In the latest ARRL Contest Update there was a photo taken by N0AX (Ward) of K1DG (Doug) and K3LR (Tim) with a copy of a 1958 Sports Illustrated magazine.  Inside that Sports Illustrated issue is an article titled “The Battle Of The Hams“.

Some of my favorite snippets from the article are:

“a hobby—amateur radio—that is distinguished by one of the most grueling international competitions in all sport”

“It takes about six months before logs, sent from the six continents, can be tabulated and checked.”  - Some results still take that long.

“Depending on just how serious he is on the subject, the DX contest man will not only kill himself in a contest, but he will spend the better part of a year getting ready for the exquisite torture of 48 hours of almost continuous operating.”

I don’t know if this story is true, but you will chuckle… “Zone 23 is mostly tundra and Tibet, and hams there are as rare as centerfielders. Robert Ford, an R.A.F. radio operator, put Zone 23 on the map, operating from a monastery for a few months eight years ago. Then he was captured by the Communists and became famous as a man who survived five years of attempted brainwashing and Red torture. When he was released in Hong Kong three years ago, the first Westerner to greet him was a British colonel. The officer was a ham first and an Englishman second. He threw his arms around Ford and cried, “Thank God you’re alive, Bob. I’ve been sweating out your QSL card for six and a half years.”

You can read and print the entire 1958 Sports Illustrated article. The article is all still relevant today, 55 years later.

73,
K2DSL

In January we were able to get our gutters repaired on the house and garage after they were damaged when Superstorm Sandy came through the end of October and a large tree came down taking out my G5RV and home made fan dipole. After the new gutters were installed I was travelling and then we’ve had cold and snowy weather (Nemo dumped 12″ of snow). I need to shoot up some new ropes with the help of some local club members and then we can pull up a spare G5RV I have. I also have been offered another fan dipole a local ham made so I might put up some extra rope even if I don’t have anything to attach them to yet.

I missed out on some contests in January and February as well as some DX so hopefully I can get something back in the air again soon. I have been following RTTY and Contesting reflectors as well as the 3830 reports and see how well folks are doing and what others are reporting for conditions.

73,
K2DSL

I just finished my LoTW DXCC submission for the year and I have 202 entities. I have another LoTW one that came in and a few paper QSL cards I need to have a DXCC card checker process so it’s closer to 208-210 right now.

Still need to get an antenna back up after Hurricane Sandy brought them down but just need some good weather and some time.

73,
K2DSL

I need to post about last weekend’s CQ WW SSB contest and I’ll get it eventually. Hurricane Sandy passed through NJ this past weekend and boy did it do some damage. Things were sort of ok until a huge 70 ft tree from our neighbors yard came crashing down. Luckily it didn’t have a direct hit on the house or detached garage and mostly fell in between both, It took out the gutter on the side of the garage and gutters on both my 2nd floor and first floor of the house.

The tree also took out my G5RV and my 10/15/20m fan dipole. It bent the pole my dual band VHF/UHF antenna is on but otherwise I think that is probably ok. So without antennas I might not be on for a while. Hopefully I can get some new ones made and shoot some rope up to get them in the air and me back on the bands.

No power since since Monday around 6pm and I wouldn’t expect it back until late in the weekend or early next week. At the end of our street we had a huge tree come down and take 5 poles with it. 4 of the poles snapped in half and there’s still piles of transformers laying in the street. I have a generator for keeping the fridge powered and our phones charged but no heat and no hot water in the house.

Here are some pics (click to enlarge)…

Some pics of the downed power lines (click to enlarge):

When I see pictures of the devastation in NYC and the Jersey Shore I know my family and I got away pretty lucky!
73,
K2DSL

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

I had only a short time this weekend with family in town and a bunch of events to attend to get on the air. On Fri I made some late contacts in the Makrothen RTTY contest. The exchange is grid square and the points are based on the distance between my station in FN21 and the station I’m making contact with adding a multiplier of 1.5 on 40m and a multiplier of 2 on 80m. You can really rack up a score in this one which has 3 different sessions that make up the entire contest.

Bands were kind of stinky but it was good to get on the air. I also configured N1MM to add a 2nd RTTY decoder window using 2Tone by G3YYD which did seem to decode the incoming signal better then MMTTY. I think I’ll run these 2 different decoders for a while and see how things work out. I do need some more monitor real estate though and a 2nd display seems to be inevitable.

On Saturday I only had a short to make any contacts in the 2nd session and then I was busy the rest of the time. On Sunday I had no time to get on the air during the 3rd session. So it was a minimal effort but fun nonetheless.

Here’s N1MM’s score summary and logs were submitted and uploaded to LoTW & eQSL.

 Band    QSOs     Pts
  3.5      24   46204
    7      36   95856
   14      50  198238
   21       7   30658
   28       5   21082
Total     122  392038

Score : 392,038

After the NY Giants handled the San Francisco 49ers, I checked the cluster and saw the TT8TT DXpedition to Chad on 20m SSB. I hadn’t spent any time looking for them but figured I’d give it a shot. Took about 15 mins before I worked them for a new DXCC. Maybe I can find them on RTTY and get them in the log on that mode before they shut down operations over the next day or so.

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