AmateurRadio.com

I spent a couple of hours again this weekend playing with the N1MM contest logging software and getting back into the contesting groove. My new K1EL USB interface continues to work flawlessly, even on my ancient XP laptop ... gone are the occasional keying stutters produced when previously keying from the serial port. N1MM is one of the most widely-used contest loggers and is freely available for download here. I still run the older 'Classic' version as I don't think my laptop could handle the newer 'N1MM +' edition ... I'll upgrade when I get a newer contesting laptop.

Both the Colorado and the Tennessee State QSO Parties were held this weekend, providing me another round of CW contest practice. Both activities are pretty low-key affairs when it comes to contesting but hey, every bit of practice helps.

I found surprisingly little action in the CO Party, making just 18 contacts ... 12 on 20m CW and 6 on 40m, with 17 sections worked. There seemed to be more activity from TN amateurs though, with 38 QSO's in 33 sections, 28 on 20m and 10 on 40m. All contacts were made on CW. All of the 40m contacts were made several hours before local sunset here, surprising the heck out of me that the W4's could even hear me in broad daylight ... the stations worked must have very quiet locations.

The state QSO parties are a good way to enjoy a short round of contesting without blowing an entire weekend, which I don't think I would really like to endure, and there seems to be at least one or two of them each weekend ... an easy way to ease into contesting or to keep up your on-the-fly contest keyboarding skills.

you can sleep soundly tonight!

You have no competition from W2LJ - whatsoever. I have finished the 2015 Skeeter Hunt Soapbox and have posted it to the Web. A bona fide Web designer probably could have done in an hour what took me a lot longer to accomplish. And I bet it would look a lot better, too. Mr. Originality or Mr. Creativity, I am not!

In all their non-glory, they are there for your perusal. Just click and go!

2015 Scoreboard

2015 Soapbox

72 de Larry WLJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!

The Peanut Power Sprint, the closeout of the Summer QRP Contesting/Operating season is scheduled for Sunday, September 27th.  Jim W4QO has been posting this notice on the e-mail reflectors:

The Bees have swarmed and the Skeeters have been hunted.  Now it time for a snack - The Peanut Power Sprint!

Everyone plays... Outdoors, indoors, lo/hi power, ... there is even a QRO category.
http://www.hornucopia.com/contestcal/contestdetails.php?ref=571
Sponsored by the North Georgia QRP Club (NoGaQrP), this sprint will be held on Sept. 27, 2015 from 4PM to 6PM EDT (Sept. 27 - 2000z to 2200z). Full rules are on the NoGaQrP website - nogaqrp.org   Your QSO will be worth more if you have a PEANUT number; assigned NEW each year (see below).

The club is making this one different from most other QRP QSO events.

1. It is open to all amateurs at any power level. This is to attract some new folks to QRP while running their comfortable power - QRO (<100 watts pls) All are welcome and there is a  QRO category. This is a FUN event. Not cut-throat!

2. It is a short sprint lasting only two hours; not tying up the entire afternoon. Although brief, run reasonable CW speeds for all to copy.

3. It starts late in the day (right after close of TX QSO party!) which will mean those on the west coast will begin at 1PM PDT, later than most contests.

4. There are categories for all situations - the prestigious category is the Peanut Power category - 1w CW or less, 2W PEP SSB or less - operating from the field! This is the GOOBER CLASS!  SOTA anyone?

5. Plaques will be awarded for each of 5 category winners (minimum 3 entries).
http://www.nogaqrp.org/PeanutPower/2014/PeanutPowerPlaques2014/plaques.php

6. Sprint encourages SSB as well as CW contacts.  The exchange: RS(T), State/Province/Country(SPC) and your Peanut Number or Power. Call CQ NUT and have FUN!

7. Multipliers count each band/each mode. Work GA ( or any SPC) on 3 bands and 2 modes each = 6 multiplier.   Puts emphasis on switching bands and modes during the event.  Check SSB on the quarter hour. (SPC means State Province Country)

8. This will encourage activity on the 3 permitted bands - 40, 20, and 15M. There are suggested frequencies for each band/mode. Notice we are encouraging the now almost dead portion of 40M - 7061 khz and up.

9. Logs are not submitted - simply a score - but keep handy in case requested  for verification.  Watch website for results. There is an online score calculator.  It's all on the website - nogaqrp.org

10. Work stations holding a Peanut Power Number (PPN) for 7 points. Stations worked who do not hold a PPN (will send their power) yield 3 points. Yes, QRO stations can request and receive a PPN. You do not declare your category until you decide to send in your entry.   If you get halfway through and change your power, simply enter under a different category than you originally thought!

