ARRL DX SSB Contest Report

Contacts, Contests

This past weekend was the ARRL International DX SSB contest. See my earlier report on the ARRL DX CW contest. The contest is between US/Canadian stations and non-US/Canadian stations (DX) with the exception of Alaska and Hawaii which are considered to be DX locations. I am a bit surprised there weren’t more stations from Mexico on.  They count as DX stations

With my modest 100w and G5RV wire antenna I was able to make 209 contacts with 155 different stations/operators. Those contacts covered 78 different DXCC entities in 19 different zones (out of 40 zones).  To show how relatively small the contesting community is, of those 155 stations I logged a QSO with, 75 of those call signs I had previously logged at least 1 QSO with, so that is almost half of the stations.

As best as I can tell, I only logged one new DXCC and that was Guinea-Bissau and the station was J5UAP. I did log a bunch of stations I don’t have any QSL confirmation on so I’m hopeful that via LoTW or a paper QSL I can get some more confirmed  I already show one of the Alaska contacts as confirmed which is good since it’s my first phone contact confirmed this year with Alaska which will help for the Triple Play Award.

The highlight for me was a large pileup late in the day on Sunday and a strong VK station in Australia was booming in. VK7ZE was clear and louder then I’ve ever heard a VK station and there was quite the pileup. It didn’t take very long and he came back with my call. How my 100w and wire made it through all the stations calling I’ll never know. Lucky is better then good. So I logged my first Australia phone contact. It shows VK7ZE as a LoTW user but I’m sending off for a paper QSL anyway!

There were 2 comments I noticed when a DX station was coming back to me, and I was silly not to note down who each was. One was an operator that came back to me with “Hey David, nice to hear you again”. Now yes, contest loggers come up with various bits of info, but regardless of it being his system which told him, it was nice that he said it.  The other comment I recall is when there was a nice pileup going for another station and he got DSL from me putting my call out and came back with “That must be K2DSL, right?”. Again, even if his software did it, it made it very personal. So though I didn’t note the specific operators, thank you!

As for working the bands, 20m was where most activity was occurring. I did my best to try and get stations (and multipliers) on 15m, but with my less then optimal setup, that’s better said then done. When 15m was open, I was able to get a long distance, but when it shut down for me, it was as if there wasn’t anyone there. A directional antenna would have definitely helped with 15m this weekend. 40m and 80m is where I was after dark, though 20m was still pretty active then too. 40m and 80m were almost 1:1 for multipliers so that definitely helps the score. Below is my score summary from N1MM. Thanks to all the operators that picked little ‘ol me up when I came a calling.

        Band    QSOs     Pts  Cty
         3.5      23      69   21
           7      33      99   29
          14     126     378   75
          21      27      81   17
       Total     209     627  142

            Score : 89,034

73,
K2DSL

Another new DXCC confirmed and logged

Contacts

The mail came today and one of the QSL cards was from EA6AZ on the Balearic Islands. It’s the first QSL I have for that DXCC. Thanks Tano for the contact and sending a QSL back so quickly!

Also this morning I was able to make a quick QSO with VQ9JC on Chagos Island. Jim (ND9M) is there handing out lots of QSOs, which I had on 30m CW, to some pretty constant pileups.  I thought I had a good QSO yesterday but right when he was coming back to me, everything dropped. Seems to happen right when they are coming back to you after you hearing them fine for a long while. A K2 came back but that was it. I sent my call again and I got a K2 back again so I sent my report in hopes it was for me and he could still hear me. I followed up via email to see if he was able to log me and he quickly replied back that he didn’t have me in his logs but to try again.  When I saw him spotted again this morning I waited for his signal to build so I could hear him pretty consistently and after a couple of tries he came back. My QSL is going in the mail. So thanks Jim for the great work and stay safe!

73,
David

My LoTW QSLs surpass 50%

Contacts

Despite less then a 20% confirmation so far in the recent ARRL CW DX contest, my Logbook of The World QSLs have surpassed 50% of those uploaded. As of this post I show 5,235 QSOs uploaded and 2,622 QSLs confirmed.

This weekend is the ARRL DX SSB Phone contest. If the rate of QSLs matches that of recent the CW contest,  might drop below 50% again. More RTTY contests and those diehard QSLers and it will jump up again.

73,
K2DSL

3 new DXCCs logged

Contacts

Over the past two days I’ve been able to log 3 new DXCCs for me, all on CW.

HK0/EA7HEJ which is in San Andreas & Providencia was on 17m & 20m CW. I sent a QSL card direc to Wil in Spain. His QRZ page indicates he’ll be home the 2nd half od March.

