Last weekend was the JARTS RTTY contest. It’s been a busy week and I’m just getting around to posting about it. Bands were good and especially 10m and 15m . I worked just a few contacts on Fri night but Sat I was able to work a good amount of the day. I worked 2 stations in China last weekend when I only previously worked 1 China station since I was licensed. There were contacts with Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand and many others. I worked 55 different DXCCs across the bands. For me, it again seemed most productive to scan the bands in S&P mode vs put my call out there in run mode.

On Sunday I worked a very short time in the morning before heading out for 8 hours to go the NY Giants football game. But after I got home late in the day I got back on the air for the final 3 hours and the bands were still hot. The JAs were active and the bands allowed me to work a lot of JA stations. To give you an idea of the JA activity I saw… I logged 47 JA QSOs with 36 unique calls so 11 stations were worked on 2 bands. I logged 18 JA Qs on 10m, 28 on 15m and 1 on 20m. For the JA sections I logged all of them except JA0 and JA9. I logged JA3 on 3 bands and the JA call areas gave me a combined 15 multipliers. Japan was my most worked DXCC outside of the US over Canada, Italy & Spain. I’m pretty sure that never happened before.

I worked John WA5ZUP on all 5 bands and he was the only one likely because I didn’t spend a lot of time on 80m. John seems to be in every contest and always one of the strongest signals on the bands.  I worked 5 stations on 4 bands and 33 stations on 3 bands.  The 515 total Qs in the contest is the most I’ve made in a JARTS contest so far and that’s with 8+ hours being away from the radio on Sunday.

Map of contacts using ADIF2MAP (click to enlarge):

N1MM Summary:

 Band    QSOs    Pts  DXCC  Area
  3.5      18    36      0    9
    7      81    174    11   15
   14     111    269    31   11
   21     184    472    39   19
   28     121    329    34   14
Total     515   1280   115   68

Score : 234,240

Up next weekend (or this weekend as I type the summary) is the CQ WW SSB contest and 10m is again hopping.

73,
K2DSL

This past weekend was a big RTTY contest and for the most part I was able to operate whenever I wanted. Last years version of this contest had excellent conditions and resulted in the most contacts made in any contest to date. This years results came in a close 2nd – surpassing the score from last years CQ WW but coming short a couple dozen Qs. I ran unassisted so any station I worked was found by spinning the knob or when calling CQ.

Friday:
Fri night I spent just 3 hrs on the air and ended up logging 112 Qs on 20m, 40m and 80m.

Saturday:
After waking up Sat morning I scanned through 80m and 40m logging anyone on those bands before popping up to 15m. There were stations being heard from 21.065 thru 21.150. It took quite some time to take one pass thru the band working any station I could hear. I then checked 10m and was estatic to see the band already open to Europe. The 10m band stayed open the entire weekend as it did last year. I needed to tighten down the RTTY filter on my Kenwood TS-2000 at points with so many stations so close to each other. It was great!

Before this weekend I had worked a station in Guam just once since I’ve been on HF. This weekend I worked 3 Guam stations all on 10m! It is so much more enjoyable to work 10m when it is open then to fight the higher noise level on 20m or even 15m.

We went out to dinner with my brother in law for a couple hours Sat evening but I got back on the air after for a couple more hours to log some states/entities on 40m and 80m. I spent most of Saturday doing S&P just because I seemed to achieve a higher rate then when I tried to call CQ. I ended up Saturday night with 583 Qs and 459k points. A good day on the radio!

Sunday:
Sunday is usually slower just from working so many stations on Sat, but it wasn’t much slower this weekend. Maybe I needed to work a little harder then just spinning the dial 500hz to work the next station, but there was plenty of new stations or stations on a different band to make Sunday fun too. 10m and 15m were the most productive but I spent time on 20m to get more multipliers. The bands were still good and 10m and 15m were wall to wall taking up a large portion of each band. I kept expecting to stop hearing stations as I tuned up the band but they just kept coming through.

Sunday @ 6:44pm ET / 2244z I surpassed last years score with 53 less Qs as a result of more mults or more DX Qs vs North America Qs. Late on Sun I was able to work some JAs on 10m though some of those took a few repeats.

