This CQ WW WPX contest was my first major contest in a few years, as we are usually away on vacation and I end up missing it.

This year, my best bands were 20m during the daytime and early evening, before moving over to 40m later in the evening. Overall, the early evening and nighttime hours seemed to be the most productive, with both 20m and 40m really opening up.

During the daytime, I just could not get a good run going. At times, it felt like I was simply calling “CQ Contest” into the ether with very little response. Because of that, this contest turned into mostly search-and-pounce for me, with only the occasional attempt at running.

Throughout the daytime hours, I kept VFO A on 20m and VFO B on either 15m or, at times, 10m, constantly watching for openings. When conditions looked promising, I would jump down to those bands and was able to pick up additional contacts on 15m and 10m. Most of my 10m contacts ended up being with South America.

One thing that definitely kept me in the radio chair was the weather. It was quite chilly here, with daytime highs reaching only 8°C and evening temperatures dropping to around 2°C. In fact, I even had to break out the portable heater I use to keep my hands warm. I find that when my hands get cold, they just do not work as well on the keyboard when entering call signs and serial numbers.

This was also the first major contest for my new Icom 7610, and I am happy to say it performed flawlessly throughout the event. 

 I have been running my WSPR desktop unit for almost 24 hours to get a better feel for band conditions ahead of this weekend’s CQ WW WPX contest. The bands I focused on were 10m, 15m, 20m, and 40m, using my Hustler 4BTV antenna. The results showed that 40m and 20m have been the strongest bands, while 15m has been relatively weak and 10m has been virtually non-existent. The evening hours appear to be when band activity really picks up and could provide my best opportunity for strong run rates. We’ll see how it all plays out, because before you know it, Sunday evening will be here and another contest will be in the books.

OHB ver 4.23

 I have been sitting back and watching the many Hamclock projects evolve. What I was looking for was a project that, when finished, resembled Elwood's Hamclock. I am happy to report that I have settled on using OHB or Open Hamclock Backend. This has a very polished look and looks and operates, in my humble opinion, the closest to Elwood's Hamclock. It is a group effort and has progressed at a smooth pace. There is an OHB web page that offers support and status updates. I operate HamClock on my Pi4B, and if you operate Elwood's HamClock on a Pi, below is the process you go through to move from Elwood's version 4.22 HamClock to OHB version 4.23 HamClock. 

This script will download the script that you are going to need when entering the script listed below. As a side note, with some Pi OS's like Trixie, you will be prompted to enter your password whenever a "sudo" command is used. Just be aware that your password may be needed.  

 

4. The next command is: 

sudo fix-hosts

 I have read that you only need to enter if you are running Trixie or newer. In my case, I entered it anyway, as the instructions indicate you can if you would like to. I just did it as a just-in-case. 

5. After the above command has been entered, you may or may not be asked to reboot. I was not, but again I did anyway just to make sure. So I entered this command: 

sudo reboot now

 And it reboots the Pi, and if your HamClock starts up and is on the desktop, you need to again click on the lock and exit HamClock. 

6. You are now able to move over to either OHB, or you can also move to Hamclock.com backend. I will just be dealing with OHB in this post, but I will give you the command script for Hamclock.com backend as well. For moving to OHB enter this command: 

sudo ohb

If you want to move to Hamclock.com backend, then enter this script: 

sudo hcdc

7. Once you have done this, you can confirm that you have actually moved by entering this script: 

what

And it will confirm that you have moved to either OHB or HCDC, which over sudo command you entered above. In my case, the return script was: 

Your HamClock is set to Open HamClock Backend

   This confirmed to me that I had moved to OHB. 

 

8. The final step is to restart by entering this script: 

sudo reboot now

And once you have rebooted and HamClock goes through its startup, you will be asked if you want to go from version 4.22 to 4.23 and click YES.  

Updating

As a way of 2 side notes:

1. I did have to, for reasons not known to me, do the above process twice, as when I rebooted into the new feed for HamClock, I was not asked if I wanted to upgrade to 4.23. For some reason, it stayed on 4.22. Once I did steps 1-8 again, I was then asked to upgrade to 4.23.  

Ver 4.22 poor quality compared to 4.23

2. If you are operating Elwood's version of HamClock while it is loading, you will be asked if you want to upgrade to version 4.23, but as you say YES, you will be greeted with the following error message. To fix this, you need to change your back end. This is done by following the above 8 steps. 

Snap shot of my Win4icom setup.

Radio Control Software: Taking the Complexity Out of Ham Radio

What Are the Advantages of Radio Control Programs?

Macros in Action

• The radio goes to 40m if not already there, on VFO A
• Antenna 2 is selected.
• CW mode is chosen.
• I am dropped into the middle of the 40m CW band segment.
• A custom audio level is set.
• Filter 1 (300Hz) is applied.
• NB, Digi select, RF gain, and NR are all set to custom values optimized for 40m CW.

The Split Operation Macro

• Dual watch is turned on.
• Split is turned on
• The appropriate antenna is selected based on the current band.
• VFO A and B are set to the same band
• VFO B is set to 1kHz above VFO A
• Filters are configured for both VFOs

A Word on Reliability