This past weekend was the 2010 CQ WPX RTTY contest and boy did I have fun! I got home from work a little late and got on the air about 1.5 hours after the contest started Fri evening but that isn’t a problem since a single op can operate 30 of the 48 hours. I ended up able to put in 30 hours in total without missing any sleep.

Friday night before heading off I was able to make 118 contacts on 40m & 80m. When I got back on Saturday morning around 1240z (7:40am local time) 20m was good to EU. It was easy to tune up the dial and work most stations on the 1st or 2nd call, even with 100w and my G5RV.  At 1450z (9:50am local time) I switched over to 15m and wow! I had never been on 15m when I could hear and work this many stations – come on sunspots! I stayed on 15m until 1630z (11:30am local) and ended up making 45 contacts. That might not seem like a lot but I think that might be close to or more 15m contacts then I made in another other contest in total. I went back to 20m and made more contacts flipping to 15m from time to time. I ended up with 68 contacts on 15m on Saturday. By 5:00pm local time (2200z) I had worked 20 of the 40 CQ zones.

Saturday later in the afternoon I picked a 20m frequency and was able to hold it and run for about 50 mins and making 45 contacts. They were all mostly US stations with a couple DX and Canadian stations. I then switched to 15m to see if I could hear anyone new and the 1st station I heard was a ZL1 in New Zealand and I was able to work him. I moved to 40m and 80m at 2300z (6:00pm local) for a couple hours before heading to dinner. When I left for dinner I was about up to the total number of contacts I made during the entire WPX RTTY contest last year. When I came back from dinner Saturday evening  a couple hours later I got on 40m and 80m again. I had a good 80m run for just under 1 hour even having some DX stations call me. I called it quits for the night at 0545z (12:45am local). On the first day I ended up logging 575 contacts over the course of about 18.5 hours.

I had 11.5 hours or so of operating time left in the 30 hours we can be on the air so I figured I’d again get on around 1230z (7:30am local time ) and that is what I did. It would allow me to operate the rest of the contest without having to schedule any off time of at least 1 hour. I started off on 20m again working up and down the band. EU was strong and working stations wasn’t an issue. I stayed on 20m for almost 2 hours before switching to 15m again and stayed there for about 1.5 hours working stations I could hear. If I could hear them, they could hear me. Just before 1500z (10:00am local) I worked my first VU2 station in India who was calling CQ on 15m. He was up and down and I hope he was able to log me on his end. After working 15m I switched back and forth between 20m and 15m with some short runs calling CQ on 20m. Around 2030z (3:30 pm local) I picked a frequency up the band around 14.120 and was able to hold it for 1 hour logging 46 contacts from the US and EU.

I  stayed on 15 & 20m through 2300z (6:00pm local) as there were stations to log including AL9A in Alaska which was the last one I logged before moving to 40m. I logged 5 different Alaska stations this weekend, all with strong signals on 20m. I was able to work just 1 station in Japan but he was in the log. I finished up the last hour of the contest on 40m. I was able to log an additional 62 contacts on 15m giving me a total of 130 contacts on the band. Prior to this contest I had only logged a total of 425 contacts on 15m since being on HF. I did more then 30% of my total prior 15m contacts in just this one weekends contest. I wonder when 10m will give me this same thrill?

Some quick stats on my logging shows 858 total contacts (860 minus 2 dupes that worked me when I was calling CQ) consisting of 668 unique call signs. I logged contacts in 24 of the 40 CQ zones and 47 of the 50 states just missing nearby states of Maine, New Hampshire and Rhode Island. I logged contacts in a total of 70 different DXCC entities with India being hopefully a new one for me. On 15m I logged 45 different DXCCs out of the 130 contacts. There were 436 different call sign prefixes logged which is a multiplier in this contest. I am very pleased with my performance and can’t wait for the next contest. I’m glad today is a holiday in the US though :-)

Here is my score summary from N1MM which worked flawlessly along with MMTTY on my new computer:

Band   QSOs    Pts  WPX
3.5    143     354   65
7      128     418   65
14     457     899  240
21     130     316   66
Total  858    1987  436

Score : 866,332

73 and good DX!
K2DSL

I wanted to create a separate post just to reiterate the info I have around USB serial support in Windows 7 for CAT rig control and RTTY FSK and CW keying. It is something all amateur radio operators will be dealing with as they upgrade their computer equipment. Until ham radio rigs provide direct support for USB, and some do, we still need to figure out how to get bin-serial port computers to work with traditional serial devices. In my investigation before switching to a new Windows 7 machine I found a lot of confusing and often contradictory info. I was using Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. Here is what I decided.