I was hoping to match the Qs logged from last year but I came up a bit short with 25 less Qs. My score though was 897,600 which is 39,432 greater then 2011. I’m very happy with how the weekend turned out.

I uploaded my logs to LoTW, eQSL and sent in to the contest. I already have Guam now confirmed on RTTY for a new mode and Bolivia confirmed as a new DXCC.

Stats:
Some interesting stats show I worked 44 of the 48 mainland states, most on multiple bands. I logged 679 unique callsigns in 82 unique DXCCs within 2 days.  On 10m alone I worked 57 unique DXCC entities. I worked 30 of the 40 CQ zones. I worked 3 stations on 5 bands, 18 stations on 4 bands, 40 stations on 3 bands  & 111 stations on 2 bands. 33% of my Qs were with US stations.

Here’s the score summary from N1MM:

 Band    QSOs   Pts   ZN  DXCC   ST
  3.5      41    49    4     3   19
    7     119    177   8    19   35
   14     228    507  24    60   41
   21     316    772  23    66   27
   28     232    607  21    57   18
Total     936   2112  80   205  140

Score : 897,600

Here’s a map of contacts made over the weekend using ADIF2MAP (click image for a larger picture):

Thanks for all the fun!
K2DSL

This weekend was supposed to be the Sept ARRL VHF contest with my local club where we head up to a mountain top, set up a couple of towers with VHF (440/220/144 & 6m) antennas and operate, but the weather forecast was bad so it was cancelled. A good thing it was cancelled as Saturday was nasty with intermittent downpours, high winds, tornado warnings and 2 confirmed tornado touchdowns in NYC.  I didn’t even operate on Saturday in the WAE contest after a morning of activities and then the bad weather.

The WAE contests are interesting in that they add QTCs into the mix. A QTC is when you send up to 10 previous contacts you made to the other station. The info includes the time of the contact, the callsign of the station and the exchange the station gave you. For points, it’s the same as making a contact, so if you make 10 actual QSOs and on the 11th QSO you send them 10 QTCs, you have logged 21 points. In the SSB contest, I can only make a contact with European stations and I am the one to send them the QTCs (WAE RTTY contest has different rules).

Friday night I made a dozen contacts on 20m and 40m all with stations having nice strong signals. Saturday was a washout with the horrible weather so no contacts were made.

Sunday morning was beautiful and no indication of how bad the weather was the previous day with the exception of my fan dipole having the 20m and 15m legs wrapped around each other. I went out, lowered one end of the antenna, untangled the wires and hoisted it back up. I spent time on and off throughout the day making contacts with a lot of activity on 15m.

European ops were very aggressive asking for QTCs which was great. Even if I didn’t have a full set of 10 to send they wanted what I had. I very rarely got to more then 10 without an op asking for QTCs. 10m had some short openings but nothing too long. I checked often to see if anyone was calling CQ.

Late in the day activity moved to 20m and other then a couple at the end on 40m the activity was on 20m. I ended up with just a couple QTCs I could have given out so I essentially doubled my points by sending almost all my QSOs as QTCs. A fun twist to the standard exchange. I’m not sure why so many non-EU ops said “No QTCs” unless they were fresh out or just not comfortable sending them. I never turned down a request.

Here’s my score summary from N1MM:

 Band  Q/QTC  QSOs   Mlt
    7    QSO    11    18
   14    QSO    60    46
   14   SQTC    50     0
   21    QSO    53    46
   21   SQTC    65     0
   28    QSO     4     8
   28   SQTC     3     0
Total    All   246   118

Score : 29,028

Here’s a map of the contacts made using ADIF2Map (click for a larger view):

Now to see if I can get Swains Island – NH8S…

73,
K2DSL

Friday into Saturday was the 24 hour Russian RTTY contest. Had a few things to deal with over the weekend and thought I’d just get on to give out a couple of quick points. I participated a bit more than that.

