Monthly Archives: October 2013

2013 JARTS RTTY Summary – Maps and Stats

I didn’t get started until noon (ET) / 1600z on Saturday as I had plans on Friday night and went to help a local ham lower his tower on Saturday morning. When I got on the air, the bands were hopping and it wasn’t hard to stay busy.

I configured N1MM to enable Spot all S&P calls since everyone can run assisted and use the DX cluster. That means any call I log that wasn’t already in the bandmap gets spotted. Not sure if there’s something online that tells me how many spots I sent to the cluster (DXWatch seems to max out at showing 50) but I’d say there were a lot. Even near the end of the contest I had a few ops that sent me a message as we worked on another band thanking me for the spots.

I had the NA4RR hexbeam pointed at Europe until late in the afternoon and turned it around to point to the NW to start having the JAs come in, which they did. The JAs were mostly on 15m as usual but I started to hear them on 10m. Once some were spotted, more showed up and I worked 11 JAs in a row on 10m and 15 JAs worked on 10m in the span of 1 hour.

Later in the day on Saturday I saw a spot for N2YBB who is Mike L the ARRL Hudson Division Director operating in the NY QSO Party that was going on so I worked him. I ended up working a total of 39 NY stations on 40m and 80m SSB whenever I wanted to take a short break from hearing diddle.

Once it was good and dark, I worked stations on 40m and 80m until I headed off to bed with 341 Qs after Satuday’s effort.

Sunday morning I got up, got on (7:30am ET / 1130z) and the bands were still as good as they were on Saturday. Was able to work TA7I in Turkey on 10m (new band already confirmed via LoTW) as well as 15m. I also worked KG4HF in Guantanamo Bay on a 5th band in the contest. KG4HF happened to be the only station I worked on all 5 bands. I previously worked KG4HF last weekend on 17m.

My club was having their fall foxhunt and I was going to participate, but the bands were too good and I was having too much fun so I just drove over and gave someone the club’s debit card to pay for pizza after the event. There was a good turnout at the foxhunt but I don’t have info on it yet. So I headed back home after a short break and got back into the contest. I spent the rest of the contest bouncing around between the bands and calling CQ at times with some success. The higher bands were good enough that even near the end of the contest there seemed to be more activity on 20 than on 40m and certainly than on 80m.

Some other notables worked in the contest – Turkey (TA7I) on 10m & 15m & TA1BM on 15m, 2 different United Arab Emirates stations on 15m, Guam (KH2F) on 15m, New Zealand (ZL1BYZ) on 10m & 15m and South Africa (ZS6A) on 10m.

I wrapped up with 663 Qs in the log over the course of about 21.5 hours according to N1MM with a break being > 30 mins. Looking back over http://3830scores.com , this would be the highest QSO/Points I’ve logged for this particular contest with over 100k points greater than last year, but I missed most of Sunday last year. I worked 58 different DXCCs with the US being the most logged followed by Japan with 42 contacts.

This contest uses Age as the exchange, so excluding 00’s for the ladies and 99’s for clubs and eliminating multiple contacts with the same operator, the average age of what was sent was 59.2 years and the median was 60. The youngest age was 27 and the oldest age was 84. The age most logged was 64.

Here’s a map of the contacts using ADIF2MAP (click to enlarge):

2013_JARTS_RTTY

 

Here’s the N1MM score summary:

 Band    QSOs    Pts  DXCC  Areas
  3.5      34      68    3    8
    7      84     176    9   14
   14     156     396   36   15
   21     245     650   44   21
   28     144     414   39   13
Total     663    1704  131   71

Score : 344,208

Thanks for all the contacts & 73,
K2DSL

 

A little Makrothen RTTY contesting

A real busy weekend so I had minimal time to get on the air but for 90 mins I was able to work the fun Makrothen RTTY contest where the exchange and points are based on grid squares and distance. A few contacts = a lot of points! Friday night I had things to do when the contest first started and made just a few contacts later in the evening on 40m & 80m .

Saturday morning I was up at 4am ET (0900z) for our club’s hamfest. Weather was great and I brought 11 cards with me for out local DXCC Card Checker to validate them. All went well with checking the cards. Our local checked W2IRT had a bunch of folks stop by to get their cards checked. I then needed to leave the hamfest for a wedding so I came home, get ready and while waiting for my wife I worked some more stations in the contest before heading out for the day.

We stayed overnight at a hotel so by the time we got home from the wedding early Sunday afternoon, the 3rd session for the contest had just ended. Ended up with 63 contacts with maybe 90 mins of time on the air.

 Band    QSOs    Pts
  3.5       6   11490
    7      10   44690
   14      12   83668
   21      27  147270
   28       8   50930
Total      63  338048

Score : 338,048

73,
K2DSL

 

2013 CQ WW RTTY – Summary, Maps & Stats

This years CQ WW RTTY contest was my first real contest after getting back on the air with a shiny new NA4RR hex beam to replace my wire dipoles taken down from Hurricane Sandy. I operated low power (100 watts) and non-assisted (no DX cluster).