If I went with a desktop, I would have opted for a standard serial card that goes in one of the slots. Of course you need to make sure the card supports Windows 7 but a real serial card should work fine.

My older XP notebook supported PCMCIA cards and my dual port serial PCMCIA card worked fine for years. Since there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of new notebooks providing PCMCIA slots, I didn’t investigate Win7 driver support for mine or other PCMCIA cards. Some newer notebooks support ExpressCard technology which is like the older PCMCIA. I checked out notebooks with ExpressCard but not all had them and specific Win7 support for ExpressCard serial card support was sketchy at best.

The real complexity and confusion comes in with USB serial cable and adapters. They provide USB support one end to plug into a notebook or desktop and then on the other end of the cable or device they provide the traditional 9 pin serial connections we all need. The problem is Windows 7 driver support and support for more complex serial applications such as FSK interfaces. In most cases, basic CAT rig control seemed to work with most any cable as long as the USB device had any recognition with the OS.

So what will you find when you start looking for yourself? I found there are 2 main USB chipsets that seem to be the most common. These chipsets are embedded in the cables or devices and make up the brains of the USB support for the operating system and the conversion to the serial end of the device. The 2 names are Prolific an FTDI. Reports on which chipset seems to work best are sometimes contradictory. Maybe specific revisions of the chipset or specific versions of the software drivers and the combination of the two determine the success. All seem to be able to support CAT rig control and the issues come in with complex communications between the computer and rig for thinks like FSK RTTY interfaces.

I kept making notes about which chipsets and devices were reported as working. Someone even put together a chart and it was incorporated into the N1MM Wiki which shows some info. I was directly contacted by a WA5ZUP, a fellow RTTY contester and he suggested devices by Digi and their Edgeport series. I looked into those and it appeared there was not yet Win 7 support but reports on the Digi forums indicated no issue using available drivers and it functioning perfectly. I checked eBay for Edgeport and the devices that cost over $400 list price new were selling for $40 used on eBay including shipping. So I took a chance since it was only $40 and picked up an Edgeport/8 which is an 8 port serial box.  The seller of my unit happened to be nationwidesurplus. I had a spare A/B USB cable so it was ok it didn’t ship with one (and the seller indicated there was no cable). I got the box before I even purchased the new notebook.

After getting the new computer I installed MMTTY and N1MM. I then plugged in the EdgePort and held my breathe. Windows 7 detected a new USB device and went through it’s usual discovery. It then went online to Windows Update and found the drivers, installed them and said the device was ready. I fired up the small program that is also automatically installed and configured the com port numbers to the physical ports on the device. I first fired up Ham Radio Deluxe and configued it to use Com4 which is the first port on the Edgeport. It worked perfectly. I then fired up MMTTY and select Com5 as the port and it immediately worked. Note that I am NOT using EXTFSK and directly specifying the com port. I then fired up N1MM, modified my old config slightly for the new com port numbers I was now using and it also worked perfectly for rig control, sending CW and for integrating with MMTTY. A perfect trifecta!

Based on my experience I would highly recommend the Digi Edgeport units. Documentation on the unit is available on the Digi support site. They provide a nice 4 and 8 port model available used at a very reasonable cost on eBay. As I would suggest with any eBay purchase, check the sellers feedback, make sure you are aware of the total cost, and if there is a problem with the unit, make sure you are comfortable with the return policy for the seller. My experience was perfect and I hope yours is as well. I’ll possibly update this post if any additional input is noteworthy or based on feedback from others.

