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About a month ago a new kit arrived and is still sitting waiting to be built. With some thought and over time I ended up selling my Logikit CMOS4 keyer that I built. I sold it not because it's a poor keyer but  being a stand alone keyer made it for me a hassle to program.  I missed just starting up the PC opening a program typing in what I wanted the keyer do and simply saving that sequence.  I do a lot of CW contests and have to keep changing the exchanges. With the CMOS4 keyer I was always taking out the manual and refreshing my poor memory with the proper sequence of buttons to push on the keyer to enter and save morse code in the CMOS 4 memory.
So I sold the Logikit keyer CMOS4 and Julie had purchased me the K1EL WKUSB keyer kit. I am familiar with the WKUSB keyer as some years ago I did purchase a built unit and it worked great. At the time it did seem to have some issues with my contest program N1MM. I ended up selling the unit and as they say hind sight is 20/20 and if I knew then what I do now I would still have it. This keyer has been around for some time now and improvements have been made. To hook it up to the PC is a simple USB cable along with some software and you are off to the races. To change the CW messages you open a program on your PC enter your new message then save to the key and that's it. You are able to enter four separate messages (just great for contests or DXepedtion contacts) The keyer can be connected to two rigs, my K3 and K2 can use the same unit without cable swapping. So back to the software for just one more moment.....not only can you program messages BUT there is a slew of custom settings you can enter such as spacing, weight and tone just to mention a very few extras. I hope this weekend to heat up the soldering iron and point it in the direction of this kit!!

RFI from new monitor

This evening I was on the radio and had the Elecraft P3 up and running as always. I just happend to be looking at the P3 external monitor when my PC's monitors went into sleep mode. I noticed that some signals (now seen as RFI) dropped off the screen. I had noticed these signals before and knew it was RFI but had

Both monitors off

 no idea it was coming from the monitors! My new AOC e2351F LED monitor seems to be the major culprit but the Acer Z233h does add just a little on it's own. If I turn the monitors off (via the monitor button) the RFI is gone or if the monitor goes into sleep mode. You can see from the picture to the right where the RFI was from the tails. So the question now is how does one go about narrowing this down? I have power supplies to each monitor...but would they be the problem if the RFI is gone when the monitors are turned off but supplies are still plugged in? Can you ground a flat screen monitor to my station ground? Could the RFI be traveling down the monitor cables? Well this is just another project to keep me busy. I am lucky that the RFI is not the same on all bands these shots are from 18mhz and it seems to be the worst of them all. Any ideas blog world??

Julie was out and about snapping shots!!

For me the ARRL  DX CW contest is over, I have some blog, email and cleaning to do for the rest of the day. Over all the contest was a success for me not that I broke any records with regards to points or number of contacts. I was very pleased with how the station and antenna were working, I find that contests are a great way to see how the rig and antenna preform. With regards to the rig and software I merged N1MM logger and N4PY rig control software through LP-bridge and as an added bonus I was able to also use the Flexradio's flex control vfo knob.....now that was a mouthful!! Lets break this down shall we N1MM is the

At 40mW and below this is the reading

contest logger that I use, N4PY is the software I use to control my K3. LP-bridge is a virtual port program that allows these two programs to somewhat talk to each other. I say somewhat as there are some minor issues. (there is another virtual port program VSP manager that allows perfect integration but I did not want to install it just before a contest) Oh and the FlexRadio FlexControl works fantastic with N4PY's rig control program and through LP-Bridge also works with N1MM as well. Another software program I ended
up purchasing was MRP40 cw decoding program. Now my code is not to bad at all but during contests I have found that for some reason some stations send at the speed of sound. (not sure why as they may loose more contacts that gain as folks just move on being not able to understand the fast code) For those stations this is were MRP40 shines.

Programs running during the contest

This is as far as I am concerned one of the best decoding programs. For those who want to participate in a CW contest but your code is not up to par this program will get you in on the action.  It's not free but is well worth the money!!

That was the software success for the contest other great events were being able to keep my power down to 1 watt....except for 2 contacts were the power creeped up to 3 watts. Did I say the power was kept to 1 watt? That was for a total number of  6 contacts the rest of the DX contacts went into the log with power numbers varying from 10mW's to 900mW's!!
Here is how the power numbers broke down
Contacts          Power
2                      10mW
13                     20mW
2                       40mW
4                       50mW
14                     100mW
22                     500mW
12                     From above 500 to 900mW
6                       1 watt
2                        3 watts

77                      TOTAL
I did say there was some records broken here at VE3WDM and they are
1. 69 DX contacts with under 1 watt in a contest!
2. Miles per watt bar is set higher.....CR3A with 10mW is 344,468 miles per watt 
                                                       DL6FBL with 10mW is 400,126 miles per watt

10mW on the QRPometer

I was not concerned about QSO per hour rate as at these power levels most of the time I had to try more than several times to make a contact. My radio equipment was (for those of  you wondering) the Elecraft K3, Elecraft P3, QRPometer, LP-100 meter, Hendricks 41dB attenuator and the last but not least the monster antenna......an attic dipole the Alpha Delta DX-EE.......that's right an attic dipole!!

In the thick of things

Well I am in the thick of things with the ARRL CW contest and as for my goals....I wanted to stay below 5 watts and try to get as many QRPp contacts as possible. Up to this point my QRPp contacts in the contest are at 92%!!! Because I am making mainly QRPp contacts the total contacts up to this point is suffering as I have to take the time to make the QSO. If there is even a faint signal coming back to the DX station I have to wait in line and sometimes these lines are over 5 minutes, this affects my total contact count big time. Some of the highlights up to this point in the contest are..........

1. Contacted DL6FBL with only 10mW's for a miles per watt total of 433,756 per watt an all time record  for me.
2. As was already mentioned 92% of contacts are QRPp and a majority of those are at or below 500mWs.
3. There are so far 9 contacts at or below 50mWs and again all these contacts are DX and not U.S stations.
 As for the rest of the goals like getting up early and racking up lots of time on the contest.........well the bed was sooooo comfee this morning it was very hard to get up and out before 8am! So that goal up to this point has not been met...but there is Sunday!! (dreams are free they say)
As for spending more time in the chair that will have to be weighted out on Sunday evening when the total time on air is looked at.
Contest on....it's off to 40m and maybe 80m as well..........will keep you posted