CQ WPX CW contest....well I started with great hopes!

Intentionally left upside down as this was how things turned out.

 Well here we are it's Monday and as I look back to Friday and the dreams of contest sugar cookies dancing in my head and how things can change! The contest was the CQ WPX CW contest and as of Friday evening I was all ready to give it a decent go. The propagation numbers were not in our favour as the Kp index rolled up to 5 and thus lots of signal QSB.

It was Saturday morning and I was just beginning to call CQ TEST when my dear wife came in and announced "I think I hear water running come and have a listen". Those words are any given day are not what you want to hear. The contest came to a grinding halt and it was taken over by contractors, plumbers and various odds and ends.  I was able to get in and out of the contest but only for very short times. The outcome was a poor showing but a better and upgraded plumbing! 

For the limited time I was in the contest here are some of my take a ways from it:

As said the conditions on Saturday were poor and I found myself calling CQ TEST and as time past with no answer my mind began to wonder. Looking around the shack, looking at the operating desk and icons on the desktop. Then all of a sudden an answer came and I was not at all ready for it. Thus repeats and some frustration. 

I really wanted to work in the contest at improving my run abilities and it was just not happening as I was calling CQ TEST sometime for over 10 minutes with no answer. I then went to search and pounce and did up my score that way. Lesson learned....go to search and pounce when calling CQ TEST is just not happening. 

Murphy did hit me with the plumbing issue as well my own carelessness...for example when I setup my CW macros and tested them before the contest I turned the power out to zero. Well this ham radio guy forgot to turn the power back up to 100 watts and for about 20 minutes I was calling CQ TEST with ZERO output!! To boot the radio have a LARGE meter showing zero out and my LDG tuner has the same. Lesson learned to pay attention and not to wonder. 

Not much else and since this is not a home repair blog I will skip the very expensive plumbing repairs.

Below is the final score. 

Amazing weekend on the radio!

A busy time on 40m

This past weekend was the running of the ARRL International DX CW contest. If you are not a CW buff then there is also an ARRL International DX SSB contest March 5-6. These contests are great to log some very nice DX stations. I had a few interesting one-offs in this contest but more on that later. If you are a frequent reader of my blog you will know I have graduated from search and pounce contesting to holding my own and calling CQ contest or running as it's called. 

In this contest, DX stations are only allowed (to gain points) to contact stations in North America and likewise, North American stations can only contact DX stations. With this in mind, I knew that it would be interesting for me to be on the calling (running) CQ contest end of things. The contest is 48 hours in length and as always I have high hopes of getting into the action at the start, Friday at 8 pm. Well as always it's Friday and I just want to relax and take it easy. So as always I started Saturday morning and I was not disappointed the bands were very very busy with DX. 

Before beginning the contest I opened up my go-to CW practice program G4FON contest trainer. I find it to be very helpful to get my ears warmed to fast speed CW before going live! I spent about 15 minutes with G4FON and then it was off to the races. I started out sending CQ CONTEST at 31 WPM but found most stations coming back to me came back at around 24-30 WPM. I then slowed things down a bit as I don't want to be sent at speeds where no one wants to answer me.

 Saturday morning and afternoon went well and here is one of those "one-offs" I was mentioning earlier. On Saturday EA3OH spotted me on a cluster....all of a sudden all hell broke loose!! I called CQ CONTEST DE VE9KK and 10-15 stations (most all at once) were calling me. I had NEVER had this happen and I can understand what rare DX stations go through. If this was not a contest I would have worked split but as they say, it's not a perfect world. Once the first 3 seconds of what I called a CW mess finished then one of two stations would toss out their call. This would allow me to work with them and I continued to work this way. Sometimes a few stations waited and I could only get 2 or 3 letters of their call. I would send out those letters followed by ?. This worked very well but I assumed some stations just moved on and came back later. 

I was spotted about 4 different times and to be honest I felt overwhelmed and I started at times to make silly mistakes. Hitting incorrect keys so wrong call letters were sent, not hitting a correct key on my contest program so instead of my exchange being sent I sent TU (thank you). I could just imagine the look on the face of the station I was contacting. At one point I called Julie my wife into the room and with headphones removed I gave her a listen of the "pack. 

When I was spotted my hourly worked station count went to around 80-90 per hour. To be honest, those times were exhausting and at times my nerves got the best of me. I now fully understand one of the "how to's" to trying to work a popular station. Don't drop your call as soon as the station signs their call. He will only hear what I did....a CW mess. Wait until things clear, about 3 or so seconds and then drop your call in. This was how I heard stations calls or part of the calls. 

Here in New Brunswick, our COVID restrictions had just been lifted to the least restrictive level. This meant going to a restaurant was almost back to normal. Julie wanted to celebrate by us going out for dinner. That gave me a nice break from the contest BUT it's time for another "one-off". Once we arrived home from our dinner out almost right away I started to feel ill. YUP bad food from the restaurant, I was sick all Saturday night and Sunday until late afternoon. This cut into my contest time and evening in the afternoon while on the radio I was not feeling the greatest. 

