This past weekend was the ARRL 10m contest. It starts to become a tough time of year with the holidays approaching to spend a large chunk of time at the radio. Last week I wasn’t home all weekend and couldn’t operate, missing out on the TARA RTTY contest and the inaugural 10m RTTY contest. For this weekends 10m contest you can work any station anywhere as a contact. Each phone/SSB contact is 2 points and each CW contact is 4 points. Multipliers are US States, Canadian Provinces and Mexican States as well as each DX entity (outside of the US, Canada and Mexico). I operated both CW and SSB though more on SSB.

Friday night I didn’t turn the radio on at all, but things were pretty good on Sat morning after I woke up. Conditions seemed ok, but not the great 10m conditions from the contests in November.  I make a comparison like that, but I don’t even have to back a year and 10m was completely dead, so I am thrilled with the current conditions. About 3pm I needed to head out for some holiday shopping and after I got home I only made a few additional contest contacts.

At 7pm ET (0000z) on Saturday night, I stopped contesting, fired up the DX cluster and noticed a spot for Ethiopia. I was able to make my first contact with a station in Ethiopia with ET3SID on a DXpedition. It wasn’t a contest contact but I got them on 20m phone on Saturday for a new one in the log. According to the N2OO QSL page, N2OO will be handling the QSLs for ET3SID and ET3AAA during the November 2011 DXpedition. There’s an OQRS link near the top of the page if you want to go that route.

Sunday I got on a little later in the morning and conditions seemed a bit worse than they were on Saturday. I heard fewer European stations and just fewer stations in general. It did seam like almost every other contact was with a station in Texas. I ended up logging 34 contacts with Texas ops. California was 2nd with 23 Qs logged and Colorado with 17 Qs. Two surprisingly active states were 6 Qs with ops in Montana and 5 Qs with ops in Wyoming.  I eeked out a couple of contacts with nearby states but just 1 each with West Virginia and South Carolina which were the only Southeastern US states I logged and not east of Texas/Kansas/Minnesota either.

I finished up with 348 contacts that made up 63 DXCCs. That is more DXCCs logged on 10m in a few hours than I worked in my first 3 years of operating combined. You can see almost a vertical line where the contacts to the East (Europe and 1 in South Africa) were and nothing was past there. Nothing past Hawaii either and I don’t think that was a very easy contact at the time either. I did happen to follow a fellow NJ operator K2DLS a couple of times and maybe he followed me a couple of times. Sometimes logging K2DLS and then K2DSL trips up some ops, but I didn’t notice any hesitation when it happened this weekend.

Map of all contacts (click to enlarge):

Map of continental US/Canada contacts (click to enlarge):

Here’s my score summary. Mults are the US/Canadian/Mexican States + DX Entities:

 Band  Mode  QSOs   Pts Mult
   28  CW      87   348   43
   28  USB    261   522   88
Total  Both   348   870  131

Score : 113,970

1 radio, 100 watts and a 10m wire dipole is sure a lot of fun!

73 and Happy Holidays!
K2DSL

This weekend was the 2011 ARRL SSB Sweepstakes ham radio contest. The contest format is to work as many US, Canadian, Puerto Rico and Virgin Island stations as possible. You can work any station only once and each ARRL section is a multiplier. ARRL sections are mostly states, but some states like NJ, NY, PA, TX and CA have multiple sections. The exchange is a relatively long one with it being serial number, operating class (also called precedence), your own call, check (last 2 years you were first licensed) and your ARRL section. My exchange would be 123 A K2DSL 07 NNJ which represents contact #123, A which is low power unassisted, my call sign, 07 since I was licensed in 2007 and NNJ (Northern NJ) is my ARRL section.

Saturday:
I had a VE testing session to attend on Saturday so I wasn’t home for the start of the contest but there are 11 new Techs about to get their call sign this week. Between the late start and having something to do that night, I was only able to operate 3 hours on Saturday, but was able to make 87 Qs covering 47 of the 80 ARRL sections. Since I only operated 80m for a short time, and 80m is where most of my “local” northeast states will be worked, I needed a lot of the nearby states/sections still. I did work a good number of the 0 and 7 call areas which can sometimes be the toughest to get such as Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, North & South Dakota as well as the Canadian Northwest Territory.

