1 day – 3 contests

Contests

Contest 1:
Started out Saturday morning with 9 QSOs for the Hungarian DX Contest all on 20m.

Contest 2:
I then headed over to K2AMI’s house which is acting as a club station with the call of K2BAR and for the ARRL January VHF Sweepstakes. I put in a few hours there and when I left there were about 100 entries in the log. I don’t think we caught any exciting openings and most contacts were in Vermont to Maryland and no farther west then Pennsylvania. We heard a Virginia station but he QSY’ed or the opening was gone before we could call him. The contest continues through tonight but I need to do things with the family today.

Contest 3:
When I got home last night I jumped on (mostly 80m with one 40m contact to Puerto Rico) for the North America QSO Party. The NAQP has a nice exchange – name and state/province/country. I didn’t call CQ but I S&P’ed for a couple hours and made 51 contacts before calling it an early night.

Again, when I’ve made many contacts with contest ops via RTTY, it is nice when I send my call and they come back back with “Now that’s a familiar call” and have a quick chat before moving on.

My logbook currently shows a total of 4,023 entries.

73,
K2DSL

QSOs QSOs QSOs

Contacts

Seems to be a bunch of activity at 3.6xx with folks trying to get LoTW Triple Play contacts. Tune around in the evening and you’ll often find folks calling CQ.

This morning before heading off to work i had a short QSO with SB6A in Sweden on 20m. Needed to cut it short as I had to get out of the house and catch my train.

When I got home from work today I was able to make contact with 8R44USA. The op is 8R1AK and running a special event station honoring Barak Obama.  That was my first contact with an op in Guyana.

This weekend is the ARRL January VHF Sweepstakes and I’ll be helping out with our club station K2BAR.

73,
K2DSL

Recent QSL Cards Received

Contacts

On Tuesday I got my first batch of bureau cards. I had previously received one, but it wasn’t for me since it was for a CW contact before I was licensed. But this batch of 4 cards had 2 from Finland and 2 from Canada. At least they were all for me!

Tonight when I got home from work, there was a card in the mail for a contact with V26B contact in Oct on 20m SSB. It’s my first confirmed QSL for Antigua. Keep ’em coming!

73,
K2DSL

Ham Radio Deluxe, Kenwood TS-2000 & LDG KT-100

Equipment

There was an operator on one of the mailing lists that was having an issue getting his Kenwood radio to kick in the LDG KT-100 antenna tuner while using Ham Radio Deluxe (HRD). The KT-100 is LDG’s Kenwood specific antenna tuner made for Kenwood radios that support the AT-300 connection such as the Kenwood TS-2000, TS-480. etc.  At least with my TS-2000, using the KT-100 is no different then using the internal tuner.  The only real difference is that when the TS-2000 is powered on and the KT-100 is attached, the Antenna Tuner defaults to off and needs to be enabled.

I emailed him since I have a very similar setup to what he was running. I have the Kenwood TS-2000 and this fellow had the Kenwood TS-B2000 which is the same radio but without any front panel display or controls. The Kenwood TS-B2000 is meant to be computer controlled. Otherwise, it’s the same radio as my TS-2000.  I really didn’t understand the problem he was having as I thought everything was working great with my setup.  After a few emails and me finally being able to be at my radio, I was able to understand his predicament. I was always pressing the AT button on the front of the radio and then the Tune function in Ham Radio Deluxe worked. But since he doesn’t have a front-panel on his TS-B2000, there’s no button to push and the ATU button in HRD wasn’t turning the AT on, just off.

I did some digging once I could reproduce the problem and found a post on the HRD forums at http://forums.ham-radio.ch/showthread.php?t=11622 and outlined the steps for him in an email and it worked.  So here are hopefully the steps with pictures that will help someone else. I imagine this works for other external tuners connected to the TS-2000 and other Kenwood radios.