To request a PPN, send an email to NoGaNuT PeTe at [email protected]  Requests for special numbers may no longer be accommodated. See the current list via the website. Or click here to see the latest list:  http://byjimeny.com/PPN2015.pdf 

Include the word PEANUT POWER NUMBER in the title of your request please.

Dang, those goobers are tasting great!   http://tinyurl.com/olkg4za

NoGaNuT JiM, W4QO

This is a really fun Sprint/Operating Event.  If you have EVER been intimidated by QRP Contesting, this is the contest for you!

I'd like to make a special request to all the Skeeters to please buzz on over to the NoGA site and request to become a peanut for an afternoon. I guarantee you will have a blast!

72 de Larry W2LJ  - Peanut #43
QRP - When you care to send the very least!

OK - I've made the 2015 NJQRP Skeeter Hunt Scoreboard public, the results are as posted.

Congratulations to all of you who participated (you're all winners in my book!), but special congratulations to the "Top Five":

N3AQC - The North American QRP CW Club - First Place Overall - Top finish in PA by a multi-multi station - 14,380 points

KX0R - George Fuller - Second Place Overall - Top finish in CO - Top finish by a single op station - 13,652 points

N0SS - Mid-Missouri Amateur Radio Club - Third Place Overall - Top finish in MO - Top finish by a multi op - single TX station - 7,276 points

N3CU - Ken McIntire - Fourth Place Overall - Top finish in PA by a single op station - 6,148 points

K4YA - Myron Cherry - Fifth Place Overall - Top finish in TN - 6,084 points

The entire scoreboard can be viewed at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lcRvpNb2jwgyJsqruCdecNiWXNpi6yz2l4vvJucp0UE/edit#gid=307219926

We didn't do too badly this year. 170 Hams signed up for Skeeter numbers (a record) and we had 60 log summaries submitted. That's about a 35% return rate.

As promised, the soapbox page will come shortly and I will announce when it's ready for viewing. Most nights this week will be busy as I will be volunteering with my CERT team for crowd control duties, as the Barclay Golf Tournament is being played out at the Plainfield Country Club, which is about 1/4 mile from my house.  Look for the soapbox announcement some time next week.

Thank you to all of you who sign up and those who participate, and those who help me get the word out about the NJQRP Skeeter Hunt. I'm already looking forward to 2016's event! And as always, if any of you have any suggestions as to how this event can be improved, I'm always willing to listen. Changes were made this year due to someone's input from last year and there was a good suggestion made to me after this year's event which will result in a small change in the way QSO points are calculated next year. I'm all ears, guys!

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!

courtesy: www.kcj-cw.com/

I am often brutally reminded of how much influence our Sun has on propagation, both good and bad!

Hoping to enjoy some further contest work and improve my ear-brain-keyboarding skills, I had prepared everything for this Saturday's 24-hour 'KCJ' Contest. The 'Keymen's Club of Japan' is an annual affair that seems to attract a lot of domestic JA activity, with bonus points when they work any DX stations. I checked my N1MM Logger software but it didn't seem to have the contest. I did find it in the program's UDC (User Defined Contests) section but had to download and install a unique 'Sections' file from a Japanese website, as the contest requires the Japanese to exchange their Prefecture abbreviations. I eventually had N1MM working perfectly for the KCJ contest and with the contest starting at 0500 locally, I tuned up everything for the normally excellent 40m path to Japan in the morning and went to bed.

courtesy: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/

Rising just a few minutes before the contest start, a quick check of 40m indicated that something was not right ... not a JA to be heard, in fact almost no signals to be heard! Checking the web for more info, I quickly discovered a 'K' index of '7', indicative of very disturbed conditions. Along with a strong southerly pointed Bz, it seemed that we were in the middle of some strong auroral conditions ... back to bed with hopes of the afternoon 15 or 20m path to Japan being better.

The afternoon path never really materialized either. Normally, propagation between the west coast and Japan is very good, with lots of strong signals being the norm ... but not today. Over the course of several hours, only four JA stations found their way into my log, and they were all a struggle.

courtesy: http://wdc.kugi.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dstdir/index.html

The earth had been hit, rather unexpectedly, by another whopping 'coronal hole stream' and propagation was truly dismal. With only a smidgen of keyboarding practice, I had to admit defeat ... the Sun had messed things up once again, as it has been doing for the past year as Cycle 24 slowly slides downhill. Unfortunately there is always a lot more flaring and streaming on the way down than on the way up. Hopefully the Sun will soon get this out of its system and radio conditions will quiet down and stabilize for the upcoming fall and winter DX season.