Sunday:
On Sunday, I slept relatively late but was able to spend time on the radio often throughout the day. When I first fired the radio up, I was still on 80m and scanned the band and was surprised to find a few stations still on 80m which gave me a couple more quick sections. I moved to 40m for the next hour and worked another 11 mults (60 total at this point). I checked 15m at 1400z (9 am local) and immediately worked the Virgin Islands section but there wasn’t much activity there yet so I switched to 20m and worked 5 more mults (66 total).

I switched back to 40m and made a bunch more contacts but no new mults. It starts to get harder to find the new sections I haven’t logged. I really wasn’t thinking I would operate a lot this weekend and certainly didn’t think I’d be able to find this many sections, but I felt I was getting pretty lucky, especially with some of the tougher ones for me – MS, KY & WV being the typically harder ones for me on the East Coast. From this point on I was just switching between the bands and tuning up and down them from the bottom to the top (or when I stopped hearing any stations) working any station I hadn’t worked before with infrequent new sections being found.

Midday I needed to stop and attend a competition for my daughter and her team. It was worthwhile as they placed first in her final High School cheerleading competition. When I got back home, I still needed a couple California sections, Puerto Rico, 1 or 2 Canadian sections, SC and unbelievably my own NNJ section. I continued to jump between the bands and just tune up/down. I worked S&P the entire contest and never once called CQ. Sometimes that makes it difficult to log sections if the operator is also working S&P.

At 22:55z I worked SC which left just 2 sections – my own Northern NJ and Puerto Rico. Working SC gave me WAS (Worked All States) in under 24 hours.  I figured NNJ would be something I’d get but I had only heard 1 PR station when I was on this weekend and he had a large pileup so I moved along but didn’t find him again. At 00:34z I worked a NNJ station as contact # 301 on 80m for section #79 leaving just Puerto Rico. I finished scanning 80m and then 40m before heading to 20m and finding a PR station with a good size pileup. It took about 5 mins of putting my call out there before he picked me up and worked him as contact #308 for a clean sweep of all 80 ARRL sections!

Stats:
Below are some stats produced by the K0RC log analyzer.

I worked the following States/Providences only once in the contest:
AR, HI, MS, NE, SC, UT & VT
MB, NL & NWT Providences
Puerto Rico

I logged CA stations the most at 33 times followed by MDC (Maryland/DC) stations 31 times.

I worked the most stations in the 4 call area with 55 Qs followed by the 0 call area with 41 Qs.

In the power/precedence breakdown I worked 111 B (High Power) stations followed by 105 U (Unlimited using DX Cluster) stations followed by 71 A (Low Power) stations. I worked 2 stations running Q (QRP) and they both had good strong signals calling CQ.

Looking at the year first licensed that was sent as part of the exchange, the most frequent years sent were:
(19)77, (19)69, (19)55 & (19)76
For 2011, the current year, there were 3 stations that sent 11.
I worked 5 other ops that sent (20)07 which is the same year I was licensed.

Here’s the score summary from N1MM showing the breakdown on contacts and sections by band:

 Band    QSOs    Pts  Sec
  3.5      72    144   13
    7      93    186   15
   14      65    130   19
   21      69    138   27
   28      45     90    6
Total     344    688   80

Score : 55,040

All logs were uploaded to eQSL, LoTW and sent into the contest Sunday evening.

For those in the US, have a happy Thanksgiving!
K2DSL

The fun and different WAE RTTY contest was this weekend. It utilizes QTCs which is a batch, usually of 10, contacts that can be exchanged with the other station as long as they are on a different continent. It helps increase your score beyond just the contacts you directly make. I made 573 QSOs and added 589 QTCs for a total of 1162 total contacts.

Friday night was the start of the contest but I was at the last high school football game of the year which was also the last game my oldest daughter, captain of the cheerleading squad, would cheer at in high school. When I got home I fired up the radio and spent 1 hour making contacts before calling it a night with 38 contacts.

