As mentioned at Paraguay – New DXCC Logged, today I received a QSL card confirming the contact. Boy was that quick, but what is even more impressive was K2DER’s communication. Hugo is ZP8VAO’s QSL Manager and when he received my QSL card and SASE, he contacted me via email AND posted on my blog. That’s what I call an attentive QSL Manager. Many thanks to Hugo, K2DER and of course to ZP8VAO for the contact with a new one for me.
73,
K2DSL
Wanted to work the VHF contest with my local radio club but due to weather it was called off. I still thought about putting up a 2 meter beam on fiberglass poles but weather on Sat was really poor with steady rain all day.
So I got on HF and participated in the WAE SSB contest. What is different about the WAE contests are QTCs. I knew I could only operate on Saturday as football season starts and I go to all the home games. Other then 1 contact and QTC batch I made all contacts on 20m. Conditions we’re ok and for the most part was able to work any station that I heard or showed up in the cluster.
I was able to send two batches of QTCs which provide to the other op up to 10 previous callsigns indicated the time I made the contact, the operators call sign and his report to me. It ends up giving me and the DX op an additional 10 contacts. I could have given more but I was obviously not in it for the points and just did so when asked by the DX operator.
After coming home from the football game on Sunday evening I processed the logs out of N1MM and into my main logging program, Ham Radio Deluxe, started writing out QSL cards, uploading the contacts to LoTW and eQSL and sent the log in. I had about the same contacts this year as I did last year when I was just getting started in contesting.
73,
K2DSL
As I was playing around in the WAE SSB contest I flipped to 15m to see if there was anything going on and the only station I heard was ZP8VAO and he wasn’t in the contest. So I launched Ham Radio Deluxe’s logbook to enter in the call and saw it came up as Paraguay and a new DXCC. I put out my call and he came right back and made the contact. He checked to make sure he had my call correct since I wasn’t already in his logbook and I confirmed it was our first contact.
After logging the call I looked at the QSL info and it’s a local US QSL Manager so the QSL card and SASE is already written out and ready to get dropped off at the Post Office. Thanks for a new one!
73,
K2DSL
I have a lot of fun participating in contests even if I can only make a few contacts in some. The hardest part about contesting is knowing what contests are coming up and finding the time to set aside to participate. Below are the top places I look for contest calendar information on the web. Always remember to check out the rules on the official site for each of the contests to understand the classes, exchange, times and other important rules that need to be followed, along with the log submission deadline.
My top site is WA7BNM’s with links to What’s Next Week and the Perpetual Contest Calendar which shows all contests for the year and future years. It’s the site I visit the most for contest info. You can also get a weekly email that contains a text version of what is coming up over the following week by sending an email – instructions at the bottom of this page.
The ARRL Contest site is a good resource for what is coming up this month and next. I really enjoy the ARRL Contest Newsletter which is sent out via email every other week and is available online as well.
Another site is the SM3CER Contest Service web site. I’ve seen some inaccuracies with the info and emailed the site but never got a response nor were the errors corrected. I also don’t like that the home page uses a java applet which causes java to load up, and on my slower notebook, it’s inconvenient.
There’s also the Contesting.com web site which is a landing page to many contest related links such as the CQ-Contest reflector where you can view the archives or subscribe to the mailing list and receive individual or digest (batched) versions of the posts.And underway is the Wiki Contest Compednium which might end up being another invaluable source for staying on top of what is going on and what is coming up.
73,
K2DSL
I wasn’t an amateur radio operator on September 11, 2001 but here’s a link to a PDF version of an article that appeared in the Nov 2001 issue of QST magazine.
9/11/01: “This is Not a Test.”
I remember the events of that day as if it was yesterday. Never forget.
73,
K2DSL
Received a direct QSL card from T77NM in San Marino today to give me another confirmed entity. The 20m contact was made back in May during the Volta RTTY contest. It is still the only contact I have with a station in that entity so it’s nice to have it confirmed.
73,
K2DSL
I posted about the Hiram Percy Maxim 140th Birthday Celebration Special Event that the ARRL is running for a week from Sept 2nd through 9th. It took place over the Labor Day weekend and thought there were many family obligations (food & drink), I was able to operate a bit.
I ended up making a total of 139 contacts as K2DSL/140. Out of the 139 contacts, 66 contacts were with other /140 stations. 3 contacts were with Canadian station and 1 with a station from Mexico. The remaining stations were US stations that covered 34 different states, including MT, ND, ID and 4 to Wyoming.
It was a lot of fun and glad I participated. I have my /140 LoTW certificate so I’ll be uploading these to LoTW. I also have a few eQSL contacts sent to my K2DSL account that I’ll confirm as well.
73,
K2DSL
I wasn’t on the radio much this weekend but made a few contacts in the SCC RTTY and Kansas QSO Party. Below are the score summaries for each.
SCC RTTY
Band QSOs Pts Exc N/A 14 19 40 15 0 Total 19 40 15 0 Score : 600
Kansas QSO Party
Band Mode QSOs P ts Sec 14 CW 10 30 9 14 USB 23 46 19 Total Both 33 76 28 Score : 2,128
With a few of the Kansas Ops I had a nice QSO when they came back to me and recognized my call. A few rovers were very active and in a couple instances I was lucky to catch them on a county boundary and able to log multiple counties at the same time.
73,
K2DSL
I had made 4 contacts with J5UAP in the entity of Guinea-Bissau on the west coast of Africa back in March of 2009 on 20m RTTY and USB. I see that Peter must have uploaded his log to LoTW and I now have them all confirmed.
Thanks for another new one Peter!
73,
K2DSL
Came home from work and there was a thick envelope from the NJDXA which contained 46 cards. 1 of the cards was for a different call sign so I’ll hand it to someone in my club that handles the QSL cards to get it re-routed. But the other 45 were all for me. Of the 45 QSL cards received, 19 cards were from operators I hadn’t sent a QSL card to yet so I filled out 19 new cards.
The most cards were 11 from Italy with others from Germany, France, Russia, the Netherlands, Columbia, Belgium, Finland, Canada, Mexico, Cyprus, Scotland, Poland, Bulgaria, Switzerland and Norway. Quite the collection of nice looking QSL cards.
Sure beats getting bills in the mail.
73,
K2DSL