I got on the air a couple of hours after the contest had begun and made a few 20m SSB contacts before checking 20m CW but I didn’t hear much activity there so I flipped back to SSB. I checked 15m from time to time but it was dead quiet again for me like it was during the NAQP RTTY contest. Since I was on the radio during daylight hours only there wasn’t much 40m activity either though I did log a couple of Q’s there. Late in the afternoon, the EU stations started coming in louder then the US stations and they were easier to log later in the day.

My wife and I had plans to go to dinner with a bunch of folks so before dusk we left for dinner. When we got back late in the evening about 5 hours later, I put the radio on and worked 3 stations (2 IOTA + 1 non-IOTA) before working Hawaii and Australia (Tazmania) to end things before shutting down. Always nice to end with a nice contact to Australia at a bit of 10k miles from my location.

Almost half the contacts I made were with IOTA stations worth 15 points each vs the non-IOTA stations worth 3 points each. Not that I was shooting for any big score, but you can see how big a difference there is. Logs have been uploaded to eQSL, LoTW and sent in to the contest. There is an interesting 2 step confirmation process to submitting your logs for this contest where you need to go online, add some additional information and confirm your submission.

Here’s a screenshot of the contacts made which you can click to enlarge:

Here’s the score summary:

  Band  Mode  QSOs    Pts  Sec
     7  LSB      2     18    1
    14  CW       6     42    2
    14  USB     58    486   24
 Total  Both    66    546   27

 Score : 14,742

73 & stay cool,
K2DSL

I stayed on 20m switching between CQing and S&Ping when CQing responses dropped off. As the sun started to set I switched to 40m and worked stations there and called CQ a bit switching back to 20m to catch anyone new. I wasn’t seeing the action on 40m that I saw in last years contest where I logged 20% more 40m contacts then 20m contacts.  I need 40m and 80m to work the closer states and to give the state multipliers for the other bands, but that wasn’t working out well tonight.

I switched to 80m and it was solid noise. Not wall to wall ham radio operators but loud S7-S9 noise. What the heck is going on? I thought it might be something at my location, but a ham about 7-8 miles away said the exact same thing. 80m was completely unusable except for the strongest stations. I was hoping the conditions would improve, but every time I switched back, it was still bad.  I switched back to 20m late in the contest to see if I could find a Hawaii station or one from NE, SD or UT but no such luck.

Last year I had 210 contacts and 77 mults on 40m & 80m. This year the conditions were rough and I only was able to manage 133 Q’s and 51 mults on 40m & 80m. I ended up with 14 more total Q’s this year but with the conditions/activity on 40m and 80m I was down a combined total of 14 multipliers so my total score was less. If 80m was usable I would have likely blown past last years effort. Logs have been uploaded to eQSL, LoTW and sent in to the contest sponsor. Here’s hoping for less noise and more Q’s in the upcoming contests.

Score summary:

 Band    QSOs    Pts  Sec   NA
  3.5      27     27   15    0
    7     106    106   36    0
   14     198    198   43    2
   21       6      6    6    0
Total     337    337  100    2

Score : 34,374

73,
K2DSL

Points to stations in my same ITU call area are worth 1 point, but other ITU call areas in the US are worth 3 points. DX contacts are worth 5 points. HQ stations are worth only 1 point. Overall, conditions weren’t very good. 10m was quiet and 15m wasn’t very strong either. I was hoping 15m would be better as it would allow for a lot more contacts during the daylight hours but 15m only gave me US contacts and South America contacts. 20m was the best band for me this weekend both on CW and on SSB. When i switched to CW I was able to do a nice sweep up the band and log contacts quickly.

I did notice what seemed to be less then normal number of European stations on. I worked the following  number of unique stations which seems very low – 1 Spain, 2 France, 2 England, 5 Germany & 5 Italy.  Just before 0100z I was able to work 4 Asiatic Russian stations on 20m that were coming in strong along with a Hawaiian station. I then switched to 40m and then 80m to work as many stations there as I could. I then switched back to 20m and just before 0315z I worked a New Zealand station on phone and then at 0350 I worked another ZL station on CW. I finished the night up just after midnight local time with 311 contacts.

Some notables beyond what was mentioned above is I worked W1AW/8 a total of 8 times working then on SSB on 10m, 15m, 20m, 40m & 80m and on CW on 20m, 40m & 80m. W1AW/8 was operated by the Southwest Ohio DX Assoc. I worked NU1AW 3 times which I think was operated out of W1AW in CT. 40m and 80m were very noisy. We were supposed to have a bad weather day for the entire day but it wasn’t really bad at all, at least on the ground. The noise on 40m and 80m was high and I cranked the RF down on 80m until I could only hear the CW and my S meter was showing a 9. CW works through the noise much better then SSB. The log shows 53 different DXCC’s worked for the day’s effort.