Saturday conditions were good across the bands with the majority of activity being on 10m. 20m seems to be the least crowded of the bands where up until a few months ago, 90%+ of the activity would be on 20m. Here’s a screenshot of an active bandmap from N1MM when I was on 10m just after 10am (1500z) on Saturday (click to enlarge):

I was able to work a VK (Asutralia) station just after 4pm local (2100z) on 10m. It was the only VK station I worked all weekend. The next station I worked was a Hawaii station on 10m. 1 hour later I worked 4 JA stations in a row on 10m. I asked to send/receive QTCs a bunch when I thought I wouldn’t have an issue receiving or they would hear me ok sending. If there’s too much QRM/QSB, repeats can be painful. I probably could have asked more often and I’ll try and do that next year. Late in the day I spend a little time on 40m and 80m but didn’t log too many and did a few other things late in the day. I worked a Saudi Arabian station on 20m. which is only the 2nd Saudi station I’ve worked.

Sunday conditions were good, though a bit more work bypassing stations I hadn’t worked the day before. 15m seemed more active on Sunday and less general noise on that band. I was able to work the same Saudi station from Saturday but this time on 10m. Tuning the bands for S&P was productive all day Saturday and most of Sunday so I didn’t call CQ too often. Around mid day on Sunday I started to call CQ on various bands, and I’d get a short burst of stations but it didn’t last long and I went back to CQing.

Some notable Qs made: ZD8F on Ascension Island worked on 20m late Sat afternoon and 10m on Sun morning right after the Saudi 10m contact. Sat afternoon on 10m I had 4 JA station contacts in a row and 7 total in less than 30 mins. Also logged Phil GU0SUP for just the 2nd time and ZC4LI who I worked a lot a couple years ago but handed logged a contact with in 18 months.

Some stats show 1 station worked on 5 bands and 12 other stations worked on 4 bands. There were 359 unique stations worked out of the 573 Qs’s logged. Looks like 59 different DXCCs were logged across 25 different zones. US stations topped the list followed by Germany, Canada, Italy and the Netherlands.

The map of all contacts made is below (click to enlarge):

Here’s a map of all the 10m contacts made over the weekend (click to enlarge):

Logs have been upload to LoTW, eQSL and sent off to the contest sponsor and already confirmed as received. Here’s my score summary which you can see is a bit longer than normal because it shows the QTCs by band:

Band   Q/QTC  QSOs    Pts  Mlt
 3.5    QSO    23      23   36
   7    QSO    88      88   87
  14    QSO   138     138  122
  14   RQTC    90      90    0
  14   SQTC    40      40    0
  21    QSO   129     129  104
  21   RQTC   100     100    0
  21   SQTC    60      60    0
  28    QSO   195     195  116
  28   RQTC   169     169    0
  28   SQTC   130     130    0
Total   All  1162    1162  465

Score : 540,330

I enjoy the WAE format. Looks like the ARRL Phone (SSB) Sweepstakes is up next weekend so I’ll be trying to get time on the air for that one.

73,
K2DSL

This past weekend was the CQ WW SSB ham radio contest and the conditions leading up to this weekend pointed at good conditions and that certainly seemed to be the case.  Because it is still football season and add in Halloween weekend, there were a lot of other activities to deal with. We also had a freak October snowstorm that caused a lot of damage and power outages that are still ongoing. But when I was on the air, it was a blast.

Friday night I went straight from work to the last home high school game of the season so I wasn’t back home until 9:45pm ET (0145z)  and spent 1 hour on 20m making some contacts including a JA and Hawaii station, a bunch of Caribbean stations and some European stations. I called it an early night spending a little time with the family before heading to bed.

Saturday was going to be the day I could spend the most time on the radio. I got on just before 9am  and scanned 20m for a few contacts and spent the next 1 hour on 15m. Most contacts were to Europe and the Caribbean. I switched to 10m around 10:00am (1400z) and for the next 2.5 hours made a bunch of S&P contacts to Europe and the Caribbean. Nice strong signals from both areas. I needed to take a break and got back in a couple hours and 10m was still going strong.

By this time, we were getting an early snow storm. It wasn’t supposed to start snowing until later in the day or early evening but before noon the heavy wet snow was coming down. The problem is the trees all have most of their leaves on them and that was going to be a big concern that turned into a serious problem. As the snow continued non-stop for hours, branches with leaves and heavy wet snow started to snap. I lost a bunch of very large branches that didn’t cause any damage to my house or vehicles, but others weren’t so lucky. The largest limb fell on the power/phone lines from the street to our house but with a neighbor we were able to push it away from the wires. We had sporadic power outages but they didn’t last too long. Others in town have been out of power since Saturday with the possibility it could be a week before all power is restored. At one point we were standing on our porch and every 15 seconds you could hear the crack and see a new branch fall from someone’s tree. It snowed from late morning through the night for what seems to be the largest Oct snowfall since they started keeping records in the 1800’s. Lucky for me, the branches holding my wire antennas held up and even branches which hit the antennas and ropes didn’t take them down.