Since we are on the subject of "one-offs" here we go again. I was on 40m (7.027) early Sunday evening and a station came back to me but it was not your standard exchange. I heard "PSE QSY UR ON CHAN 816 PSE QSY TU" I thought WHAT....so I sent "? ?" and the same message was sent. No worries I sent "SRI" and two short DIT's. After the contest, I did some online searches and came up with nothing. Does anyone know what this op was talking about I would be interested to know?

The final score 

Because this was a contest with emphasis on DX I was pleased to have made some nice DX contacts such as: 

- Turkmenistan is number 23 on the DXCC list

- Congo 

- Japan 

- South Cook island 

- Liberia 

There is a nice piece of software that takes your ADIF file and shows you many visual options adventure radio.

Below is just one option the program gives you to view your ADIF file. All the contacts I made in the contest.

RAC Winter contest.

 The RAC Winter contest is in the books and my second contest where I was running and not S&P.  The propagation numbers took a big leap in the right direction before and during the contest. I did find that even with the good conditions there was steep QSB on 20 and 40m. 

I find this more of a relaxed contest compared to the international contests. Most of the time, CW speeds were a bit slower. When someone you know makes contact, there is time to say thanks and 73. Speaking of someone you know, I had the pleasure of John AE5X a blogger I follow contact me, and we had the opportunity to send pleasantries to each other. Thanks for the contact John. 

I found there was the early contest jitters, but I did settle in a bit sooner  compared to the other contest. One take away was to NEVER try drinking coffee while calling CQ! Thought I had this calling CQ thing down, I decided to have a drink of coffee as the PC was belting out RAC DE VE9KK. While in mid-sip of coffee, the radio went to receive and a nice multiplier station was coming back to me! In a rush to put the coffee down my elbow was banged, coffee all over the keyboard and multi station gone! 

Overall, a great time was had. 

A keyboard is a keyboard..........but is it?

As frequent readers of my blog, you know my interest in contesting, and specifically CW contesting. Just a few weeks ago, for the first time, I called CQ in a contest and was running for the entire contest. I had a great time and also a time of growing. As with all bloggers, we have different keyboarding levels. To be a blogger, you have to be somewhat of a typist. There are single finger, two-finger and home row typists. There is a saying "mom knows best" and well in grade 7 I was not so sure about that saying. You see, I had what was called in school a spare period. It was a time slot with no class, and really it was my first one ever, and I planned it as a rest time. Well, mom knows best, and she had to sign off on my spare period and well she had other plans for me. 

She looked at my school timetable and the available classes for my so-called spare period. She found a class that fit right into the spare period time slot..........TYPING.....yup that's right typing! With my mom it's not a suggestion.....it's "your taking typing, and you will end up thanking me for it one day" I went to school in the '70s, and you know how many guys were in typing class.........ME! 

In I went and well there was a positive note and that is it was a great place to meet girls anyway I digress.  The first thing I noticed was you can't look at the keyboard to find the letters as there were no letters to be found, the keyboard was blank. To make a long story short I learned about something called home row and I can still hear the teacher calling out "AAA   BBB    EEE" and so on. I have to admit that yes, mom knows best, and I took 2 semesters of typing class. It made my university years way easier for term papers and so on. 

Fast forward to now......getting a blog post together runs along very smoothly, BUT who would have thunk that my CW contest would benefit as well? I found that when I was running in a CW contest, having the ability to not look down at the keyboard was a bonus. I can hear the calls or exchange and just look at the PC screen and enter the information. 

Here is the catch........ I can type, and my speed is ok for blogging, but typing a call sign and then an exchange at 25-34 WPM takes practice. In the past I felt keyboard was a  keyboard right ?? Well, I found over time, frustration and trial and error that all keyboards for contesting anyway are not alike. 

The keyboard of choice for the longest time was the wireless Logitech k830. It was a smaller keyboard that had a mouse pad. The keys had a soft touch, meaning not much pressure was needed when typing. Also, the keys were close together therefore no ambidextrous finger moves to hit certain letters were needed. 

When practicing with this keyboard for CW contest call sign copying at slower speeds it was good but up around 25 WPM, I found myself hitting two keys at once a lot. At 25 WPM when this happens you lose track of the next letters coming at you, and it can get frustrating.  The Logitech keyboard is not going to cut it. 

I went through my PC junk box and found a keyboard called Adesso this was a small keyboard as well, but with much firmer keys that were raised a bit higher than the Logitech keyboard. I gave this one a go and yes I was not hitting two letters at once but when the CW speed increased again there were issues but again. With firmer keys, I needed to give an extra effort to press each key and at higher CW speeds it just took too much time to enter the needed info from a contact. Once you miss a letter, your concentration is removed from the CW program and  to the keyboard and hence calls and exchanges are missed. 