Friday:
Friday night some friends came over and other than showing how it worked, I didn’t operate the first 3 hours of the contest and got started at 11pm ET (0300z). I operated until 1:30am (0530z) on 40m and 80m and ended up with 95 Qs before heading to bed for 5 hours.

Saturday:
Saturday morning I took a quick spin through 80m and then 40m. I heard a couple JAs on 40m but they couldn’t hear me. I switched to 20m for 1 hour mainly work EU stations. I popped into the shower and then back in the chair on 10m. I was ecstatic to see 10m open and there was a lot of activity – 90 mins worth! I worked two Saudi Arabia stations on 10m including HZ1PS who sent a real nice personal message. I later worked HZ1PS again on 20m on Sunday and he sent another nice personal message. Thanks Peter!!

I also worked Oman on 10m and with 200 Qs logged in the contest, I stopped operating for 2 hours and went over to our clubs Portable Day at a county park about 20 mins away.  They had 7 different stations setup within walking distance using portable power with wire antennas strung on poles and trees. One station was running just 3 watts into a wire antenna in a tree and on 10m had a nice QSO with Sardinia like they were standing next to us. Another station was running a KX3 connected to a netbook making some CW WW RTTY contacts on 10m with a wire running between a pole and a tree branch. The weather was gorgeous and everyone was having a blast.

I got back on the air about 2.25 hours later, made some contacts on 10m and then switched to 15m which was hopping. 90 mins later of S&Ping EU and SA stations I took a quick look on 10m and logged some new stations.  I switched over to 20m and spent over 1 hour there spinning up and down the dial logging anything I could hear. Around 4:30pm ET (2030z) I switched back again to 10m and came up a New Zealand station. I headed back to 15m and pointed Northwest as it was time for the JAs to start coming in and within 30 mins they were coming in as I tuned the dial. I’d sneak back to 10m from time to time and see if anyone knew was calling CQ before heading back to 15m. On one switch back to 15, I went up to the top of the band to work my way down and there was a Korean station coming in just calling CQ. I listened twice to make sure I printed it correctly, and when it came back HL2WP again I sent my call and he came back to me. I sent my exchange, he asked for a repeat on the state which I sent, and then I got his QSL. I just logged my first Korea contact! I stayed on the frequency  seeing if anyone else would show up as he kept calling CQ but after 1 minute with no one else coming back to him I tuned away.

I spent the remainder of Saturday on 20m before heading to 40m and 80m, popping back to 20m from time to time. One of the contacts on 80m sent a nice message about my blog – thanks N1QD (Joe)! I called it a night about 11:30p ET (0330z) with 511 Qs in the log.

Sunday:
Woke up a bit later and got on about 7am (1100z) and spun through 80m and 40m logging over 30 stations, mostly in the US, but necessary state multipliers. I then switched to 15m and spent 2 hours working the band logging new multipliers such as Georgia, Iceland, Surinam (‘ol reliable PZ5RA). I switched to 10m for a short while, back to 20m and then back to 10m. Around 11:50am ET (1550z) , 10m got very quiet. The activity dropped considerably. I spent the rest of the day on 15m and 20m popping back to 10m from time to time. Though there were some new stations on 10m, it was much less after than on Sat and Sun morning until just before noon. Good thing 15m was hopping as the band was full from below 21080 up to 21150. As quick as you could nudge the dial there was another station to log.

On 1 band switch from 20m back to 15m, I entered 21125 into N1MM to tune to that frequency so I could see how far up the band stations still were. I could just hear a station calling CQ. I sent my call and I got an immediate reply. I sent my report and received a TU so 5W1SA on Samoa was in the log. At the time I thought that was another all time new one for me (like Korea) but I had previously logged another station a couple of years ago. Still, I was thrilled and I stayed on frequency to see if anyone else came along. After a few more CQs, N2QT came on frequency, sent out his call and exchange and I went on my way.

As it got dark out, I hopped on 40m and 80m, worked stations, ran a bit, worked some more stations, ran a bit more, and then the contest ended. I wrapped up with 895 Qs and 847k points which is a bit down from the previous year. But it was a fantastic contest and I took some time out for friends, visit club members at the park, and to keep an eye on the NY Giants play horrible football for 4 games in a row. It was great to be back on the air and making contacts with so many familiar calls again.

Here’s my N1MM score summary:

  Band    QSOs    Pts   ZN  DXCC  State 
   3.5      90    123    9    12    32
     7     161    260   14    30    37
    14     240    600   19    54    31
    21     284    742   21    61    22
    28     120    326   16    50     5
 Total     895   2051   79   207   127

Score : 847,063


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

2013_CQ_WW_RTTY_Map


Here are some stats:

DXCCs worked: 82
DXCCs worked with just 1 contact: 22

Mainland US states worked: 43

Unique stations worked: 631
Stations worked on 5 bands: 6
Stations worked on 4 bands: 14
Stations worked on 3 bands: 40
Stations worked on 2 bands: 98

Top 5 entities worked – name / # Qs / % total:
United States – 273 – 30%
Germany – 57 – 6%
Canada – 54 – 6%
Italy – 43 – 5%
Spain – 30 – 3%

 

Thanks again to everyone for participating and I can’t wait for the next contest!
73,
K2DSL