heard nothing. I even called CQ a bit later and not 1 station responded.

I stayed on 20m switching between CQing and S&Ping when CQing responses dropped off. As the sun started to set I switched to 40m and worked stations there and called CQ a bit switching back to 20m to catch anyone new. I wasn’t seeing the action on 40m that I saw in last years contest where I logged 20% more 40m contacts then 20m contacts.  I need 40m and 80m to work the closer states and to give the state multipliers for the other bands, but that wasn’t working out well tonight.

I switched to 80m and it was solid noise. Not wall to wall ham radio operators but loud S7-S9 noise. What the heck is going on? I thought it might be something at my location, but a ham about 7-8 miles away said the exact same thing. 80m was completely unusable except for the strongest stations. I was hoping the conditions would improve, but every time I switched back, it was still bad.  I switched back to 20m late in the contest to see if I could find a Hawaii station or one from NE, SD or UT but no such luck.

Last year I had 210 contacts and 77 mults on 40m & 80m. This year the conditions were rough and I only was able to manage 133 Q’s and 51 mults on 40m & 80m. I ended up with 14 more total Q’s this year but with the conditions/activity on 40m and 80m I was down a combined total of 14 multipliers so my total score was less. If 80m was usable I would have likely blown past last years effort. Logs have been uploaded to eQSL, LoTW and sent in to the contest sponsor. Here’s hoping for less noise and more Q’s in the upcoming contests.

Score summary:

 Band    QSOs    Pts  Sec   NA
  3.5      27     27   15    0
    7     106    106   36    0
   14     198    198   43    2
   21       6      6    6    0
Total     337    337  100    2
Score : 34,374

73,
K2DSL

An APRS Day – Lots of Driving

Misc

I was off from work on Friday and ended up doing a lot of driving. The main reason is my parents were up visiting my brother (lives outside of Philly) for the weekend and we wanted to get everyone together. With what was already planned for this weekend, Fri night dinner was really the only reasonable option.

The first trip of the day was to meet my sister-in-law halfway between our houses to pick up 1 of my daughters who spent the week with her and her kids. Later in the afternoon one daughter, my wife and I set out to head south to Pt Pleasant Beach to pick up my older daughter that was there with a friend and her family. It should have taken closer to 1 hour but with all the traffic it was 2 hours. After picking her up we headed west for 1 hour to Princeton to meet up with my brothers family and my parents for dinner.

After dinner and a great cupcake it was time to take my older daughter back to Pt Pleasant for the remainder of the weekend. After dropping her off, we set off for home and without any traffic it took the appropriate amount of time.  For the day I put 312 miles on the car.  Below is a track from aprs.fi for the day.   The route was pretty much the same going and coming.  APRS coverage was pretty thorough along the routes. I didn’t hear much on simplex other then 1 or 2 short conversations but I was able to hear many of the repeaters I already had programmed into my Kenwood TH-D7A other then along the route between Pt Pleasant and Princeton.  APRS.fi’s data showed packets being received up to 79 miles from me with a couple over 50 miles away. There could be more, but only the 1st station that logs the transmitted packet is recorded.

The things we do so the grandparents can see their grandkids! It was nice to see my parents too, even if for just a couple of hours.

73,
K2DSL

2010 IARU HF Ham Radio Contest Summary

Contests

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

Finding a job using ham radio

Misc

Steve Mendelsohn, W2ML, is a long time ham and broadcast engineer that also happens to be one of the executive members of my local amateur radio club in NJ.  I noticed today that Steve is featured in The Rain Report podcast this week. You can get to the main site at http://www.therainreport.com/ and the specific audio interview podcast at http://www.therainreport.com/rainreport_archive/rainreport-7-3-2010.mp3 . Steve talks about using ham radio as a means to finding a job.

Also in the same 15 min audio clip is an interview by Bob Heil discussing how he too refers folks to ham radio when they ask him how he got into his field and line of business.

73,
K2DSL

2010 DL-DX RTTY Contest Summary

Contests, Equipment

One leg of my G5RV antenna had come down earlier in the week after the rope holding 1 end finally broke after 2 years, so on Friday I got it back up where it needs to go. My daughters helped me too negotiate getting it up quicker then I could do by myself especially having to be on the roof of the house.