Got on to make a couple contacts starting out with K1SFA @ K1TTT who I quickly found on 40m. Made another half dozen on 40m before checking 20 which had some activity. Worked 15 or so stations and checked 15m. AL9A was booming in on 15m and then I worked another US station but didn’t hear anything else. Went back to 20m and worked some more before heading back to 40m. Worked some there and came across TA2ZF in Turkey who was pretty loud. He wasn’t spotted yet from what I could tell but there were louder stations then me working him. I came back in a few more mins, could still work hear him and worked my first TA on 40m. I worked a couple more on 40m and 20m before checking 15m before calling it a night and came across BA2IA in China. He was up and down but I could get a good copy on him. Took a couple mins but I did work him for my first China contact in the log! I then called it a night.

Sat morning I got on to see what I could hear and with the radio still on 15m I heard ZC4LI (UK Base on Cyprus). Steve is an active contestor who I worked a few times in 2008 and 2009 but hadn’t worked much since (one in 2010 and twice in 2011). It was nice to work him for the first time in 2012. 10m was open to Europe – worked Germany, Serbia, Romania and Hungary. Bands seemed to drop out shortly after that and then were less active whenever I was able to hop on for a bit and check.

I received a nice TNX LOUD AS ALWAYS exchange from DO4DXA. I worked TA2ZF in Turkey again on 20m mid-day Sat and heard him continuously through the contest.

Midday on Saturday I worked TG9 and KH7 on 10m both with strong signals.

I loaded the logs from N1MM into DXKeeper, uploaded the QSOs to LoTW and eQSL as well as sent it in to the contest sponsor. This morning when I looked, the contact with China is already confirmed on LoTW for a new one.

Here’s the score summary from N1MM:

 Band    QSOs    Pts  DXC   OBL
    7      13     80    4     2
   14      72    585   29     7
   21      59    500   28     2
   28       9     85    7     0
Total     153   1250   68    11

Score : 98,750

Here’s a map of the contacts made (using ADIF2Map) – click to enlarge:

73,
K2DSL

Saturday into Sunday morning was the 2012 SCC RTTY ham radio contest. I had a lot of errands to get done on Saturday morning and a big party to go to Saturday evening, so my time to participate would be limited to just Saturday afternoon.

The exchange and multiplier for this contest is the year you were first licensed. For me that was 2007. Most seemed to be in the ballpark but one exchange was 1916 which required me to forcefully log the station when I worked them because N1MM said it wasn’t valid. I just checked the call now and it is for W7DK which is a club station that appears founded in 1916. Before I checked QRZ I was calculating the age of the person, assuming it was their birth year vs their license year and that would have made them 96 yrs old!

I spent most of my time on 20m and the rest on 15m though I checked 10m a lot. I would say at times 10m was open but no one was there calling CQ. During the contest I worked C31PP on 10m in Andorra for a new band with that country. The station wasn’t in the contest so I logged them in DXKeeper instead of N1MM. I also eeked out a 10m contact with K1SFA who was operating at the K1TTT station. I just saw K1SFA post her score which is almost 60% higher then last years #1 world score in the contest – congrats Khrystyne and team!

I didn’t work anything exotic in the short time I was on. I did hear India but there was a good pile-up and it wasn’t worth my time to try. I didn’t work a station that sent 2012 meaning they were licensed in the last 8 months. I did work 2 different EU stations sending 2011. Leaving out the 1916 station, the lowest year I received was 1950 by a Slovenia station. Both the average and median of all the years (excluding 1916) was 1982.

Here’s the N1MM score summary:

 Band    QSOs    Pts  Year
    7       6     13    6
   14      64    166   40
   21      33     82   27
   28       6     14    6
Total     109    275   79

Score : 21,725

Here’s a map of the contacts generated from ADIF2Map (click for a larger view):

All logs are uploaded and submitted.

73,
K2DSL

I’m a little late getting to this post but it’s been a busy week.  Last weekend were a couple of smaller contests that I got some time in.

The NJ QSO Party is a state QSO party that never seems to attract much attention.  I was often away on the weekend it was running, but this time I’d be home, at least for some of it. I was away until late on Saturday and after I got home I went on 40m to see what was happening. I spun the dial and worked a few stations that were on and called CQ a bit but not much activity. The next day I did the same on 40m and it felt like there was even less. I recorded a CQ NJQP message and configured N1MM to send it through my SignaLink as a voice keyer, which worked great. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much activity, and I got tired of listening to myself call CQ.