The logs have been sent in to the WRTC competition for them to use and the IARU for my contest log submission. They have also been uploaded to LoTW and eQSL and I’ve even written out the QSL cards for those I wanted to send out. I finished up the QSL cards this afternoon after I returned from the largest hamfest in the area (about 1 hour away). Below is my score summary followed by a map of the contacts based on grid locators.

Next up is the NAQP RTTY contest that starts Sat afternoon and goes through Sat night. You can work 10 of the 12 hours that the contest is on so I’ll probably run it from 2pm local to midnight local time. Get on and hand out some Q’s.

Score summary:

Band  Mode  QSOs    Pts  Zon   HQ
 3.5  CW      11     13    0    1
 3.5  LSB      5      7    2    2
   7  CW      21     45    4    1
   7  LSB     15     31    5    5
  14  CW      90    212    2    7
  14  USB    139    361   21   22
  21  USB     28     60    5    1
  28  USB      2      2    1    1
Total  Both   311   731   40   40

Score : 58,480

Map of contacts (click to enlarge):

73,
K2DSL

As this is a holiday weekend in the US, I didn’t think I’d get on the air much or but nothing was going on Saturday so in the early afternoon I decided to pop into the DL-DX RTTY amateur radio contest.  The category I was entering was about as targeted a match for me as I could imagine. I was going to operate for 6 hours using nothing more then a dipole and a single radio running at low power. That would be my exact setup. I got on the air around 16:30z (12:30pm EDT) on 20m and started to work stations getting mults from US stations and then some DX stations as well. I took 3 breaks of just over 1 hour whenever things started to slow down a bit.

It wasn’t hard to call CQ so whenever I finished scanning the bands for new stations I’d find a spot and call CQ which usually resulted in a bunch of contacts both from US/Canadian stations and later in the day from DX stations. I checked 15m a couple times but it was dead, even if I spent a few mins calling CQ. Didn’t hear a soul the entire time.

In the first time slot I was on the air for about 2 hours I was able to log another contact with TA2ZF in Turkey for my 3rd contact with that op.  After taking a break and getting back on around 20:00z (4:00pm EDT) I heard A61BK from the United Arab Emirates. I’ve heard Khalid before but was never able to work him until today when I got him in the log for a new one! When I looked this morning I see we matched on eQSL which gave me a big smile so I’ll send off a QSL card to his US QSL manager. I also worked a Japan station which was the only one I heard. I also worked FO8RZ again on Tahiti Island in the French Polynesia.

I starting switching to 40m around 00:00z (8:00pm EDT) and logging stations there, though switching back to 20m often yielded another station or two I hadn’t previously logged. I finished up the end of the 6 hours by calling CQ on 40m for about 7 or 8 mins and getting over a dozen stations logged including 2 from Argentina. I ended up with 184 logged Q’s of which 1 was a dup. Not a bad few hours of ham radio RTTY fun I didn’t expect to have!

Here’s my score summary from the contest. The cabrillo log was sent in last night as well as all contacts loaded to LoTW and eQSL.

 Band    QSOs    Pts  Cty   Sec
    7      31    275    6     9
   14     152   1300   28    15
Total     183   1575   34    24

Score : 91,350

Here’s a picture of the contacts made during the 6 hours ham radio contest:

2010 DL-DX RTTY Contest - click for full size

73 & good DX!
K2DSL

We had the following set up: an all-band station using a vertical, a 15/20m station setup with a tribander on a tower we put up, a 40m station using a wire antenna, a 80m station using a wire antenna, a 6m station using 2 loops on a mast and a GOTA station using a wire antenna.  The weather was warm but it didn’t bother me at all.

Setup seemed easier then the previous 2 FD events I have been at. We put up 1 tower and a bunch of antennas. We were ready with plenty of time to spare before the contest started. We had plenty of food and drink around and plenty of operators to work all the stations. As things got rolling, I started on the 15/20m station. 20m was very noisy (the band, not any local noise) and was wall to wall with stations on top of each other, sometimes with 2 operating on the exact same frequency. It was rough going and finding a free frequency to call CQ on was a lot of work. So after a while I switched to 15m and the band was much quieter but still very active. We closed out the first day with more contacts on 15m then 20m.