There is one more chance left, this evening, to get in some more keyboarding practice. The 'Flying Pigs QRP Group' holds their monthly 'Run For The Bacon' CW QSO party, starting at 0100Z tonight. Non-members may also join in the fun by sending their 'power' level instead of a membership number ... so maybe I'll run into you tonight.


Now it's back to N1MM to reconfigure for the QRP Party and hope that old Sol will co-operate for the Sunday night crowd, but you know what they say about the 'best laid plans...'

Can't wait 'til New Year's Eve's Straight Key Night? Enjoy CW as it has been sent since the earliest days of Amateur Radio in the SKCC Weekend Sprintathon! The SKCC regularly celebrates the joy of CW ... sent by either hand key or by bug:

The SKCC WES aims to bring together operators with different skill levels in a regularly scheduled, informal operating event lasting 36 hours. The event starts at 1200 UTC on the Saturday following the 6th of each month and ends at 2359 UTC on Sunday. Participants can operate for a total of no more than 24 hours. This event runs from 1200 UTC Aug. 8 to 23:59 UTC Aug. 9.


Non-members are encouraged to join in on the fun and, better yet, get an SKCC number by signing-up. Most of the action will congregate around the SKCC watering-hole frequencies:

Participants may sprint on 160-6 meters, excluding the WARC bands (60, 30, 17, and 12 meters). Suggested frequencies are on or around the SKCC calling frequencies: 1.820, 3.550, 7.055 and 7.114, 14.050, 21.050 and 21.114, 28.050 and 28.114, and 50.090 Mhz. K3UK's sked page or other spotting tools are permitted for this event.

I'll be on 20m for a few hours with my single 6L6 Tri-tet crystal oscillator running about 10 watts ... hopefully within a few KHz of 14.050, doubling from a 40m crystal along with my faithful Vibroplex, purchased as a teenager back in the early 60's.

For all of the details, visit the SKCC WES Rules page here ... so put away your keyers and have some real old fashioned radio fun.

courtesy: http://k1el.tripod.com/

It's been a few years since I've done any CW contesting, mainly because the laptop I have always used became slow and sluggish as well as developing a keying glitch when keying was done via the serial port connection. Apparently it is, or was, a fairly common problem with some operating systems when serial port keying was employed.

Last year I purchased and built the WinKeyer USB keyer, mainly to use as a USB keying interface, and hopefully kill the keying stutter. The stutter would manifest itself in the form of delayed element spacing. For example, the 'C' in a 'CQ' would sound like 'NN'- every once in awhile ... not every time, but often enough to drive me crazy. From lots of 'Googling', I learned that USB keying should solve the problem.

The first thing I did was to download and run 'CCleaner' to scrub the computer of unused files and clean up the registry. My contesting laptop uses Windows XP, which I've always liked but my old system was taking about eight minutes to boot-up from a cold start! Following the CCleaner run, I did a hard drive defragmentation, shut the system down, and pressed the 'on' button. This time the system booted completely in less than two minutes, the fastest in several years!

After, interfacing everything with a half-dozen clip leads (I didn't have the required cables), configuring the WinKeyer and setting up the N1MM logging software for this weekend's NA CW QSO Party, I cautiously waded into the fray.

Yikes!

Like riding a bicycle, it all came back to me quickly. The NA guys are hardcore CW fans and send fast, typically 30WPM or better. I started in the 'Search & Pounce' (S&P) mode to ease into the logging software's required keystrokes but soon felt comfortable enough to change to the 'Run' mode.

Handling the pileups and typing fast enough to keep up was challenging yet exhilarating ... it had been a few years since my last test, the 160m Stew Perry Contest, my favorite. I could only take the heat for so long and after about two hours of steady operating decided to call it a day. It was nice to shake out the new interface and also test my own skills once again. I completed my short test with 137 QSO's and 5891 points ... not much by 'NA' standards but still, for me, a ton of fun and a good 'back-in-the-saddle' re-start.

Now that the software is working well (there were zero keying glitches during the test), I'm looking forward to getting back into some CW contesting again and to improve my ear-brain-computer skills.

Time to get busy and build some interfacing cables and get rid of the clip-lead rat's nest for the next exercise.

Contesting events can be found at WA7BNM's excellent WA7BNM Contest Calender website