In Ham Radio Deluxe, once connected to the radio, the default buttons (I think as I don’t remember customizing them) look like:
hrd_kt100_default_buttons

The ATU button is the Antenna Tuner button which, in this hardware setup, will turn the Antenna Tuner off, but not on. As mentioned above, by default, the Antenna Tuner isn’t turned on each time the radio is powered on. In the “on” state, it would be dark colored like the Ant 1 button under it is.

So the first step is to create a CAT Command which will be used in the second step. You click on the Macros menu in HRD and select CAT Command Manager as pictured below:
hrd_kt100_cat_command_menu

A new window opens that looks like the following:
hrd_kt100_cat_command_1

You probably have a window like mine showing no user defined CAT Commands yet. So click the New button and the following window opens. Fill in the title, command and a description. The CAT Command is A (Alpha) C (Charlie) followed by three number ones:
hrd_kt100_cat_command_2

Once entered as the above shows, click the OK button and it will add it to your list of user defined CAT Commands, leaving you at a window that looks like:
hrd_kt100_cat_command_3

Press the OK button to close the window. Now click the Tools menu and select Customize Layout at the bottom of the long Tools menu. A window that looks like the following will open. If the Layout tab isn’t selected, select it so it looks like the below:
hrd_kt100_customize_layout_1

Click the ATU button just to the right of the current displayed frequency and it should turn a darker color such as shown below:
hrd_kt100_customize_layout_2

Once the ATU button is selected, the left portion of the screen will show ATU in the Define Button section. Under that is a Select button just under where it says Dropdown Button / CAT Command / Macro. Click the Select button and window will pop up that looks like:
hrd_kt100_customize_layout_3

Select CAT Commands: KT100 from the bottom of the dropdown list and then name the button KT100 as shown. When you then press OK, you’ll be returned to the Layout screen and above the Select button on the left side it will now say KT100 = CAT Commands: KT100 as shown here:
hrd_kt100_customize_layout_4

Press the Apply button on the bottom right of the Customize Layout window and you’ll be returned to the main HRD window with the ATU button replaced with a functioning KT100 button. The screen will look like:
hrd_kt100_customized_buttons

You should now be able to press the KT100 button and it will enable the AT on the radio and initiate a tuning cycle. Once initiated, the Tune button (just below Ant 2) should be used.

I hope this helps someone that runs into the same or similar situation.

73,
K2DSL

Some new confirmed DXCC’s

Contacts

Over the past 2 weeks, even though I haven’t had any new contacts with DXCC’s I haven’t previously logged, either paper QSLs or Logbook of The World (LoTW) QSLs have come in for 4 new DXCC’s.

The confirmed DXCCs are:
Sierra Leone – 9L0W
Ireland – EI6HB
Greece – SV1JSQ
Kazakhstan – UN1L

That gives me 87 confirmed DXCC’s of which 8 are only confirmed via paper QSL and the rest are LoTW confirmed. I have 27 DXCC’s logged and not yet confirmed with all but 1 or 2 sent a QSL card from me.

I am working from home today because of a doctors appointment. I was online responding to emails when I looked and saw the cluster showing ZD8UW on Ascension Island on 17m. Turned the radio on and the first time I put my call out there he came back. Woohoo – a new DXCC for me once confirmed. I need to work from home more often ;-)

73,
K2DSL

ARRL RTTY Roundup

Contests

Happy New Year! Got back home from a skiing vacation with the family and friends a few hours after the contest started and after bringing in all the luggage and doing some quick chores, I got on the air. Spent a few hours before I was tired, my back hurt and my cold I’ve had since Christmas was telling me to hit the sack. Of course, I woke up way too early and couldn’t go back to sleep, so what else to do but get on the air.  I spent most of Sunday active on the air before the 7pm ET end where I drove one daughter to an event and headed to my radio clubs monthly meeting.

I was able to log all the US entities in the contest except for ND and Wash DC. I also logged about 1/2 of the Canadian provinces.  It was fun and I need to do more CQing and less S&P. I had good (for me) rates going when I was calling CQ the couple times I did it. Didn’t use any packet clusters and just tuned around the dial. It was wall to wall so it was just quickly listening to determine if I already had a QSO with the op calling on that frequency. It’s also, oddly, less work to get on a frequency, if you can squeeze in, and call CQ vs S&P. Don’t need to touch the radio and click away with the mouse without moving.