73,
K2DSL

My old Pentium notebook running Windows XP had out lived its ability to serve my needs. It was originally my work computer from 2004 which I took with me when I left my company in 2005. It had become slow to the point where it was extremely frustrating to use all the latest memory and processor intensive versions of the applications I run. The time had come to get a new computer.

I did a bunch of investigation on Windows 7 and support for the radio programs such as Ham Radio Deluxe/DM780 and N1MM/MMTTY. I also considered desktops vs notebooks and decided A notebook would again be the best choice. My old computer supported PCMCIA cards so I had a dual port serial card I used for rug control and the CW/FSK interfaces. I didn’t see any new notebooks with PCMCIA card support and a few with ExpressCard support but very sketchy info on serial card support with them and Windows 7. I got a suggestion from a great fellow contestor in WA5ZUP and John suggested checking out Digi EdgePort units. On eBay there were many used units for sale and I picked up an 8 port unit for only $40. It has a list price of $455 if purchased in the Digi site! Even if it didn’t work, it wasn’t a lot of money lost.

Later last week I saw a good deal come up on Amazon. I was glad because I had about $240 in Amazon gift certificates waiting to be used on something. I ended up purchasing an Acer Aspire AS7740-6656 17″ notebook running the new Intel i5 chip with 4GB RAM, 500GB HD, N wifi, webcam, etc. It was $700 and with my gift certificates it came to $460 and I signed up for Amazon Prime so for $3 it was sent overnight and I had it Fri when I got home from work.

I was up until 3:30am working on removing the software I didn’t want and installing software like HRD, N1MM, MMTTY, etc. Then came the big moment where I plugged in the EdgePort/8 and took a deep breathe. Windows 7 found the unit and then automagically went to Windows Update and found the Windows 7 drivers for it. It installed and started to work perfectly! I ran a couple quick tests with N1MM and MMTTY and it was sending/receiving fine. Whew! Time to call it a night.

On Saturday and Sunday I participated in the Mexico RTTY contest on the new computer setup and it worked flawlessly. 213 contacts and not a glitch!

Moving from a 5+ year old Pentium notebook to this new Acer is a huge improvement. The speed at which things open and run is fantastic. No waiting and no frustration. Windows 7 seems to be solid and it is just me finding where things are in the new interface that takes a little time. At least for an experienced Windows user, Windows 7 seems very natural.

Thanks again to WA5ZUP for his suggestion on the EdgePort unit and I would recommend them to anyone needing serial port support with Windows 7. Kudos to the developers of Ham Radio Deluxe, N1MM and MMTTY for building applications that run well on Windows 7 especially if you install outside of the \Program Files\ directory which is something all Windows 7 users need to be aware of.

Now comes the long task of pulling off relevant data from the old notebook and reinstalling programs on the new computer.

73,
K2DSL

I was looking forward to some 10m contacts in a 10-10 contest but every time I checked I heard nothing. I didn’t hear a single 10m operator over the entire weekend contest. Other then the 10m contest I didn’t think I would do much else other then some random contacts but it didn’t work out that way.

I had purchased and received a brand new notebook Fri night and started working on that until 3:30am early Sat morning. Part of what I setup was Ham Radio Deluxe, N1MM and MMTTY. It went surprisingly smoothly. I will write about it in a subsequent post.

I started out making some QSO Party contacts with Minnesota stations. Ended up with 21 SSB contacts. With the VT and DE QSO Parties I made a small number during Sat evening with 1 VT & 3 DE contacts.

What I spent most time on the air with this weekend was the Mexico RTTY contest. As I mentioned earlier, I didn’t plan on participating in it but with 10m dead and what seemed like a good amount of activity, I jumped in. Saturday afternoon into the evening and then Sun morning I ended up making a total of 213 contacts across 4 bands with most contacts on 20m followed by 40m. Did mostly S&P but also had a couple of short runs including a nice DX run mid morning Sunday. There was a good amount of participation from the XE stations.