As I dealt with the snow during Saturday afternoon I intermittently got on the radio. My wire antennas were drooping from the weight of the snow and I could tell at one point my 3 band fan dipole was touching the roof, I was able to make contacts.  Around 6:30pm (2230z) I made my first VK Australian contact on 10m and got him on the first the call followed by 2 Hawaii stations. There were probably 5 or so intermittent blackouts during the afternoon that put me off the air. By 7:30pm (2330z) I needed to shut down and head to a couple of Halloween parties in town. We had to deal with multiple detours as roads were closed from downed trees and power lines. The roads were a mess but the parties were fun. When I got home around 1:00am (0500z) my wife asked if I was getting back on the radio but I decided to head to bed.

Sunday morning was a home Giants NFL football game so I was off early to go to the game. It was warming up and sunny without a cloud in the sky – great weather to watch a football game. I got home from the game, moved branches around, pulled one down that was leaning on the house, and turned the radio on  at 5:15pm (2115z) and went right to 10m. Just after 6pm (2200z) I started to hear JA stations and was able to work two JA stations back to back on 10m. I even worked one JA station on 3 bands – 10, 15 & 20m.  I popped over to 15m and worked a few more stations and after a quick bite for dinner popped over to 20m for the remainder of the contest working AL9A as my last contact.

I ended up logging 9 different JA stations in 12 contacts, 5 different AK stations in 6 contacts with 4 on 10m, 5 different HI stations in 6 contacts also with 4 on 10m. I also logged the 3XY1D Guinea dxpedition, the C5A Gambia dxpedition and Turkey on 10m for the first time. In total worked 65 different DXCCs. Had a nice short chat with a few different operators including Derek J39BS who I seem to find in most contests as well as KL7AF who recalled sending my QSL request from over 2 years ago.

Here’s my score summary for the time I was able to spend on the air:

 Band    QSOs    Pts  Zone DXCC
   14      43    108   17   27
   21      67    180   17   36
   28     142    385   17   51
Total     252    673   51  114

Score : 111,045

Here’s a map of the contacts made over the weekend (click to enlarge):

73 and thanks for the fun!
K2DSL

The preliminary results for the recent 2011 NA RTTY Sprint that took place have been posted and it looks like I just squeaked out coming in first in the 2nd call area. I had a 8 contacts removed from the score I posted that I’d be interested in trying to figure out how I blew them. I have the LCR (Log Checking Report) and need to compare it to what the MMTTY log

I ended up coming in 4th overall in the Low Power category and 11th overall regardless of power. A fun short sprint!

73,
K2DSL

I had almost no available time to operate this weekend with other events (mostly football – high school, college and professional) going on Fri night, all day Saturday and most of the day Sunday. For a total of 1 hour operating, I made 27 contacts, all on 10m. I’m sure I could have switched bands, but I was having fun on 10m since it’s all “new” to me with the band being open.

Saturday morning I had 30 mins from when I was ready to leave before heading out of town for the entire day so I fired up the radio to see if I could hear anything on 10m and the JARTS RTTY ham radio contest was going on and I could hear some signals so I quickly configured N1MM for this contest and made a few quick contacts. The exchange is your age which is fun to see vs a sequential serial number. In the 30 mins I made 15 contacts all with stations in Europe. I needed to run so I shut things down and didn’t think I’d be on any more this weekend.

Sunday a bit after  7pm I was able to get back on during the last hour of the contest and figured I’d see if 10m had anything and boy I’m glad I did. The first contact on 10m was a strong JA station for my first JA station logged on 10m. I worked a total of 6 JA stations on 10m RTTY in 30 mins. To top it off I worked a VK4 station in Australia, again on 10m RTTY for yet another new DXCC worked on this band. I didn’t hear any European stations coming in but did hear some US West Coast ops.

