AmateurRadio.com

During the NAQP CW contest

In Canada Monday is a civic holiday.....translation...LONG WEEKEND!!! The weather has been a mixed bag of sun, heat and thunderstorms with heavy rain storms. On Friday a package arrived for me from A&A Engineering. My Elecraft K2 is outfitted with the the internal rechargeable battery. A&A Engineering offers a great charger called a smart charger it's combo 1amp swithchable to .05amp charger. Of coarse I ordered it as a kit and I am looking forward to building it in the near future. So there will be more on the charger when the build happens this thing is great and can really extend the life of your rechargeable batteries.




On Saturday I took part in the NAQP CW contest. It was this day and mostly early evening and evening that the thunder and lightening storms came my way. This limited my on air time in the contest.  I entered as QRP at 5 watts and was going to lower the power into the mW range but the conditions would not allow it. I was having a hard enough time making contacts with 5 watts.

First time it has been blank

 I decided to take the plunge and purchase the Elecraft KX3 my previous post talks about selling off gear for funds BUT the great news is all but two (very minor) items have been sold. I was able this afternoon to call Elecraft and place my order for the KX3. Along the radio the optioned I ordered were the KXFL3 dual-Passband Roofing Filter, KXAT3 Internal, 20-W Automatic Antenna Tuner, KXPD3 Precision Iambic Keyer Paddle and the KXBC3 Internal NiMH Charger with Real-Time Clock. The wait time for this rig is anywhere from 60 to 90 days. 
 So that is how the weekend more or less went here at VE3WDM!!

I was planning on spending some time this weekend participating in IOTA contest...but...I got called into work and by the time I got home and settled in I was only able to put in about an hour toward the contest. This is the first time I had taken part in the contest and was surprised at the turn out, this is a very busy contest for sure. I had hoped to add to my DXCC count by taking advantage of some of the rare islands. I did hear lots of rare DX but that was as far as it got to making any sort of contact. I found the bands to be so so there was an M6 flare along with an R2 radio black out that did not help out conditions. Despite the conditions I was able to make 8 contacts.
On all my contacts I tried with the lowest power possible and worked my way up until I made contact. If  I was at full output (5 watts) and still could not make contact it was time to move along.

Pile up for CY9M on my P3

I have been a ham for some time now but there are some things I just have not done as of yet......I can now cross off one more "not done thing" and make it DONE!! To some this may be old hack and you have done it hundreds of times. I was on the radio on the weekend and I heard VP2MUQ down in Montserrat, this is not a new DXCC for me but I did notice here was operating split (transmitting on one frequency and receiving on another). I had two strikes against me before I even gave Bob (VP2MUQ) an attempt. He had a large pileup and he was operating split. Up to this point in my have carrier I have never been able to make a contact when the station was operating split. It made me wonder if I was doing the split thing  right or wrong. I had tried many times in the past but was not able to make contact with ANY op using split. Well on July 21 2012 that all came to an end. I setup the offset for the split (the split according to a spot on a cluster) and gave it a go.....nothing.....but there was a large pileup so I gave it a couple more goes. Then at 01:15 UTC VP2MUQ came back to me and before you know it I worked my first split. Well that's it for the post not very exciting to some but to me it was GREAT!! I now know I have been doing the split thing correctly all along. Another item stroked off the ham bucket list.

This evening I wanted to get on the  radio to catch some DXCC's for my Diamond ARRL award. The bands were not to full of the DX  that was needed for my DXCC award BUT St.Pierre et Miquelon
is a self-governing territorial overseas collectivity of France and is just outside of Canada, some Canadian hams were there making contacts on 20m!!! It was a DXCC I did not have and it's more or less local....easy peasy.............so I thought. The pileup was huge and I never did make the contact. Later in the evening they were on 40m but I was not able to hear them at all. It seemed I was the only one not able to hear them by the size of the pileup. Oh but earlier China BY5WJ was on the cluster and I thought "what the heck " and holy cow there were LOUD AND CLEAR....I gave them a go but again the pile up was big but I wanted to stick with it as they were just blasting in. While others were making contact I went to QRZ.COM to get some info as I always do...........this is what I found........

 Oh and I already have Jamaica' well it was good I found out before calling "BY5WJ" for 30 or more minutes. Lesson learned be careful even of the DX cluster spots. As a side note this is a mistake I or anyone could make and it's nice Josh put the info up on QRZ.COM to clear the fog.

Outdoor temperature reading

We had the hottest day on record today at mid day it climbed to 39C or 102F. When you factored in the humidity it was a nice hot and sticky 47C or 117F.

The IARU 2012 contest has come and gone it was not without atmospheric grumblings. High solar wind at times over 700, Kp index topping out at 6 and this being the aftermath of the class X flare last week. On a brighter note (no pun intended)  the sunspot numbers are up along with the flux readings.

 So how did all this solar mumbo jumbo affect the contesting goals at VE3WDM?? My first goal and last goal of having fun and enjoying the contest was accomplished. As for adding to my DXCC count I only was able to grab one DXCC. The spotting networks were alive with South Pacific and Asia but at VE3WDM nothing at all was heard. My openings seemed to be centered around Europe with the occasional South American tease.

 This contest for me was not about gathering points and contacts. It was taking advantage of a large amount DX and working them with the least amount of power as possible. This meant the contest was slow going and not worrying about total contacts and points. 99% of my contacts were made with QRPp power and some with QRP. Each potential contact started with trying to make the contact with as little as 50Mw's. I had to stop at 50Mw's as my LP100A meter will not measure any lower power output. Back when I ordered and built this meter I never thought I would ever be operating as low as 50Mw's......my thinking was "an attic dipole antenna at QRP of 5 watts I am pushing it" funny how things change over time. I have a device on order that will allow me to measure power output into the nano watts...not that I will ever go there......but you never know!! I was not able to top my all time miles per watt high of  45,868 well maybe next time.



Contacts                    16                   Six contacts 100mW's or much less
ITU                               9
HQ contacts                6
Points                         46 UPDATE: score was actually 690 have to stop using that new math!!