After the Mexico RTTY contest ended I popped over to SSB and worked 8 New Mexico stations in the NM QSO Party. So in total I worked 5 separate contests and 246 total contest contacts.

Next weekend is the CQ WPX RTTY contest so I will be in that one as much as possible over the weekend.

Here’s the score summary from the Mexico RTTY contest:

Band    QSOs    Pts  Cty  Sec
3.5      28      60    2    1
  7      50     124   11    5
 14     126     331   26   13
 21       9      23    4    1
Total   213     538   43   20

Score : 33,894


See you on the air!
K2DSL

I use an older Sony Pentium notebook for my computer for all needs including ham radio. It was my computer when I worked at Sony and I took it with me (legally) when I left Sony in 2005. It is 6-7 years old and ready to be retired.

I have been thinking about what to do when replacing it. Should I get another notebook? Should I get a desktop? How will I handle serial ports? Does the software I need to use run on Win 7? All my friends that run Macs were pushing for me to get a Mac, but I’m a Windows guy. In addition, the Macs costs a significant premium over a similar sized/featured Windows machine.

Yesterday I saw a posting online about a very good price on a 17″ Acer notebook at Amazon. I was hoping to find something suitable at Amazon because I had $240 worth of gift certificates to apply to any purchase. I pulled the trigger and made the purchase. It’s an Acer Aspire AS7740-6656 notebook with a 17.3″ display. It runs the new Intel i5-430M processor, comes with 4GB of memory, 500GB HD, Win 7, CD/DVD burner, webcam, 802.11N wifi, media card reader, 4 USB ports and a HDMI port. Price was $700 and then I deducted my gift certificates so it was a good deal. And it should arrive today if someone is home to sign for it.

In anticipation of getting a new computer, on eBay I purchased an Edgeport 8 port USB to Serial box. Supposedly it is compatible with Win7 using Vista drivers and native Win7 drivers should be out soon from the vendor. So I’ll keep my fingers crossed that works and I don’t need to purchase USB to Serial cables for support of rig control and the CW/RTTY FSK interface and hope I get ones that work.

Now comes the daunting task of removing software from the computer I don’t want on it, installing software I do, configuring all the programs and hoping when something doesn’t work right (specifically around N1MM, MMTTY, Ham Radio Deluxe, etc) I can troubleshoot it and get it working. With a potential snow storm coming overnight, I’m hopeful I get the computer today (Friday) so I can start setting things up over the weekend.

I’m also hoping this weekend I can get on and make some QSO Party and 10-10 contacts. I checked 10m last night around 8:30pm ET (0130z) and didn’t hear anyone. Compared to the arm-chair copy of stations on Sun and Mon, the band was dead. But maybe everyone is resting for an active 10-10 two-day event starting tonight?

73,
K2DSL – David

I’ve been a licensed op since Aug 2007 and on HF since about June 2008. I’ve heard tales of 10m contacts on a few watts from a mobile radio all around the world, but I thought they were fairy tales. Since I’ve been operating, 10m has been pretty dead.  I had noticed on Sunday late in the afternoon and early in the evening that 10m was open a bit and I was able to make a couple contacts. This has happened just a few times that I’ve noticed so it was a nice treat.

We have a weekly net on 10m – 28.375 – Monday evening at 9:00pm ET (0200z) with my local radio club and maybe 8-12 local folks participate. Well something happened last night that I’ve never heard before. We had more check-ins from the midwest in “8 land” then we had from the locals checking in. There was literally a pileup of folks from what I recall as Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, etc. Quicker then our 10m net control op (K2ZO operating as K2BAR) could write, they were putting their call out there to check in. I could hear those stations louder coming in at 57 to 59+then I could hear some of the locals at 53 to 55.  It was really marvelous!!

I don’t know how long it will last, but I hope it’s here to stay for a bit. There’s a 10m contest this weekend and it would be nice if the band remained open for it. I only have my G5RV wire antenna but it tunes up fine on 10m so maybe I can work some of that contest this weekend.

And maybe all those tall tales of 10m contacts around the world isn’t as far fetched as they previously seemed to me. Maybe, just maybe, you might be able to work 10m from a mobile rig to a far off land. One can dream.