I have heard it said that most times the solution is right under your nose, and you just can't see it. This was the case with the perfect keyboard. My wife was working from home during the height of the pandemic, and for some time that has not been the case. Her company PC has sat ideal at home for some time now along with a KEYBOARD! It was a full size keyboard, much different from my other go-to keyboards, but I thought I would give it a go. This keyboard is a Lenovo Pro 2 and when she requires it again I have already scoped them out online. I am thinking I will purchase one as a New Years gift for myself. 

I have been using it for about 2 weeks now, and it's amazing, the keys are the right height and key sensitivity is spot on as well. Not only that, but I am having no issues copying calls and exchanges around 33-35 wpm.  So no, a keyboard is a keyboard is not true. I found that it's a personal thing and once you get the right keyboard for you, it sure can make a differance ....in contesting anyway. 

I can't believe I did it!!

The hills are alive with the sound of music....well you get the idea. 

This past weekend, as most of you may have known or seen, the bands were alive with a CW contest, all except the WARC bands. The annual running of the CQWW CW contest was in full swing for the entire weekend.  I try to take part in most of the large CW contests, and this one was not exempt. In this contest, for the first time EVER, I did not operate search and pounce. (search and pounce meaning searching out stations in the contest who are calling CQ and trying to contact them) I was for the first time ever a running station. (run, meaning you sit on a frequency and call "CQ contest" and wait for stations to contact you)  I CAN'T BELIEVE I DID IT.....

For those of you who are not into CW contesting when you are running (for me anyway) it's a big deal, and you have to  be on your CW game. You send out your call sign (for me at 26-28wpm) and wait for the grease to hit the fan and at times it did!  Below is how it feels to be a first-time CW running contester. 

Before I begin with the adventure, just a little background. They say that preparation is the key, and that I worked on. Over time, getting my code speed up to copy around 30wpm.  Every day I practiced with programs such as Morse Runner and RufzXP.  These are both free programs and  excellent tools. I also downloaded the CWops intermediate CW course and worked through that each day.  I worked on my keyboard skills, so I am now able to copy calls without looking at the keyboard. This allowed me to concentrate on the contest program. 

Well here we go......first thing that occurred to me was a contest simulator and the real deal is very different! I was not sending code to a computer program but a real person, it's a hobby and all, but I was very nervous about the whole thing.  Out the code went, "TEST VE9KK VE9KK" I did this about 3 times and then a station came back to me........it didn't turn out as planned. 

I heard the code but my N1MM+ contest software was just met with my blank stare.  I heard the call again, and this time it was a full out fumbling act between reading the call and keyboard stumbling. Eventually the op just moved on to another running station.  Well, that was a bell ringer for sure! I took a deep breath and tried again, and this time it was worse. The next station came back to me in around 35 wpm, and I was clueless. This time I did not even attempt to answer them, they gave their call a few times and moved on. 

I decided it was time to go back to search and pounce and that contest running at this stage in the game was not for me. I took a little break from the contest with a walk, and once I got back to the operating desk, I began to search and pounce. After making a few contacts it occurred to me that  this was the first time I tried running in a contest and for sure there are going to be hiccups. Heck after all I just did not grab my first bike and started riding it, I had training wheels..........wait a minute training wheels! 

I took a deep breath and set my N1MM+ contest program back to running but this time I opened up a program called MRP40  an excellent code reading program. Now just wait a minute, I am not giving up and relying on a code reader......it's my training wheels and will be used when needed.  Well off I went again......"TEST VE9KK VE9KK" 

The contest is now in the history books and I did keep running throughout the contest except when I did some search and pounce for needed multiplies for a better score.  Midway through the contest, I started to loosen up and began to get the hang of things. Sure, I had op's get frustrated when I messed up their call and when I asked for repeats, some just moved on. 

Some highlights were: 

-The obvious one being, running for basically the entire contest. 

- Being spotted in the cluster and BOOM I'm not trying to work a pileup, I am the pile up. They were not huge pileups and did not last for long but exciting nonetheless. 

- Having the time fly compared to search and pounce where the time went slowly. 

- My highest number of contacts ever in a contest of 412 and my best score as well of  113,775.

- Depending less and less on MRP40's decodes. 

Some funny moments: 

- With N1MM+ you are able to program macros to send preprogrammed messages.  It's when my fingers press the wrong key and send thanks for the contact before the was made! 

- Finding out the hard way that the code reader is not always correct.  I copied a call in my head and then glanced at the code reader, I may have messed up on a letter. So I change it and low and behold my head was correct and MRP40 was wrong. 

- This has happened more than a few time......forgetting to change N1MM+ from search and pounce to run and send out the incorrect message. 

- Finding myself answering one call after another and sounding  to others that I have really pulled this off to only then totally screw up the next few callers.....the way the contest can humble me.

Finally, I want to apologize to those of you with whom I messed up your call or made your contact with me a bit painful. Then those who just gave up and moved on I hope next time things will be better.  

Worked All Germany (WAG) contest.

The Worked all Germany (WAG) contest was this weekend. It's an event in which you can operate both CW and SSB. I chose the CW only option for the contest. I entered low power (100 watts and under), single op and assisted (using spotting new works) It was very well attended and during the contest I received a station from Israel calling German stations.  It was a shame I could not call him, as with this contest DX can only contact German stations. Oh well, it was nice hearing them anyway. 