I stayed overnight and around 2am popped into my car for about 4 hours. 20m was dead and I wanted to catch a couple of hours of uncomfortable but needed sleep, especially because I was before 5am on Sat morning. I woke up before 6am and there were fresh hot coffee cups waiting to be sucked down so I grabbed one and a choc donut. I changed my clothes and got back onto the air. 20m was workable and by the late morning, we had 20m with more total Q’s then 15m for the first time since we got on 15m on Saturday. Late in the morning I flipped to 15m and it seemed to start hopping again so I made a few Q’s before someone else sat down. I went over to 40m and got on there for a bit.

My wife and one of my daughters came by to help us have someone under 18 make a contact which gives additional points. I took my daughter to the 6m station which was available, tuned around and found a station we hadn’t worked. I told her to say Kilo 2 Bravo Alpha Radio and she did it perfectly. The other op came back with his reports and she gave 4 Foxtrot Northern New Jersey and he said QSL. She did it perfectly. Well, she’s 14 and not 6, but I was still impressed.

When I came back to the 15/20m station, 15m was again ahead of 20m and the ops were doing well so I went back to 40m. We ended up with 1003 Q’s on 40m eliminating the few dups that were logged. On 15/20m we logged 654 Q’s and on 80m we logged 359 Q’s. On the other stations (misc, 6m and GOTA) we logged 105 Q’s for a grand total of 2121Q’s which I don’t think counts the handful of fun satellite Q’s we made or the few solar powered Q’s made.

Teardown seemed to be much easier then previous years and I think because we did really have a lot of folks to help. Once things were broken down they were loaded into the rented UHaul and taken to the garage where we unloaded things quickly. After getting home, hitting the shower felt great. I fell asleep about 9pm and didn’t wake up until the alarm went off at 6 for work.

It was a great weekend. Lots of fun, lots of operating, lots of friendship. I can’t wait until next year.

73,
K2DSL (operating as K2BAR for Field Day)

Randy suggested using a program called LM which I didn’t have installed on my new notebook so I downloaded it and fired it up. It is very efficient for entering in paper logs once you figure out the little tricks, especially around the time of the QSO. You just need to enter the last digit of the time and it takes a good guess at what it should be based on the previous Q’s time. You only need to mess around if the time is more then 10 mins after the previous time and you just highlight the other numbers in the time, one by 1, and adjust as needed.

I am a decent typist so I banged out the first log quickly and sent it back last night. This morning Randy sent me another log for HP3FTD and before heading to work I fired up LM, entered in the base info (call, name, power, class, address, etc.) and entered in the first batch of Q’s in no time. I will finish it up tonight when I get home from work.

I find it interesting to do this. Since this is a recent contest I am seeing many calls I have worked myself. It is also interesting to see the contacts made from other locations in the world. It is like having a one way mirror view of what each operator was hearing as they worked the contest.

I am just glad the 2 ops logs I got sent have very good handwriting. I do wonder though, if they both supplied an email address, couldn’t they have done the same thing I am doing now and entered their log into LM and sent it in? Yes, they could just have email, but I bet they have a computer.

73,
K2DSL

In between trying to log E4X, I started to make some contacts in the Alabama QSO Party and in the end I finished up with 72 contacts with 43 different operators.  There were some pretty active rover/mobile stations participating and if I was around more I probably could have logged more counties.   In the end I finished up with 35 different AL counties in the log out of 67 counties in the state.

Here’s my N1MM score summary:

  Band  Mode  QSOs    Pts  Sec
   3.5  CW       5     10    0
   3.5  LSB      1      1    0
     7  CW       9     18    4
     7  LSB     12     12    4
    14  CW      33     66   26
    14  USB     12     12   11
 Total  Both    72    119   45

 Score : 5,355

73,
K2DSL

Saturday I logged 21 Q’s in the SP DX RTTY contest and a few Q’s in the first part of the Florida QSO Parry.

Sunday afternoon I logged 2 SSB Q’s with Nebraska stations in their QSO Party and ended up with 36 total Q’s on SSB and CW in the Florida QSO Party.

No big numbers or exotic contacts but always fun.

73,
K2DSL

It also looks like there’s some customization (stored locally on the computer you use) for which contests to view if you wanted to filter out contests you weren’t interested in. Thanks to WA7BNM for maintaining a web site with great information I visit multiple times a week.

73,
K2DSL

Score summary:

        Band    QSOs    Pts   Cty  Sec  Mis
         3.5      19      63    2    6    2
           7      53     180    9   11    3
          14      87     137   27    9   10
          21      11      21    4    0    4
       Total     170     401   42   26   19

       Score : 34,887

73 and good DX,
K2DSL