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I did participate in the EPC Ukraine PSK63 contest on 80/40m and the 10m RTTY contest last weekend for a while. Goal was to score some points for the “afdelingscompetitie” (local divisional contest counting). I did make 105 QSOs in total. 78 in the EPC contest and 27 in the RTTY contest. Not much, but not bad since I didn’t spend hours on the radio. Unfortenately N1MM did not support the EPC contest, I could not fill in the exchange UR12 for example, and I had to switch over to DM780 to continue. After all I cannot merge both ADIF files to a good one for conversion to cabrillio and I do have some errors counting as well. I actually made a total mess of it, so I’m sorry I will not send in my log. These russian contests are supported well by mixW, but that is not a free program and I don’t like to work with it. It doesn’t have the “feel” I like from a digital modes program. It could be personal.

Bas, PE4BAS, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Groningen, Netherlands. Contact him at [email protected].

The Summits On The Air (SOTA) program was launched in Europe in 2002 but is just now making its way to the United States. Recently, there has been a surge of activity in Colorado as the program gains traction here.

The basic concept of SOTA is an award program that rewards the radio operators that activate summits and the radio operators that chase summits. For those of us that enjoy the mountains and enjoy ham radio, this is a great fit. I won’t go into all of the rules here (Warning: There Are Lots of Them), so check out the SOTA web site for the complete details.

Steve WG0AT (World Famous Alpha Goat) just published another one of his Rooster and Peanut videos that capture his recent activation of Mount Herman. I managed to work Steve on 2 Meters and I make a cameo appearance in his video below as I make my first official SOTA contact.

Steve has been activating SOTA summits for a while now and others are joining in. Here’s a video from Pikes Peak with Mike, KD9KC and Ron,WT5RZ on North American Summits On the Air weekend.

Recently, Jerry KD0BIK succumbed to the SOTA addiction, activating Mount Herman and  Green Mountain (click on the mountain names to see his blog postings). Chris NW5W has also been active…check out his web site here.

There are numerous SOTA videos on youtube from all over the world.

The SOTAWatch web site is dedicated to posting future SOTA operating plans (Alerts) and SOTA activations in progress (Spots). The North American SOTA Yahoo! Group is another great source of information.

See you on a summit soon.

73, Bob K0NR

Bob Witte, KØNR, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Colorado, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

Well those of  you who are waiting for the Elecraft KX3 to go on sale have been given a tease.....there is a download of the control panel now available!! Looking at this gem will help sooth the wait for the unit to go on sale. So put the kettle on for some tea, sip and enjoy the first KX3 PDF  I am at this time not getting one but the PDF info is just GREAT!!!
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Colin Butler, M6BOY, is the host of the ICQ Podcast, a weekly radio show about Amateur Radio. Contact him at [email protected].

Colin Butler, M6BOY, is the host of the ICQ Podcast, a weekly radio show about Amateur Radio. Contact him at [email protected].

For some time now I’ve been nibbling away at H. G. Wells’book, War of the Worlds — in CW! It is available along with several other books at the SKCC CW Learning Page. What a blast! It’s an effective way to improve your code speed, and it is so captivating that you want to keep coming back to it to find out what happens next. Somehow the story is all the more gripping as it unfolds slowly, letter by letter, giving you ample time to imagine the scenes that Wells describes.

Each chapter is one word-per-minute faster than the last one. So while it starts at a mere 10 WPM, if you finish the book you’ll be copying 36 WPM!

A couple other features are helpful, too. For one thing it has punctuation marks that I’ve never learned before. It’s not everyday that you hear hyphens on the air, and the first time you hear an apostrophe or quotation-mark it will throw you for a loop. But you learn them quickly enough.

Another thing I like is that Wells uses some expressions that are a bit antiquated. This helps keep you on your toes. On the air, it can be a help to anticipate the next word, but it can also be a hindrance — if you don’t hear what you expect to hear, it can take just enough milliseconds to get over the surprise that the whole word “rushes by like a freight train” (as my friend Keith describes code when it suddenly becomes opaque). By listening to War of the Worlds on CW, with its occasionally unfamiliar turns of phrase, you learn to temper your expectation so that you’re not thrown off.

All in all it’s a great way to hone your skills, and it’s way more enjoyable than the dry practice tapes I listened to ‘way back when!

Thank you to SKCC and especially to John Dunlap, KF7BYU, for making this book available!

Update: One ham has asked me for help on this. Currently the only way to listen to the files at http://www.skccgroup.com/learn/learn.php is to click on them one at a time, either listening to them one at a time online or right-clicking each one and saving them one at a time to put together in a playlist on your computer (That’s what I did, and it was a bit tedious.). If you would like to download a zipped file of the whole book, send me an email at [email protected] and I’ll give you the link for as long as I can spare the disk space to keep the zipped file online.

Todd Mitchell, NØIP, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Minnesota, USA. He can be contacted at [email protected].

I have been debating this one for a long long time and that is do I or don't I want (want not NEED) the Elecraft P3 pan adapter. There were two factors that drew me away from this unit, the price and the size of the screen.
Well I have sold some unused "stuff" here at VE3WDM so the funds are there. I contacted Lisa at Elecraft and I was told that in a few months there is a board coming out to put the P3 video up onto your monitor along with other goodies that it can do as well. For example decode on the monitor CW, RTTY and PSK31 to name a few. So
 on Friday I called Elecraft and sealed the deal. I hope it comes in time for Christmas and in keeping with tradition I ordered the kit version!!
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].