If the reported ages sent in the exchange were accurate. 4 of the 27 operators worked were younger than me and one was my age (48). The youngest sent their age as 32. The oldest op worked skipping the 99 reported age for multis was 76. There were 3 ops over the age of 70.

All this with 100w and a dipole. What a lot of fun!  I don’t know how the bands were for the contest throughout the weekend but I’ll check out the reports on 3830 and see what folks have to say.

73,
K2DSL

This past weekend was the Makrothen RTTY ham radio contest and the NA RTTY Sprint. The Makrothen RTTY contest is three 8 hour sessions and the NA RTTY Sprint is 4 hours right after the 2nd Makrothen session ends.

The Makrothen contest exchange is grid square and the points are calculated based on distance. Also there’s a bonus for contacts on 40m and 80m but no other multipliers. The first Makrothen session was Friday night and the bands were very noisy for me and it was rough going and I only worked a bit of the time before calling it a night. I ended up with 74 Qs and 219,000 points when I set off for bed. Saturday’s session started at noon local time through 8pm and the bands were much quieter and the activity was up.  10m was open from time to time and worked ZS2 in South Africa on 10m. I was working S&P a lot but it wasn’t too hard to find spots and call CQ for a bit which I did on 15m and 20m.

I broke 1 million points with a contact on 15m with JM1CXW, a JA RTTY op I can always count on to hear my faint signal. I worked a few different JA ops and even had two 10m contacts to JAs on 10m which is a first for me. I noticed in the middle of the contest that KH2/N2NL was spotted on 12m CW and since I didn’t have Guam on any band/mode I switched to see and he was coming in loud. It didn’t take long at all to have my first contact with Guam. Starting around 6pm local time I was able to work Hawaii, Alaska and Japan all in the span of a couple of mins for nice long distance contacts. Around 6:20pm local time I passed last years score which is normally a goal I have in any contest. Just after 6:30pm I was able to work the two JAs on 10m. I ended up at the end of Saturday’s session with 281 Qs and 1.223 million for a score.

Right after the end of the 2nd Makrothen session is the start of the NA RTTY Sprint. I grabbed a quick dinner, got back on the radio, reconfigured N1MM for the Sprint and started that 4 hour contest. The Sprint is an odd format in that after you work a station, that operator relinquishes control of the frequency to you and he needs to QSY to another frequency. It is a little tricky at first but pretty easy once you get going. Because it’s very different, not all the ops that are participating in the contest understand the flow and continues to call CQ when he should QSY or the new station doesn’t take the frequency and call CQ. But it’s quick and fun. Because it’s all after dark, it’s mostly on 40m and 80m with a bit of 20m activity. Since you can only work a station once per band, there are points where I have worked anyone I could hear and calling CQ is sometimes futile. If there was more activity, the fun could last the whole 4 hours. I beat last years score but a good amount, but I also was able to put in more time. The score summary is below.

At midnight after the NA RTTY Sprint ended I went off to bed. Sunday morning I woke up with just a bit of time to operate while I get ready to head out to go tailgating for a football game. The bands weren’t very good early in the morning and getting to 300 Qs (from the 281 the night before) was going very slow. Most stations I could hear I had already worked, 40m was empty as was 10m so it was hunt and peck on 20m and 15m. Near 10am (1400z) when I needed to head out the bands seemed to getting better, but I needed to leave. Based on the outcome of the football game maybe I should have stayed and spent more time in the contest. As I shut things down I ended up the contest with 301 Qs and a score of 1,313,052.

Here are the score summaries from N1MM for both contests. Following the summary is a map screen shot of the contacts made in the Makrothen contest with some nice long distant contacts to South Africa, Japan and Asiatic Russia. All logs have been sent in and uploaded to LoTW and eQSL. Thanks to all the ops that made it another fun RTTY contest weekend!

Makrothen Summary:

Band    QSOs    Pts
 3.5      18   23302
   7      43  143750
  14     141  628130
  21      73  371162
  28      26  146708
Total     301 1313052

Score : 1,313,052

NA RTTY Sprint:

Band    QSOs    Pts  Mlt
 3.5      21     21    2
   7      51     51   18
  14      25     25   13
Total     97     97   33

Score : 3,201

Map of Makrothen RTTY contacts (click to enlarge):

73,
K2DSL