The contest is 24 hours long, which is nice as it does not occupy all of your weekend. Conditions were good for me on 15m, 20m and 40m. I did try 80m on Saturday evening, but it provided no contacts for me. On Sunday I stayed on 15m as I was up early and the band was open. I wanted to stay away from 20m for as long as I could, as this was the band I mainly stayed on during Saturday. This way I would not run into Dupes on 20m.  The contest software I used was N1MM+. 

I was using my Icom 7610 radio which for contesting is a great radio, the antenna was my Ultimax DXtreme  it's 52 feet long and about 30 feet off the ground and about 6 feet at the feed end. I used my solid state CW paddle by 9A5N. The key worked very smoothly and worked without issue. 

Speaking of issues, it would not be a contest if there were not some hiccups. First off I thought (for some reason) the contest started at 1600 UTC. I sat at the radio 10 minutes (1550 UTC) before the contest started. I was shocked to see the band's full when I turned on the radio. A quick investigation on my part had me realize the contest started at 1500 and not 1600 UTC, so I was an hour down before I even started. 

At times, I found myself calling a station, and I was not being heard, don't get me wrong this does happen but not with stations that are booming in. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed N1MM+ software was showing me that my transmit XIT  (transmit increment tuning) was on! The reason the station was not hearing me was because I was transmitting way off-frequency. This for some reason happened a few times. 

The last comedy of errors was at one point on Sunday when I was on 15m the band just went dead! Hmm, maybe propagation on 15m just dropped off. I went to 20m, and it was the same, so I checked the solar conditions,  maybe I missed a huge storm forecast. Nope solar conditions were fair.....oh wait a minute it's 1500 UTC and the contest is over!! 

Contest summary 

40m  34 contacts with 18 multipliers 

20m  51 contacts with 21 multipliers  

15m  30 contacts with 17 multipliers 

Total contacts 115 

Score 19,320

IOTA contest partisapation

This was the first year I took part in the IOTA (islands on the air) contest and I very much enjoyed the time I spent in the contest. It was very well attended and many Island stations were there and waiting to be contacted. I found the band conditions on my end were very challenging at times with stations going from S9 to barley above the noise floor. This is one of the challenges of a contest and just makes things more interesting. I would say it was a nice change to hear lots of stations in the contest, a sure sign that the solar cycle is improving.  As a participant in the IOTA contest you can enter as CW, SSB or both and I choose to enter as a CW op. 

The radio I used was the Icom 7610 with the filter set to 250 Hz with the APF (Audio Peak Filter)  feature turned on. My antenna was an Endfed multiband antenna and my power output was 100 watts. One of the memorable contact I made was Cuba. With all the issues going on there it was nice to be able to make contact with that island. 

I was on the air for about 3 hours in total and made 53 contacts for a score of 5,124. It sure is not a record but I very much enjoyed my time on the radio and that's what it's all about. 

CQ WW CW 2020 contest is on the books!

 This past weekend was the CQ WW CW contest which if I can I always partake in.  This year I made it a point to set aside the time to indulge.....well I'm retired now so it's really not all that hard to set the time aside. But this time around it was going to be a toss-up whether the monitor troubles I was having were going to give me issues.  In a nutshell, if the monitor was turned off it was a 50/50 chance I could be greeted with a black screen. If that was the case I then had to play around starting and restarting the PC and turning the monitor off and on to get it working again. My solution was during the day when I took a break from contesting was to leave the PC and monitor on. This seemed to work very well and it was only when the PC was turned off at night did I only have one time with issues trying to get the monitor up and working. 

 I was really looking forward to seeing how the new upswing in the solar conditions treated me with my 100 watts of power into a mediocre Endfed antenna. I did have plans to hit the airwaves on Friday evening but Julie and I decided to have a date night COVID style at home with a home-cooked meal and a movie. On Saturday and Sunday, I was able to spend a good amount of time in the operating chair. The new solar conditions made the contest a pleasure!

 There was really no dead bands from 10m to 80m in my case. The highlight for me was making contact on 2 occasions with Hawaii both times on 15m. There were other possible opportunities with some exotic places but the pile-up was that of a DXpedition. I did not want to waste valuable time to make or not make the contact. 

It was a pleasure to see 10m meters open and it had me rope some contacts in South America and Europe and well as the U.S. I also gave 80m a shot as I can use my external tuner  (AT200Pro II) to get a decent SWR. This opportunity netted me some U.S contact points. 

My score for sure is not going to be in the CQ WW CW record books but I really enjoyed this contest and the propagation brought even more joy and really had me staying in the radio chair to make contacts. 

Below is the score breakdown: 

Contesting at QRPp levels!