73,
K2DSL

Check out the KH7XS superstation which is for sale. Price seems very reasonable.

http://kh7xs.qth.com/

http://kh7xs.qth.com/main/page_photo_album.html

I know my wife wouldn’t mind a tower in her back yard if the front and sides had views like this house has!

In 10 more years, this might have been a perfect buy for me!

73 and still dreaming,
K2DSL

It’s been 4 days since the ARRL Jan VHF Contest ended and I’ve only received 2 QSLs on LoTW out of the 43 contacts. Now 43 isn’t a lot of contacts, but only 2 LoTW QSLs? That’s less then 5%. I’m only noticing this because I really had no logged VHF contacts before this so I was hoping to see some show up. The 2 contacts that are confirmed in LoTW are both 6m contacts with ops in CT and NY. Oh well, maybe 1 or 2 more will trickle in.

I also received a QSL card in the mail from WB2CUT who is in central NJ. When I work the VHF contests with my local club and we are using K2BAR as the call, WB2CUT is always one of the loudest signals we here. Thanks for the card and I’ve already mailed out my reply QSL.

73,
K2DSL

In November’s CQ WW CW contest I worked 9J3A located in the Kalue National Park in Zambia. This was my first contact with Zambia and I sent off for a QSL via S57S in Solvenia with $2 US and today I received the reply QSL. Thanks S53A for the contact as 9J3A and the new DXCC.

73 & Good DX,
K2DSL

On Saturday morning I participated in the BARTG RTTY Sprint. I was out on Sat afternoon and evening but thought on Sunday I would head over to our unofficial VHF club station at one of the ops houses for some VHF contesting. By the time I would have been able to head out it was after 3PM so I figured instead I would just get on and hand out a few FM contacts to nearby ops. I ended up doing a bit more then that.

My ‘antenna farm’ consists of a dual band vertical I use for FM repeaters and a G5RV wire antenna. It is certainly not a VHF superstation! So I got on 146.580 FM and made a contact with a local operator. I was trying to contact the op of the house I was going to go to but he wasn’t responding on that frequency. I then switched to 6m SSB and worked the same op I just worked on FM. I tuned around 6m a bit and made a couple more contacts. In this contest the op will typically ask if you have other bands and then switch to an open frequency on that other band. VHF contests sees comparably less activity then a HF contest as it is typically local contacts so there is plenty of room on the bands. So for the 1st time ever I tune my Kenwood TS-2000 to 144 SSB and make a contact. I am able to run 100w on 144 but 50w max on 430. We then try 430 and though ops have no problem hearing me, even the strongest ops are weak for me to hear. But in the end I worked 3 ops on 70cm SSB.

Over the next few hours I worked stations on and off on 6m and 2m SSB. I even called CQ on 6m for a short while and got a few ops that came back to me. All contacts were in NJ, NY, CT and PA. I heard a station in the Midwest and in Florida on 6m but they couldn’t hear me and were gone quickly.

As I am familiar with many ops and their call signs I work in HF contests, from operating a few VHF contests since I’ve been licensed I am familiar with the local VHF ‘big guns’ and I worked a bunch I had worked in previous VHF contests when operating under our club call of K2BAR. I was able to work the op of the house I was going to head over to on 6m, 2m and 70cm. I worked 2 other ops on all 3 bands and a few on 2 bands.

Though I had planned a little VHF work on Sunday and then it seemed like I might not be able to, I ended up very pleasantly surprised with what I was able to do. I am interested to see how the other club members I worked made out.

Here is the N1MM score summary for my time in the VHF contest:

  Band    QSOs  Pts  Grid
    50      23    23    7
   144       3     3    1
   144      14    14    3
   420       3     6    2
 Total      43    46   13

 Score : 598

I am looking forward to June’s VHF contest where we go to the top of a small mountain and setup some towers and operate with beams and some power. A VHF contest with my club was my first exposure to contesting and what got me excited about being on the radio.

See you on the air,
K2DSL