Monthly Archives: August 2012

2012 SCC RTTY Contest Summary

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

Hong Kong VR2KF and Reunion Island FR5MV

Not much contesting this weekend for me as I wasn’t going to be around much. I did make some contacts on 40m in the Maryland QSO Party on Sat.

On Sat I worked FR5MV (Ray) on Reunion Island off the eastern coast of Madagascar. That was a new DXCC entity, which is already confirmed via LoTW. That was great!

On Sat morning I heard a Hong Kong station on 17m. I haven’t worked a station in Hong Kong on any band and barely hear them even when I see them spotted on the cluster. The operator was Kazu VR2KF. He was strong on just my G5RV though with a warble. There were a lot of stations calling and since it wasn’t a great copy for me, I emailed him. Kazu responded back immediately and we tried a couple of times but I wasn’t able to work him – all on my end with the G5RV.

Kazu told me he’ll be on again Sun morning so after I got up I checked my email and he said he was on but not hearing the US yet. Then he emailed me that he’s hearing the US. I got on the radio and there he was, stronger then yesterday AND he was calling for K2DSL! I put out my call a couple of times, he heard me and we had a short exchange. I copied a 339 from him as well as my name and he got a 559 from me. At times he was 599 but then would drop down. At 1152z I had Hong Kong in the log!

I continued to listen to Kazu for another 20 mins. He got even a bit stronger with less up and down. I emailed Kazu to thank him for such a terrific effort on his part. What a fine op!

Good DX,
K2DSL

 

 

2012 NJ QSO Party & IOTA Contests

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