Yesterday I dabbled in the OK/OM DX CW contest for about an hour and a half. This time for some fun and interest I entered QRP level but lowered my power to just one watt. Propagation has been surprisingly nice over the past week or so and I wanted to give the new solar flux a test run. My radio is the Icom 7610 and my antenna is a slopped Endfed antenna at about 25 feet. I stayed on 20m as the radio gods seemed to be smiling on me there. I made only 10 contacts as I was not in the contest for scoring just to see how the fishing was with one watt. I was only asked for repeats regarding my exchange twice other than that the 1 watt made it through. 

Because I was operating at only 1 watt I also wanted to take the loss of my SWR into account. I checked with my antenna analyzer and the CW portion on 20m my SWR was 2.3:1. According to the power loss at various SWR readings chart at 2.3:1, I was in around 15% so this took my 1 watt down to 850 milliwatts. 

Below are the results of my QRPp contest efforts: 

Band     20m 

QSO     10

Score    300

Contacts and Miles per watt using grid square to grid square for millage  

1. OM7M        3720 miles  4376 miles per watt at .850 watts. 

2. OM3CGN    3795 miles 4464 miles per watt at .850 watts.

3. OL3Z           3515 miles  4135 miles per watt at .850 watts. 

4.OK7K          3503 miles 4121 miles per watt at .850 watts.          

5. OK1DOL    3478 miles 4091 miles per watt at .850 watts. 

6. OK5Z         3601 miles 4236 miles per watt at .850 watts. 

7. OM7JG       3773 miles 4439 miles per watt at .850 watts. 

8. OM5ZW     3755 miles  4418 miles per watt at .850 watts 

9. OK1RI        3462 miles 4072 miles per watt at .850 watts. 

10. OM2VL    3714 miles 4369 miles per watt at .850 watts. 

Skunked in the 2020 NJQRP Skeeter Hunt!

The setup 

Last weekend on Sunday was the NJQRP club QRP Skeeter hunt I received my Skeeter number close to the Sunday start date as I was not sure if I was able to participate but things turned in my favour Sunday was open for the contest. The morning here did not look too promising as there was a steady rain, but the weather reports were calling for a nice sunny afternoon. This was important as I was planning to set up in the backyard in our dining tent. 

Just in case it rained

The weather report was correct and the skies cleared and things looked just great for operating outdoor. For my set up I was going to use my Elecraft KX3 that I put together from a kit, battery power, Palm mini paddle and finally the antenna was a mag loop. I was on checking out 20m to see how it was sounding before the contest. It was not all that great but I was coping some station so the only thing to do now was to wait for the contest to start. 

My QRP signal was being heard.

To make a long story short I was on for over 21/2 hours and I did hear some skeeter station but only at the noise floor and they were soon gone. I had my Mac laptop with me and I was checking and found some spots but I was just not able to hear ANYTHING! I did check the Reverse Beacon Network to see if my QRP CQ was being heard and it was all the way in Finland as OH6GB heard my signal. 

My score for the contest was a big fat ZERO but I did get out, had my KX3 running and had a nice time outside. 

The annual 13 Colonies special event.

The annual 13 Colonies special event  (please view link to learn more about the event) was going on during the RAC Canada Day contest on July 1st. Last year I read about this event on Larry W2LJ's blog last year and he had a posted about it as well as this year. While I was operating the RAC Contest I found over and over a number of the special call letters from the 13 colonies event kept popping up. I then decided my operating would become contesting /13 Colonies Event operation. I was shocked that by the end of the evening I had a total of 9 of the 13 special calls in the log. Now there really are 15 stations you can contact as there are 2 bonus stations and I was able to snag one of those as well. I was on last evening but was unable to secure any additional contacts. The fun begins now as I have to search out specific calls that I need. Larry W2LJ did mention that the event can get very busy and last evening I was listening to a station (that was already in my log) and it was so busy and the pileup was crazy he had to operate split!
I will be on again this weekend to see if I can get all 13 stations and the bonus stations. Stay safe everyone and thanks very much for taking the time to stop by the blog.

CQ WPX CW contest summary.

Another CQWPX CW contest has come and gone and this year for me it was a parttime effort as the weather was great here and many outdoor "Stuffs" had to be done. I was shocked to see 10m open and I was able to bag 7 contacts there. During my first leg of the contest on Saturday, I found it very hard to contact any Europian stations. I did make one into Ireland and that was it. The second leg of the contest was Sunday and it seemed that Europe had opened up just fine and I was making DX contacts. The only issue during the short time I was taking part in the contest was the XIT issue which I posted about a few days ago. The other issue was right at the get-go of the contest, I was not able to get the N1MM CW macros to key up the Icom 7610. I have been working QSO parties Win4Icom rig control software looks after N1MM+ as 3rd party software. I do this because I can control the 7610 via my mouse using Win4Icom software. So things like band changes, fine filter adjustments, APF on and off and so on. I did not want to play with the issue for too long as I was not really going to be in the contest for all that long. I ended up going back to old school operating.....well almost old school no paper and pencil yet. I shut down Win4Icom and configured the N1MM+ com port to talk directly to the 7610. In minutes I was up and running again.

without issue and not an issue! Most of the time I get on the radio the day before a contest and test out the rig, software and keyer to make sure all is well.....guess what I failed to do the day before this time? My setup is as follows, I use
Below is the contest breakdown:
20m          73 contacts
15m          20 contacts
10m            7 contacts
Total      100
Score 18,778
WPX        83

Software can bring you joy or grey hair.......