As this is a holiday weekend in the US, I didn’t think I’d get on the air much or but nothing was going on Saturday so in the early afternoon I decided to pop into the DL-DX RTTY amateur radio contest.  The category I was entering was about as targeted a match for me as I could imagine. I was going to operate for 6 hours using nothing more then a dipole and a single radio running at low power. That would be my exact setup. I got on the air around 16:30z (12:30pm EDT) on 20m and started to work stations getting mults from US stations and then some DX stations as well. I took 3 breaks of just over 1 hour whenever things started to slow down a bit.

It wasn’t hard to call CQ so whenever I finished scanning the bands for new stations I’d find a spot and call CQ which usually resulted in a bunch of contacts both from US/Canadian stations and later in the day from DX stations. I checked 15m a couple times but it was dead, even if I spent a few mins calling CQ. Didn’t hear a soul the entire time.

In the first time slot I was on the air for about 2 hours I was able to log another contact with TA2ZF in Turkey for my 3rd contact with that op.  After taking a break and getting back on around 20:00z (4:00pm EDT) I heard A61BK from the United Arab Emirates. I’ve heard Khalid before but was never able to work him until today when I got him in the log for a new one! When I looked this morning I see we matched on eQSL which gave me a big smile so I’ll send off a QSL card to his US QSL manager. I also worked a Japan station which was the only one I heard. I also worked FO8RZ again on Tahiti Island in the French Polynesia.

I starting switching to 40m around 00:00z (8:00pm EDT) and logging stations there, though switching back to 20m often yielded another station or two I hadn’t previously logged. I finished up the end of the 6 hours by calling CQ on 40m for about 7 or 8 mins and getting over a dozen stations logged including 2 from Argentina. I ended up with 184 logged Q’s of which 1 was a dup. Not a bad few hours of ham radio RTTY fun I didn’t expect to have!

Here’s my score summary from the contest. The cabrillo log was sent in last night as well as all contacts loaded to LoTW and eQSL.

 Band    QSOs    Pts  Cty   Sec
    7      31    275    6     9
   14     152   1300   28    15
Total     183   1575   34    24
Score : 91,350

Here’s a picture of the contacts made during the 6 hours ham radio contest:

2010 DL-DX RTTY Contest - click for full size

73 & good DX!
K2DSL

Two Years on HF – Some Stats

Contacts

I didn’t realize it but 2 weeks ago I celebrated by 2nd full year on HF. I documented my first year in amateur radio on HF in a series of posts:

K2DSL’s first year on HF – Part 1
K2DSL’s first year on HF – Part 2
K2DSL’s first year on HF – Part 3
K2DSL’s first year on HF – Part 4
K2DSL’s first year on HF – Part 5

I don’t think I’ll be as verbose this year but here are some of the more interesting stats covering my 2 years in ham radio…

I logged a total of  17,956 contacts in 2 years with 7,500 being logged in the first year which means in year 2 I logged a whopping 10,456 contacts!

The top stations I have logged over 2 years are N2BJ with 67 contacts, WA5ZUP with 65 contacts and AB4GG with 57 contacts. I can usually count on those 3 fine folks for at least one contact in any contest and usually more then one.

I show a total of 169 different logged DXCCs which is 24 more then last year. I looks like I have 159 of those DXCCs confirmed.  I looked at the top DXCCs based on the number of logged contacts and the top 6 match the top 6 from last year – US, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain & then European Russia.

Looking at the contacts by band over the course of 2 years, 20m is still the most logged with almost 8900 contacts followed by 40m with 4249 & 80m with 3475. 10m jumped from 29 in the 1st year to 162 now. I didn’t have any 6m or 2m contacts logged in the 1st year and now I have 78 contacts on 6m and 69 contacts on 2m with most of those during some VHF contests.

Looking at the contacts by mode, RTTY is still the top for me with 9106 contacts logged. SSB is 2nd with a total of 5213 contacts and then CW in 3rd with 3518.

I continue to send out more QSL cards then I get back, but they are starting to come in a bit more now that I’m hitting 2 years and the bureau usually takes at least that long. In paper QSLs, I’m not up to 538 received which is a bit better then a 1/3rd of the 1433 sent out.  For LoTW, all contacts are uploaded and I currently show 9510 QSLed. That’s pretty good at 53% confirmed. A lot has to do with a lot of RTTY contest contacts and they are the best at confirming via LoTW. eQSL shows I have 4854 confirmed which is 27%.

I continue to enjoy so many different aspects of the hobby, but contesting, and specifically RTTY contesting, is what I currently can’t get enough of. I’ve done pretty well too for a single station running 100w and nothing more then a G5RV wire antenna. In the 2010 ARRL RTTY Round Up I finished first in the Hudson Division LP category winning my first plaque. In this months CQ magazine I see in the 2009 CQ WPX RTTY contest I ended up 9th overall in the entire US in the LP class. I can’t wait for the next contest and for my next year on HF.