I also see from comparing my score summary with those posted on 3830 or the RTTY mailing lists that I need to also hit up more DX contacts next time for the multipliers to increase my score.  Others with generally the same or slightly lower QSO count scored higher because of the DX multipliers.

        Band    QSOs    Pts  States  DX
         3.5     135     135   17     0
           7     110     110   13    11
          14     187     187   25     7
       Total     432     432   55    18

            Score : 31,536

Lots of fun. No new DX Entities logged but lots of fun.

73,
K2DSL

Ham radio thoughts when off the air

Misc

I’m skiing with the family in Vermont between Christmas and New Years. On the drive up to Mount Snow from New Jersey I noticed many homes with antennas. Not so easy to spot those with wire dipoles, but with yagis, towers and even veriticals, you could tell a ham lived there.

I’m also starting to see call signs and DXCC entities in license plates and other non-ham everyday things. I was behind a car with a license plate that started with VKx-xxx and thought Australia. I guess I’ve got the bug.

Happy New Year to all and I hope to work you in 2009, starting with the RTTY Roundup that kicks off a couple hours before we get home from our vacation.

K2DSL

Christmas & RAC Winter Contest

Contests, Misc

For Christmas I got a fleece pullover and a long sleeve t-shirt with my call sign and name on it from CallsignWear. Nice quality clothing and the personalization looks sharp.  My younger daughter did the tags for the call sign personalized items and one said “To Kilo 2 Delta Sierra Lima Love L5PDL, S9LIZ and M2Mer” . Very cute.

On Fri night, Saturday I participated in the RAC (Radio Amateurs of Canada) Winter Contest. I have just gotten a good (bad) cold and wasn’t feeling well, but I made 88 contacts on 80, 40 and 20, mostly to Canadian stations, though you’re allowed to work anyone. Sort of like a QSO party where you can still work other “states” but the big points are making a QSO with a Canadian station.

        Band    QSOs    Pts  Sec
         3.5      41     410    9
           7      16     162    6
          14      31     212    7
       Total      88     784   22

       Score : 17,248

There wasn’t a tremendous amount of operators on, probably because it’s right after Christmas. I thought there would have been more Canadian stations.

Happy Holidays!
K2DSL

My [almost] first bureau card

Contacts

I’ve sent a bunch of cards out via the bureau since I’ve started on HF over this past summer. A bunch means a couple hundred. It can take months to years to get a card back, if you get one at all. Well in the middle of December I received an envelope from the NJDX Association which handles the 2nd call district. My first bureau card, or so I thought. I opened it up and looked at the front and it was from LZ1250 in Bulgaria. I turned it over and noticed the mode is CW. I don’t do CW yet. I then looked at the date and it’s from March. Well, I wasn’t on HF in March yet. I looked at the year and it’s 2003. Well, that’s about 4 years before I was licensed. Definitely not me!

Now I don’t think that K2DSL was previously assigned to anyone so my best guess is that LZ1250 copied the wrong call sign down when the contact was made on 10.1 MHz (30 meters).  At least it’s an interesting card. If you have a call sign similar to mine and had a contact with LZ1250 (special callsign used for one month in March 2003), send me the details of the QSO and if it’s close enough, I’ll send you the card.

Happy Holidays,
K2DSL

[Edit: Removed the space between NJ DX to make it NJDX]

OK DX RTTY Contest

Contests

Still having antenna issues, and I had a bunch of things to do on Saturday, but I was able to put in a couple hours to participate in the OK DX RTTY contest.  The antenna is acting up and I can’t tune well (so not full power) but I ended up with 93 QSOs with 54 within in the US, 7 in Canada and 32 DX. Here’s the breakdown by band.

Band    QSOs    Pts  Cty   Sec
3.5      17      57    4    1
7        33     117    7    2
14       43      57    8    5
Total    93     231   19    8

Score : 6,237

Happy Holidays,
K2DSL