AmateurRadio.com

Sunday was my day to get some chores done and then sit down at the radio/PC to put in about two hours in the Real Time Contest. I had taken part in this relatively new contest in the past and had a great time.

The exchange is your report, serial number, and grid square. Another great feature of this contest is that you are allowed to self-spot, which is a real bonus for a small gun like me!

I sat down, thinking I had just two hours left in the contest. However, between the time change and forgetting to change a few clocks in the shack, my two hours quickly turned into one. And from there, things went downhill!

When I set up the contest in N1MM, I entered my FULL grid square, FN76nb. Not sure why! My first contact must have thought I was a poor op because he had no idea what I was sending him. On top of that, I had forgotten to include the 599 report. It might not sound like a big deal, but when the other station is expecting the exchange in a certain order, it can throw things off.

After the first couple of contacts, I clued in and made the necessary changes. BUT, in a CW contest, 599 is sent as 5NN. Well, once again, I'm not sure why, but I had entered 599 instead of 5NN. So, on my next contact, I sent two number 9s along with my full grid square!

Back I went into the settings and changed 599 to 5NN and my grid square to just FN76. All good to go, I thought!

Well, I sent the exchange, and after all those changes, something still didn't sound right. After the third attempt, I realized there was a backslash in the exchange! Back into the settings AGAIN to make another correction. Not sure how that appeared. 

Finally, the exchange was correct, and I had about six contacts in the log. I was feeling pretty good until I remembered something else. In this contest, you have to be logged into the Contest Online Scoreboard. If you aren't logged in, your score won't count!

So, I tried to log in, but for some reason, my PC wouldn't auto-fill the password. I looked up the password, only to discover it wasn't correct. Another ten minutes of fooling around, and I finally managed to get logged in. Once again, I was good to go!

One of the features of this contest is that you can self-spot yourself on the cluster. For me, this is great because it gets my call out there and hopefully brings some contacts my way while I'm calling CQ TEST.

You have to remember that I never run assisted, always unassisted, so I hardly ever use a cluster. Anyway, I have self-spotted before in contests that allow it.

N1MM didn't seem to be behaving as it should when it came to self-spotting. I kept hitting ALT+P, then checking the RBN (Reverse Beacon Network), but nothing was showing up.

Then I realized I had to log into the cluster first. AGAIN, the password was wrong, and more time was wasted while I sorted that out.

Finally, I made another contact, and it was time to self-spot and hopefully get some contacts going. I hit ALT+P, but nothing happened. I tried it a few more times, but I still didn't see my call on the cluster.

Then it dawned on me. I needed to put my own call sign into the N1MM contact window before hitting ALT+P. It seems N1MM was remembering the last station I had worked and was spotting that station rather than me on my frequency!

By this point, the contest had only an hour left, not the two hours I had originally planned. Between the time change, the incorrect exchanges, the passwords, and the self-spotting confusion, I had managed to turn what should have been a relaxing couple of hours of contesting into quite an adventure.

The final result? Ten contacts in one hour!

I guess you could say it wasn't exactly my finest hour in the shack. But hey, I had fun, learned a few things, and that's what it's all about. There's always next time!