Starting Saturday morning East Coast time in the US was the 24 hour IOTA contest where anyone can work anyone else, but it’s really best to work stations that have an IOTA associated with them as they are worth 15 pts vs 2 pts.  You can have an IOTA number if you’re on an island which might not seem as exotic as it might sound. Yes, there are islands such as Reunion Island or the South Cook Islands that come to mind, but Long Island counts as an island too.

The contest started out slow for me with few signals and those I heard were weak. I logged some Qs and then all of a sudden I could tell the noise was back that I experienced last week. I immediately got up and asked my neighbor if he just turned something on and he said he just opened the garage and put the lights on. I asked him to shut off the lights and the noise was gone – turn on the lights and the noise was back. They installed some high output T5 fluorescent lights in their new garage and they are noisy. With both on I get about a S5-S7 when I turn the antenna to them. With one disconnected as a test, the noise was 1/2 so it’s not one particular light that was the problem. We’ll have to figure out what to do but at least the source was identified.

I spent the day going back and forth to the radio working stations here and there. It remained pretty slow to mid afternoon when the signals got stronger and I could hear and contact more stations. It continued strong through the evening so I spent time at the radio. I worked SSB (phone) for most of the contest until I saw a station spotted on CW that I wanted to work so I did some CW too, putting me in the Low Power Single Operator Assisted Mixed Mode category. The spot I saw was for Dodecanese on 20m and I was able to work him.  I saw E51AND in South Cook Islands spotted on 20m at 10pm local time and it took me 2 straight hours to get him logged right at midnight local time. He had a huge pileup  but it started to thin out a bit as it got later in the evening.

After logging the E5-S station I took a quick listen and logged 2 ZLs and a VK station on 20m CW followed by FR4NT on Reunion Island who was coming in very strong on 20m SSB.  I was pretty tired so I exported my log from N1MM, loaded it into DXKeeper and sent it off to the contest robot, Clublog, eQSL and LoTW.  I already have the SV5 Dodecanese contact confirmed on LoTW.

It looks like I worked 46 different DXCCs including Dodecanese, South Cook Island, Reunion Island, Crete, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand & Australia.

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

 
Here’s my N1MM score summary:

 Band  Mode  QSOs    Pts  IOTA
    7  CW       5     49     3
    7  LSB      2     30     2
   14  CW      23    241    13
   14  USB     86    807    29
   21  USB      6     77     4
Total  Both   122   1204    51

Score : 61,404

73 & Good DX,

K2DSL

This weekend I participated in 3 different contests with most of the effort in the NAQP RTTY.

Before the NAQP fired up the DMC RTTY contest started. It starts before the NAQP, runs during the NAQP, and continues after the NAQP ends. I worked just 36 stations on 15m & 20m. Conditions didn’t seem good for me, but it killed some time.

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

Here’s the N1MM score summary:

 Band    QSOs    Pts  DXCC   Area   Cont
   14      20     20    10      0     0
   21      16     16     9      3     4
Total      36     36    19      3     4
Score : 3,168

At 2pm local time, the NAQP fired up. It was confusing at the start since there were stations working the DMC RTTY contest that was going on and stations now working the NAQP contest that just started. It didn’t take long but it seemed to me that most of the DMC stations took a break for a while or moved to other bands less used by the NA stations. I turned the hexbeam to the west since I’m mostly working stations to the west of NJ and I heard S5 noise on 15m and 20m. I switched to the G5RV and I heard the same noise. If I point the beam to the south, the noise goes completely away. I dealt with it throughout most of the contest but it definitely impacted my ability to hear stations. A local ham was working stations I couldn’t even hear or see in the waterfall. You can tell from the low count in the 15m totals how challenging it was.

10m was quiet for both noise and unfortunately RTTY signals. I switched to 10m a few times but there wasn’t any activity. Late in the afternoon I switched to 40m and there were a few stations active. After working them I parked myself on an open frequency, called CQ and worked a bunch of stations. I switched back to the higher bands and the noise had disappeared so I worked some stations I probably couldn’t hear with the noise. As the sun started to get low in the sky I was back on 40m where there was a lot of activity both in S&P and CQing.

As things were rolling along on nicely on 40m when my wife told me it was time to head out to a friend’s party. A couple hours later we got home and I got back on 40m and 80m to make some contacts before calling it a night and heading to bed. I missed logged 7 states with most of those in the immediate area since I wasn’t on 80m until the very end.

Here’s the summary of contacts by band for the NAQP contest:

 Band    QSOs    Pts   Sec
  3.5      26     26    16
    7     119    119    41
   14     118    118    38
   21      24     24    13
   28       3      3     3
Total     290    290   111
Score : 32,190

On Sunday I decided to clean up things for outstanding QSL cards I needed to send, most in reply to those that sent them to me asking for a QSL in return. While I was doing that I had the radio on, flipped to 6m, and heard one of my club members a town away calling CQ. I realized it was the CQ WW VHF contest so I fired up N1MM, worked him and then on and off worked a station here or there. The stations ended up being local such as NJ, NY or CT and then FL with a lone LA (Louisiana) station.

I worked 12 stations in 9 different grids. I did end up getting everything done I needed with QSL cards. I’ll write about that next.

All scores sent in and also uploaded to LoTW, eQSL and ClubLog.

73,
K2DSL

I have some catching up to do as I’ve fallen behind in my short write ups. On July 4th weekend was the DLDX RTTY contest which runs for 24 hours. There were activities going on but I got some time on the air and was able to work 176 Qs.  As you can see from the breakout, most activity was on 15m & 20m which is when I was able to be at the radio.

You get more points for DX (outside the US) contacts but US contacts still get points and are multipliers.

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

Here’s the score summary from N1MM:

 Band    QSOs    Pts  DXCC   Area
  3.5       5     30     2     4
    7      18    150     6     7
   14      66    935    28     8
   21      84   1150    32    10
   28       3     25     2     2
Total     176   2290    70    31

Score : 231,290

73,
K2DSL