EL2DX which is in Liberia and is an American at the American Embassy there.  I got James on 17m CW and sent off a QSL to his US address which gets sent along to him in Liberia.

PS0F which is on a small island off Brazil called Fernando de Noronha was contacted on 30m CW. From what I can find, a likely grid locator is HI36sd and QSL is via W9VA, which I will do now.

Thanks to 3 fine ops for picking me up for new ones!

73,
K2DSL

3 new confirmed DXCCs = 100 !!

Misc

Even though I just recently posted about new DXCC’s confirmed for me, I have 3 more to report.

Uruguay is now confirmed on LoTW thanks to CW7T.

Bermuda and Dominica are confirmed via QSL cards received from VP9/W6PH and J79WWW.

That brings my DXCC counts to 88 on LoTW and 12 via QSL cards (missed listing Bermuda in the last post). That brings my confirmed total DXCC count to exactly 100!! I think I will hold off applying for now until I have a few more paper QSL cards or LoTW confirmations just in case any that I think confirmed are rejected. Thanks to all the ops that took the time to make the contact and confirm either via LoTW or by sending back QSL cards to me.

I also logged a new contact with PJ5NA on St Eustatius so I am sending off a QSL card to James for hopefully another confirmation.

73,
K2DSL

FSK vs AFSK on a TS-2000 – What a difference!

Contests, Equipment

For RTTY I’ve used AFSK via my SignaLink USB into my Kenwood TS-2000.  It has always worked fine but I was unable to take advantage of the RTTY/FSK filters in the TS-2000. When using AFSK you are in SSB mode and the tight FSK filters aren’t available. There are some adjustments you can make to try and compensate a bit both in the MMTTY application and on the radio but nothing compared to what I experienced this weekend when running FSK.

A club member that made me the serial to CW cable I used to work my first CW contest volunteered to add in a FSK circuit. With a spare 13-pin DIN plug that comes with the TS-2000 that I provided him and all the spare parts he had already, he turned it around quickly. I tried getting it working and ran into some issues and he even volunteered to come over and troubleshoot. After messing with the software we checked the cable connections and a couple of pins weren’t wired per the online circuits so a quick unsolder/solder and it was working like a champ. So many, many thanks to K2ZC for getting me to the next level of RTTY capabilities!!

I made notes of all the changes I made to MMTTY, N1MM and the TS-2000 so I can switch back as needed. The only TS-2000 change was on menu 39 and changing the FSK keying polarity to Inverse from the default setting of Normal. Everything else was just configuring MMTTY to specify the serial port I wa using for the FSK/PTT drop-down on the TX tab and the Misc Tab being set to COM+TxD (FSK). On the soundcard tab I changed the input from the SignaLink device to my audio card which has a mic/line in connection from the ACC2 cable as part of the cable that K2ZC made up. In N1MM I think the only change was on the Digital mode tab to change it from AFSK to FSK. No setup changes in the N1MM hardware configuration were required.

Now that I was transmitting FSK, I can put the TS-2000 in FSK mode and use the filters to narrow down the bandwidth. This filtering makes all the difference in the world when there are signals stacked up right on top of each other. I left it at 1000hz and dropped it down to 500hz if I couldn’t easily copy a signal. Going to 250hz made it even tighter and that was only needed a few times. I was now able to copy signals I wouldn’t have been able to do without the FSK filtering and would have had to move to a different frequency and tried later if they were still around.

I can’t really tell the difference in me transmitting other then I don’t think anyone asked me to repeat my exchange in the NA QSO Party this past weekend. It might have nothing to do with FSK vs AFSK but I don’t really know for sure. I know I didn’t have to worry about adjusting the transmit to get the power at max and still make sure the ALC didn’t kick in. One less thing to have to worry about.

The contest was primarily a local (US/Canada) contest but there were a few DX stations participating. I made a total of 340 Qs in the 10 hours you were around to operate. I logged Qs with 45 of the 50 states.  Here is the score summary:

        Band    QSOs     Pts  Sec   NA
         3.5     135     135   43    0
           7      88      88   34    0
          14     114     114   27    1
          21       3       3    1    0
       Total     340     340  105    1
            Score : 36,040

I had a nice hour of being in run mode on 80m with an average of 1 Q per minute which for me was great.  Using clusters isn’t allowed in the single op category for this contest so I only popped over to 15m once and there wasn’t much there. There might have been other times it was in better shape and I could have picked up more mults but I didn’t bother.