I ended up with a whopping 28 Qs. I only worked 6 different NJ counties and didn’t even work my own county. At least I can say I participated.

 Band QSOs Pts Sec
    7   28  28  17
Total   28  28  17

Score : 476

A bit more action was going on in the RSGB IOTA contest. I ended up with much less time in this and more QSOs. Some were US but a bunch were DX including an “easy” contact with Turkey. I stayed on 20m and didn’t even check 15m at all. Below is the N1MM summary.

 Band QSOs Pts IOTA
   14 38   349  17
Total 38   349  17

Score : 5,933

Not sure how much time I’ll get on the radio for the next couple weeks. I’ll miss the NAQP SSB contest on the 18th & the SARTG RTTY contest  also that weekend. Before we know it, it’s September!

73 and good DX!
K2DSL

The July NAQP RTTY ham radio contest was Saturday. Format is a 12 hour contest that a single operator can work 10 total hours in. The exchange is consistent giving Name and State (or Canadian Province). I worked, as I have done in past NAQP contests, the names Dopey and Bambi during this contest.

I reviewed the NAQP July posting from last year that I wrote and recall that the first hour was slow and I might want to consider delaying the start and working a bit later into the evening.  So I started about 40 mins after the official start of the contest. I was hoping 15m and 10m would provide some activity but they were pretty quiet with little activity. I spent the first part on 20m and switching back to 15m & 10m hoping for conditions/activity to improve, but instead conditions seemed to get worse. So with around 77 Qs in the log, I decided to burn a 30 min break and see if things would improve.

After taking a 30 min break (the minimum time allowed between contacts to not count as operating time), I came back and things did seem to improve a little with my first contact after the break being KL7RA in Alaska on 15m. At least they didn’t get worse. With my delayed start and the 30 min break, I could work up through 15 mins before the end of the contest.

Before the contest on the RTTY reflector (mailing list) there was a posting about special event station VE7TUB being in the contest. I found and worked them on 20m.

Conditions were challenging for me throughout the entire contest. 20m became wall to wall with it being the only band seeing much activity, at least as far as I was concerned. Stations that were strong on 20m telling me they were also listening (QRV) at a specific 15m frequency resulting in no signal being heard.

There was also the DMC  RTTY contest going on at the same time so there were different stations calling CQ for different contests. Most of the DX stations calling CQ were in the DMC contest, but I did have some DX stations come back to me and send both a serial number (DMC) and their name (NAQP) in their exchange. It’s always nice when you are running 100w into a dipole and Greece, Slovenia & Czech stations call you.

I switched to 40m just after 0000z (8pm ET) and there was a fair amount of activity already on the band. I guess with 15m not cooperating, you need to move somewhere and 40m is where folks went. The bands weren’t noisy and I didn’t notice any local noise so that wasn’t an issue. I popped back onto 20m from time to time the remainder of the evening to see if any new stations showed up to work. I hit 80m just before 0300z (11pm ET) where at the time I had no 1 call area stations in the log. Noise wasn’t too bad on 80m either.

I surpassed last years score at 0439z (12:39am) with KH6ZM on 40m. 338 Qs this year vs 366 last year made possible by more multipliers – 121 vs 111 at the same score from 2011. I had 1 hour to go when I passed last years score. The last hour was tough as it was getting late and folks were dropping off, even if they were working the entire 10 hours. The last 15 mins of my time I found very little to work and calling CQ resulted in very little activity. Next year, it makes sense to wait 30 mins after the start, but maybe not take a 30 min break, even if conditions seem poor. The last 30 mins of the contest (0530z – 0600z) are pretty dead and not worth holding out for any activity there. Maybe different if you are working 80m on the West Coast.

I finished up with 367 Qs in the log but one was a dup that called me so I have 366 Qs with points which exactly matches last years QSO count. I ended up with 126 multipliers this year vs 111 last year which results in a score increase of 5,490 points on the same number of contacts logged. I worked 45 of the 50 States and 7 of the 13 Canadian Provinces.

Here’s the score summary from N1MM:

My log has been submitted to the contest, eQSL & LoTW.

Good DX,
K2DSL