This weekend contained some QSO parties to partake in. Almost every weekend there has been a QSO party I wanted to take part as I have a personal goal to see if I can make some contacts in all the QSO parties. I am not officially enrolled in the QSO party challenge as I have no hope of placing anywhere other than close to the bottom of the pile. It is just a thing for me to do during the COVID 19 stay at home order.

This is not the message you want to see 

I have managed to make at least one successful contact in each of the QSO parties up to this point in time (I have a feeling that may end once the Hawaii QSO party happens) But this weekend I thought the streak was going to come to an end. I was having huge issues with hearing anyone in the Nebraska QSO party! BUT I then remembered reading they also accept FT8 QSO"s and not many QSO parties do. So it was off to FT8 to see what I could find. The contest software I use is N!MM+ and it does integrate with both WSJT-X or JTDX software. The issue here was I had not as yet made the integration. I found online a very nice video of a step-by-step process and as Picard would say "make it so". Before I ever venture into making program and radio changes I always back up both my PC (system restore) and my radio settings.
I followed the setting changes that needed to be made in N1MM+ and JTDX software I then did the smoke test and restarted the programs. I was greeted with an error message and the program stopped working altogether. To save the day I restored the JTDX settings and rig settings back to their previous settings. I then was able to make 2 Nebraska contacts on FT8 using the "old" settings in JTDX.  My next step was to figure out how to convert the ADIF file that JTDX gave me into a Cab file which the Nebraska QSO party needed for submission. I went online and found SP7DQR's program called ADIF2CABR program and it did the trick.
The next day it was time to tackle the JTDX integration with N1MM+ so I went back to the video and figuring the issue was I was rushing the day before. Since everything was backed up from the day before I got right down to it. Once done I tried a restart and low and behold all worked fine. I reviewed what I did and it came down to the file location of JTDX I had to enter into N1MM+ I don't believe I enter the exe file last time.

A much better message. 

There was one very odd thing that happened it had nothing to do with N1MM+ or JTDX it was my setting for my windows microphone. What clued me into this was the receive level in the JTDX program was off the scale. I open Windows microphone settings and it went from a set level of 4 to 100. It's just the magic of Windows and for whatever reason, it decides to do whatever

it wants!

CWops club

CW ops in action

Greetings to all my blog readers I think it's safe to say that a majority of you 6 months ago never thought we would be where we are today! Life is so fragile along with our environment my hope and prayer is that all of you stay safe. I am so thankful that up to this point Julie and I are doing just fine without any COVID 19 issues. I'm retired so I can stay at home and Julie is an essential service and has to go to work but she may be able to work from home soon. I am so so so thankful that I have a pension income and that Julie is still working my heart and prayers go out to those who I can't even for a second imagine what you are going through. To all the essential workers such as medical, grocery store, pharmacy, truckers, call centres, the essential trades, border patrol, military, firefighters, EMS, police, public transit and please forgive me if I missed your type of work that helps the wheels turn during this time. Thank you thank you very very much!

Ham radio is a very good way to pass the day and I was thinking today how ham radio can play a key roll in this time we are in. My radio time was very simple yesterday basically turn on the radio and see what is going on out there. My wife works these crazy shifts and Friday is never Friday and for the next 6 weeks, our Friday is Tuesday. So we both just say thank god Friday is coming and when it's it's actually Tuesday so when it's Wednesday it's our Saturday. Having said that yesterday when I flipped the radio on and 20m was dead and I thought why is it dead on a Saturday........WRONG it's really Wednesday.

All of a sudden the band became very busy with CW traffic and I was not sure what was going on so I ventured over to WA7BNM contest page which is a fantastic site for contest goings-on. It turns out from 1300 -1400 it was the CWops mini CWT contest and WOW was it ever busy.

The CWops or CW operators club has only been around since January 2010 and according to there website now have over 1000 members and I would think that to date it's more than that. Even more exciting is that in 2012 the CW academy was founded within CWops. The CW academy is for those who are interested in learning code to those who want to improve their speed and then at the top end those who want to head copy the code! CWops also have a morse code trainer page this is a very detailed page and I can only imagine the hours that were put into its creation. With the spare time that has been unexpectedly placed upon our lives and if your interested in morse code or want to improve your code the CWops page is the place to go. I have enrolled in their intermediate coarse and opted to start in the fall as I am not sure I can put the time aside that is needed during the summer. 