73 and good DX!
K2DSL

2010 Field Day Recap – K2BAR

Contests

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)

Entering in Paper Logs – 2010 WPX SSB

Contests

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

Weekend contacts in Ham Radio

Contacts

This is an in-between weekend – after the VHF contest and before Field Day next weekend. I got on the radio various times this past weekend and made a few contacts. On Saturday I was able to log my first contact with a station in Mongolia participating in the All Asia CW contest. There was a lot of QRM but I am sure he was coming back to me.  I also worked a Japan station and a couple of Asiatic Russia stations participating in the Asia contest. There was also an extremely strong station in Turkey that I previously worked on RTTY that I worked on CW. There were 2 IOTA DXpeditions that I was able to work in Scotland and Greece. I’m not a big IOTA chaser but might as well log them.

Also on Sat & Sun I worked a few 6m stations though nothing out of the US. I have a fellow ham nearby that has a nice 6m beam and amp and it’s interesting for me to just listen to him work 6m stations when the band is open. I think it is one of his favorite bands to be on. He was working some stations out west in openings though I either wasn’t on the band when they were around or I can’t hear them, which isn’t unusually when I’m just on a G5RV wire antenna.

I also found out from my daughter that her boyfriends dad is a ham. I’ve only met him once but next time I see him we’ll have something to chat about.

73,
K2DSL

June ARRL VHF Contest with Pictures

Misc

The local club always plans on a big VHF contest weekend heading up to the top of a mountain that was previously a Nike missile base but the threat of thunderstorms has caused us to again cancel the club event. So when I got word it was cancelled, I decided to put up a 2m 4 element beam I picked up about 1 year ago on top of a non-metal military type mast. So my setup for the contest at home is this 2m 4 element yagi where I can run 100w that I can turn manually, my G5RV to try and tune some 6 meter contacts that can also run 100w and my dual band vertical on 70cm that I can run at 35w.

Saturday afternoon when the contest started, things were a bit slow going as all the strong 6m stations with beams were working each other and a low power wire antenna 6m station like myself was only breaking through with the more local stations. 6m though was extremely active and I’m not usually on 6m but folks were ecstatic about how good propagation was. There were longer openings to FL and shorter openings to the midwest though I did get a nice contact with a NM station in the short time I could here him. I also heard a VP9 station in Bermuda but he had a big pileup so I continued to tune around.

2m was interesting as it was the first time that at my house, I had any directional capability, all be with a manual rotor – me running up to the 2nd floor balcony and turning the pole. But it worked well and I had some fun on 2m. I think with 6m being so good, less folks moved to 2m unless they were a multi-op station. If 6m wasn’t so active I think I would have logged even more on 2m.  I was calling CQ on 2m from time to time and was real surprised when a station from Texas that I worked on 6m called me on 2m. He was booming in. I heard the next day that other folks on 2m also worked him and he was booming in to them as well. For me that’s about a 1280 mile 2m SSB contact.

I only made 2 70cm contacts and those were with very local stations. On my low power and vertical, it’s not enough to work much more then the local area. At the end of the first day I finished up with 60 contacts with 33 on 6m, 25 on 2m and 2 on 70cm.

On Sunday things were a bit slower as I worked many of the stations but I kept popping around between 6m and 2m throughout the day. It seemed to me like there were less openings on 6m then the day before and the openings were shorter, but there was some activity. I logged a Nebraska station mid day and even a Bermuda station that had too big a pileup the day before. I did hear a California station which was booming in, but all the high power stations were getting in and he started to fade so I turned the dial.

Late in the evening I called it a night and wrapped things up. It was fun, though I would have enjoyed being with the club, on the mountain, with beams and a KW or so of power. If I’m counting correctly, I worked a total of 18  states + Bermuda. On 6m I worked 16 states + Bermuda and on 2m I worked 7 different states. Below are pictures of the 6m and 2m maps based on 6 character grid squares. That Texas 2m contact really was an exception!

2010 June VHF 2m Contacts - Click to see full size
2010 June VHF 6m Contacts - Click to see full size

Here’s the N1MM Score Summary:

   Band    QSOs    Pts Grid
     50      50     50   27
    144      51     51   13
    420       2      4    2
  Total     103    105   42

  Score : 4,410

73 and thanks for all the contacts,
K2DSL