73,
K2DSL

New logged and confirmed DXCCs

Contacts

In the past week I was able to log the following new DXCCs for me:

stationcountry
4U1UNUnited Nations HQ
TA3AXTurkey
V51ASNamibia
VP2VVABritish Virgin Is.
YS4MEl Salvador

The UN station is a stones throw from me but they never seemed to be on the air when I was on the radio. Seems there was a guy and gal switching between 20m and 40m. They were in the non-US phone portion of the phone band on 40m so I wasn’t able to call them on 40m but easily snagged them on 20m.

And over the past week, the following new DXCCs were confirmed:

stationcountry
C4NCyprus
EY8MMTajikistan
H7/NP3DNicaragua
HG7THungary
JW5NMSvalbard

Svalbard and Cyprus were paper QSL cards that I received from local US QSL managers. The others were via LoTW.

Edit: The mail came today and among other direct QSL cards was one from Vp9/W6PH so Bermuda is a new confirmed DXCC for me.

My LoTW confirmed DXCC count is 87 and I have 10 11 paper QSL confirmations so I have 97 98 confirmed DXCCs right now. Thanks to all the ops that worked me and confirmed their contacts. I sent out a bunch more paper QSL cards direct and via the bureau for entities I don’t have confirmed yet.

73,
K2DSL

My K5D Desecheo Island Summary

Contacts

I was very excited to make my first contact with the K5D DXpedition at Desecheo Island.  My first contact was on 17m SSB on Feb 13th. I then made 11 more contacts on different band/modes over the course of their stay and was excited after each one of them.

I had a very easy time making all the contacts with the exception of my 2 RTTY contacts. Those took the longest amount of time to check off my list. For the SSB and CW contacts, I’d be shocked if any of them took longer then 5 minutes of calling. In a couple of cases, they came back on the first call. The only band/mode I tried on that I couldn’t get was 20m CW. Seemed every time I could hear them they were only listening for Japan or EU stations.

Near the end of their DXpedition, I probably could have made dozens of contacts on bands/modes I already had logged but didn’t feel the need to burden them or prevent someone else from making a contact. One contact on each band/mode was plenty good for me.

All the ops I interacted with and listened to were top notch. Some were better at handling the pileup then others, but I imagine it was a monumental task to deal with for even the best operators.  They just did a phenomenal job!

Here are the contacts in the order they occurred and all are confirmed on their online log. I will be using their online QSL request system to get a paper QSL back and they indicate they will upload to LoTW in a year.

Date / Time   Band   Mode
2/13 19:32    17m    USB
2/15 03:45    20m    USB
2/15 11:53    40m    LSB
2/18 15:05    30m    CW   * My first CW contact ever
2/18 15:43    17m    CW
2/20 00:55    80m    LSB
2/20 12:20    40m    CW
2/21 19:40    15m    RTTY
2/23 20:08    17m    RTTY
2/25 03:16    80m    CW
2/25 13:54    15m    CW
2/25 15:57    15m    USB

Thanks again to all those that participated in the K5D DXpedition!

73,
K2DSL

Latest confirmed DXCCs

Contacts

Over the past 2 weeks I’ve gotten the following countries verified via LoTW:

Tajikistan, Nicaragua, Hungary, Corsica, Cong and, Belize

That brings my LoTW confirmed DXCCs to 87. I have additional 8 confirmed DXCCs via paper QSL cards so my total is 95 confirmed DXCCs.

I’ve sent out a few direct QSL cards in the past couple weeks so hopefully a few new DXCCs will come back from those and/or the bureau. I currenlt show about 37 DXCCs where I’ve logged a contact but don’t have either a paper or LoTW confirmation.

73,
David

My first CW contest

Contacts, Contests

After using DM780 to read/send CW to K5D using the CW KY functionality the Kenwood supports on the same serial connection, Dave K2ZC created a cable for me to connect my PC’s serial port to the key connection on the back of the radio. This is a more standard way of keying supported by programs such as N1MM as well as DM780.

With the new cable from K2ZC I jumped into the ARRL International DX CW contest this past weekend. I would listen on the frequency to get the info and then send my call out and when the DX station came back to me, it was decoded on the screen and I would respond with my report. Because it seemed most of the stations in the contest are using a computer to generate the code, the computer does an excellent job of decoding it and showing it on the screen.

I used DM780 to decode the transmission and N1MM to send/log. It all worked very well and I was able to make 209 DX Qs over the weekend. Not bad for a CW contest and not knowing morse code yet! By the end of the weekend I could pretty reliably recognize my own call, 5NN for a report and TU which is typically the first response back after sending a report.

New logged DXCCs this contest: El Salvador, San Marino and Turkey.

Here’s my score summary from my first CW contest:

        Band    QSOs    Pts  Cty
           7      67     201   38
          14     142     426   60
       Total     209     627   98
            Score : 61,446

73,
K2DSL