The weekend of radio

Russian CW contest was Rockin the band

Another weekend passes and another QSO party in the bag! This past weekend it was the Virginia QSO Party. In this QSO party, you had to pay a bit closer attention to the contact information as it was not the standard 599 and county that was sent. In this contest, you had to listen for a QSO number and the county. In other QSO parties where the exchange is 599 or 5NN (cut numbers) and their county if you miss the county just listen to his next contact and you are golden. When QSO numbers are involved if you miss it or part of it and ask for "NR?" and they are lost in the mud.........well then it's a matter of counting his next contacts and listen to the number you can hear and then subtract from that number to figure out what your number is. Believe me, I have been there done that and it can be a challenge!
So how was the Virginia QSO Party you ask.........well on 20m things were really hopping but not with the QSO Party but the Russin CW contest. The band was packed with DX and very tempting to just jump in BUT I wanted to keep up with my goal of working all the QSO parties this year, I jumped up to 40m and worked a few Virginia station ground wave from my location. I was able to get 4 in the logbook only on 40m as I did have some "to do" items that needed to be done around the house. I checked in again on Sunday and went back to 40m but the strange thing was on Sunday I could only hear the stations making contact with stations in Virginia?? Oh well, propagation can be a funny thing at times.
Other related radio adventures were I was able to work fellow blogger John AE5X from Texas. John was working POTA and activating location KFF-3054. I was not able to hear John at all on CW but it was great he grabbed his laptop for the trip as we made contact on FT8. On Sunday I checked out the POTA cluster to see what was up and I was able to contact KB3WAV and at the time I did not realize it until I went to the POTA website and found that Kerri is a top leader for POTA activations.
His stats are:
Activations       1266
Unique parks      446
Total contacts   4730 Now this is an old number I would believe after this past weekend activation.

I also noticed on Sunday 20m was dead again as the Russian Contest had ended but it goes to show propagation is alive and well.
If you are like me and trying to work all the QSO parties this year by taking part in State QSO party challenge make sure your seatbelt on during the weekend of April 3-5. The QSO Parties for the weekend are Nebraska, Missouri, Mississippi, and Louisiana!  There is also the Florida State Parks on the air as well.
Finally, on a lighter note, today is a milestone for me.........I'm 60 today! My car dealership sent me an email birthday wish bright and early this morning way before anyone would have been at work. Darn computers programs just don't sleep...:))

ARRL DX CW contest.

It was nice to see the bands very active with DX for me it was from 15m to 40m. The Endfed I have at the moment will not get me onto 80m BUT the new Endfed I purchased (going up in warmer weather) will give me 80m and maybe more. This year I spent a bit more time in the chair operating than I usually do. I was operating as a single operator, all band and low power (100 watts)
Score breakdown:

I was not able to snag any rare DX and in fact, I really only heard manly Europe, nothing from the middle east or Asia this year. During the late afternoon on 15m, I had Central and South America open up and I was able to get some contacts from there in the log. I only made 126 QSO's I was in and out of the chair and I really have to get to the point in my CW career to feel comfortable calling CW contest and stop the search and pounce only routine. The only Murphy moment I had was when my Bluetooth keyboard's rechargeable battery when dead. I had to hunt down my USB keyboard before continuing in the contest. The lesson learned here is to set the Bluetooth aside and use the USB keyboard for contesting.  The next contests in my schedule are the North and South Carolina QSO party contests the first weekend in March.

Bring it on!

Using Dual watch 

There have been some blog posting regarding the ARRL State QSO party challenge. After looking over the ARRL site regarding this "challenge" it is something that can fit right into my schedule. My wife Julie works most Saturdays and Sundays, our weekends are Tuesday-Wednesday. This leaves me with time to jump into the weekend QSO party fray! In the past (post-retirement) the weekends were occupied with yard work, food shopping and cleaning house BUT now that I am retired all these things can be done during the week now.
The kickoff (Super bowl lingo) to the ARRL QSO party challenge was very busy with 3 QSO parties this weekend. The BC QSO party, Minnesota QSO party and the Vermont QSO party were in full swing this weekend.  The challenge to me was how to participate in 3 contests using only one contest software program?  The software I have used in the past for contests were N1MM+ and N3FJP's contest software. I did read regarding Scott's N3FJP's contest software that you can run multiple contests using API (application program interface). Now I never claim to be a computer guru and API meant nothing to me until Thursday last week when I read about it on the N3FJP software user group site. For this weekend I used N1MM+ and loaded all three QSO parties and just loaded the contest I was logging in and for the time being, it worked just fine for me until I can read up on this API thing.
Why has the ARRL QSO party challenge appealed to me:
- I have the weekends more or less free now.
- These contests are not a full 48-hour effort.
- They are local meaning North America and low sunspots do not have as much of an effect.
- Maximum power is 100 watts so most of us are on the same level of playing field.
- The modes are CW, Phone and in some QSO parties, the digital mode (FT8 and FT4) has been            embraced so there are lots of opportunities no matter what your choice of operating is.
- If CW is your forte I have found the speeds are slower and sometimes a TU (thank you) and 73 is      added to a contact.

