Posts Tagged ‘Contests’
CQ WPX CW contest in the books
May 27th, 2013 | 
Author: 
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| Lots of Solar action |
- When running N1MM logging program, N4PY rig control software and the Flex Radio Flexcontrol vfo knob all together through LP-Bridge some very very strange things can happen. This resulted in some lost contacts and down time due to software issues.Going to have to get these programs to shake hands and get along.
- Funny thing.....I have been practicing my contest CW code with Morse runner and using my laptop. Well it would seem that my fingers became very familar with the smaller keyboard on the laptop. When I contested on my home PC and regular sized keyboard I was making mistake after mistake while keyboarding calls and exchanges. I do have a smaller keyboard for the desktop PC and started to use it towards the end. Going to have to stick to the same keyboard as it seems size does matter.
- It seemed to me that most of the contesters CW speed was in around 25-30 wpm and I did find that very comfortable.
- At least the bummer conditions were world wide and leaves us all in the same playing field more or less.
- I contacted OQ5M in the contest and soon after he commented on my blog of how good my signal was. This fast interaction is kinda cool.
- My contact with Australia, Cuba and Hawaii.
- The politeness of the op's whom I had to give several repeats too, those who still could not make out my call just said "bad QRM and hope to contact later 73"
Day one of CQ WW CW contest
- The propagation was.....shall we say (because this is a family blog) crap!!
- I was in the contest for a grand total of 5 hours today.
- There was some down time as you can tell from fact number 2...software troubles, USB port trouble and K3 updates and the list can go on. (This is normal contest OMG stuff)
- The attic dipole once again did very well considering the conditions.
- The evening once 20m closes down I am done as with the poor conditions for some reason 40m has not been a great band for me with the attic dipole.
- So far I have not used any paper and pencils to copy call's I have been able to just use the keyboard. Now yes in the picture above in the center monitor bottom right you will see MRP40. (cw decoding program and the BEST one out there) That was up and running for the contester who for some reason send at @#@%$$# SPEEDS!!
- With the propagation conditions in the dumps I was very please to get my QRP signal heard in Hawaii, Australia, South America and Cuba.
- I have been practicing my contest code with some programs and for the first time code at 30-35wpm was clear and understandable!
Adding my two cents worth…………
HF Slacker Works the CQ WPX Contest
This past weekend, I had to great time working the CQ WPX (SSB) Contest. I am pretty much an HF Slacker but I do like getting on the air once in a while for these contests. The attraction seems to be the opportunity to make lots of contacts in a short time and picking up a few new countries. The format for this contest is really fun…multipliers are based on the callsign prefix, so “everyone is DX”…sort of. CQ has an awards program (CQ WPX Award) that is also based on prefixes worked, so the contest is a good way to pursue that award. The ARRL recently added CQ WPX Award support to Logbook of the World, which will help with confirming contacts. Us HF Slackers don’t like messing around with actually sending QSL cards when transferring a few bytes electronically is sufficient.
I operated from our mountain cabin, with just 100W to a trap dipole up in the trees. Not a Big Gun station, especially not in this contest. There were quite a few stations on the Caribbean, many of them contest DXpeditions. Conditions were pretty good on 20M and 15M, with 10M also quite usable during portions of the day.
Band QSOs Pts WPX 7 39 69 30 14 71 142 59 21 81 163 54 28 9 24 6 Total 200 398 149 Score : 59,302
The last time I submitted a log for CQ WPX was in 2011 with roughly the same station. That year, I made 98 QSOs for a score of 18,920. So this year’s score is an improvement over that effort.
But the most important thing is to have fun messing around with radios.
73, Bob K0NR
New records set at VE3WDM!!
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| Julie was out and about snapping shots!! |
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| At 40mW and below this is the reading |
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.
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| Programs running during the contest |
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
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| 10mW on the QRPometer |
ARRL DX contest
There is still a few hours of the ARRL DX CW contest to go but I have worked all that I want to work this weekend. I only took part for fun, so no targets to beat. I did hope to work some of the rarer west coast states but conditions didn’t allow it. I only worked W/VE stations – in fact I only worked US stations, the VEs were conspicuous by their absence. I did hear one VE but I never managed to work him. So in comparison to other contests my haul of contacts was worse than normal.
I operated for a couple of hours late Saturday morning, and the same again after lunch. On Sunday morning I did another couple of hours but I almost gave up as I seemed to be hearing all the same stations I worked on Saturday. Then the jinx left and I managed to log another batch of new stations. But by Sunday afternoon I’d had enough, and it was a fine late winter day so I went for a walk by the river with Olga.
I think conditions this weekend were below average. Ten metres was all but dead; 15m was quite productive but the money band as usual was 20m. I didn’t try the lower bands as I think my attic antennas are too much of a compromise on those bands to work DX with them.
My total of 55 stations worked is nothing to write home about, but remember I was only working US stations – I ignored all the Europeans and Russians whom I would have worked in a normal contest. I worked 20 different states: CT, FL, GA, IL, MA, MD, MN, NC, NH, NJ, NY, OH, PA, RI, SC, TN, TX, VA, VT and WI. So my 100W was barely making it past the east coast. If anyone is interested in my full log the contest starts on this page.
Working in a contest is always fun. It’s not the winning, it’s the taking part that counts!
Contest goals close to 50/50
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| In the thick of things |
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