BC QSO party shot

So how did the first weekend of QSO party contest go.......
Vermont QSO party:
This was a tough one as I made only 2 contacts both on 40 meters and I felt because Vermont is close to home my contacts would be ground wave. I was not able to hear any Vermont stations on 20m at all. I had to settle for 2 contacts with a score of 16. When I visited the contest score webpage 3830 I was shocked to see that all others had scored low as well.
Minnesota QSO party:
There was more action in this contest but for some reason, the only station I heard were ones I already worked (Dupes).  I ended making a whole 7 contacts in this contest for a final score of 98.
BC QSO party:
In this contest, I was able to hear lots of BC stations but the conditions were changing very fast such that I would make the contact but then they went below the noise level. I ended up making 6 completed contacts with a score of 116 but lots of contacts that ended up being incomplete as they were washed up in the noise floor.

The benefits of the these QSO party contests:
- It gets me on the radio as most of the time just planning to get around to it never happens.
- I want to enter the CW category this will help me improve my code.
- When CW slows and if the contest allows digital FT8/FT4 I will give this new way of contesting a       go. 
- Allows me to learn more about my Icom 7610 in contest situations.

CQ WW DX CW contest 2019

No lack of action

The CQ WW DX  CW contest this weekend was the first contest as VE9KK unfortunately, most of Saturday and into the evening I was not feeling well at all. I gave the contest an off and on again effort during this time. Sunday was a very late start as I wanted to get my rest to get over this bug I had.  In summary, the weekend went as follows:

        Band     QSOs     Pts  ZN   Cty  Pt/Q
           7       6      18    3    5   3.0
          14      10      29    6   10   2.9
          21       2       5    2    2   2.5
       Total      18      52   11   17   2.9


            Score: 1,456

I found Sunday to be a tough one my signal was just not being heard and I am guessing it was just the propagation? The few times I was on the radio on Saturday I had no issues making contacts. Some of the bonus things here at VE9KK were:

- The new Astron power supply worked just fine. 

- I was able to work Europe on 40m which never happened at the old QTH with the MFJ 1788 antenna. 

- Speaking of antennas it was a joy to use the End fed antenna, I was able to change bands without returning. The magloop I used for so long had to be re-tuned on the same band and for sure on band changes. 

- On Saturday (when I was on) I was able to get into Europe, Central America and South America without issue. 

During my time on Sunday during the contest I was greeted with an on screen message that N1MM+ stopped working as it was not able to communicate with com3. Com3 is my CAT control for the Icom 7610 and in a nutshell, this meant I was having RFI issues with one or more of my USB cables. I thought I had solved this issue already with snap on chokes?? I had a fast glance at the snap on chokes an noticed some had "un-snapped". I shut things down and spent well over an hour to fix the situation once and for all!! More on that later this week in another post. I restarted the rig and software and did a few tests and I was good to go, but the bands did not seem to want to co-operate. Having said that the bands sure were alive with opportunity. I heard nothing from the south pacific or Asia. Overall, I had a great time while in the chair at the radio and am looking forward to other CW contests. 

A screen shot of the ARRL DX CW contest

I was on for a short time yesterday afternoon but we had a dinner date to go to in the evening so things were cut short. I stayed on 20m as it seemed to be producing very surprising results including a contact into Japan. I was shocked when I heard his call just come from out of no where! I gave him a call and he came right back to me and in about 5 minutes after he was spotted along with some other JA's the pileup was huge. It was just luck I was where I was at the time and made the contact with 60 watts and my MFJ 1788 loop.
I will see if the propagation gods are smiling down on me today as I give the contest another go this afternoon.

RAC contest and the new IC7610

I was finally able to get on the radio and give the RAC contest about 2 hours and I had a blast with the new rig. I made only 32 contacts as the  Christmas season is a busy time of the year for all of us but Julie and I both agreed that the weekend after Christmas it was going to be a relaxing weekend. As always Murphy very briefly showed up in the shack. I tuned my MFJ 1788 loop to a great SWR of 1.3 using my MFJ antenna analyser. I then flipped it over to the IC7610 and the perfect match went to 3.0!! After some trouble shooting it turned out to be a short coax jumper between my antenna switch and the 7610. I replaced it with one I had on hand and all was good. As I thought about it I do

Won't make that mistake agian.

remember at one time there was an issue with one of my patch coax cables.....guess I never fixed or tossed it out.
I was thrilled with the Icom 7610 I didn't as of yet get the time to set up N1MM+ contest software so during  the contest I was old school with a paper and pencil. The audio was crisp and clean, I stayed with the 250Hz filter and had not even one issue with very close adjacent stations bothering my contact station. The touch screen is very responsive and an absolute joy to use. I took advantage of the 2 independent receivers, I turned on dual watch and had one VFO on an RAC station such as VE7RAC who was very popular and the other VFO I search and pounced. With one simple button push I muted the VE7RAC station and could unmute to check on the pileup. Once things slowed down I was able to put VE7RAC in the log.

Dual Watch on 

Another feature I found very handy was as you spin the VFO faster your tuning steps increase so you can move up and down the band quickly. One issue I found was that as the shack got a bit darker the bottoms on the Icom are not illuminated. This being a new rig resulted in some incorrect push button selections.