AmateurRadio.com

Its probably not news to many people but whilst I was thinking about a suitable site for the UKAC 144Mhz contest next Tuesday (4th December) I remembered about a coverage prediction programme called Radio Mobile.

Now seeing as things on the internet are steadily replacing things on the desktop I had a go with comparing sites with the model outputs. As a contest novice I am entering in ‘in the spirit of’ contesting. Any site needed to be quite close to home and easily accessed / operated from.

Radio mobile confirmed what you’d expect, the site closest to home that I can get to with the car isn’t the best but its a whole load better that operating from the house. So armed with the knowledge that I’ll get some contacts at least I’ll take the plunge and aim not to be at the bottom of the pile.

The key kit will be

1. A warm coat (its 20.00UTC – 22.00 UTC) – So it’ll be chilly

2. FT817 and extra power supply – Seeing as it runs out of puff within a few minutes

3. Sotabeams 3 element yagi and fishing pole

4. A flask of tea and chocolate hobnobs

The output from a 4w Tx at the Sandwith site is below. More than enough to get a couple of contacts I hope.

We’ll have to see how I get on next week, but if you’re in earshot listen out for the weedy signal from Cumbria (rather than the stronger on from G4VFL, who has nabbed the Corney Fell site – perhaps I should tramp up Scafell Pike to out do him on height!)

The last day of the CQ WW DX CW contest. But nothing of interest to report. Sunday morning was one of those mornings when I didn’t seem to fully wake up. It was after 11am before I got into the shack.

My intention was to make some more contest contacts on 10m. Although I don’t compete seriously, I usually decide what category I am going to play in – single or multi-band, QRP or Low Power – and stick to it so that if I do make a decent number of contacts I can send an entry in. But this time my effort didn’t even justify sending in a check log.

I heard some interesting big gun stations such as in Africa (Gambia, Senegal) but I just could not be heard over the others calling. One Russian station seemed to be following me around and he wasn’t having much luck either. It was hard going even with the more run of the mill stations. I felt like I was running QRP. In fact, I’ve had better results when I did run QRP (such as for the CQ WW WPX back in May, when I used the KX3 ) than I was having this weekend.

It was obviously a mistake to limit myself to 10 metres. Not everyone was having such bad luck as me though. I heard a DX station who wasn’t hearing my calls working fellow blogger Tim G4VXE. So much for the magic dipole!

After I broke off for lunch I couldn’t be bothered to get back on the air again and so I spent the afternoon listening to a broadcast concert. I will draw a veil over my lamentable effort. (Those who are really interested to see the extent of my embarrassment can take a look at my contact log.)

The first day of the CQ WW DX CW contest and propagation on 10m is disappointingly down compared to previous days.

10m WSPR spots @ G4ILO 24 November 2012

No propagation to USA as you can see.

I have made a handful of contest contacts on 10m but I have been too preoccupied with computer issues to really get into it. Perhaps tomorrow will be better.

I’m not a serious contester – how could I be with attic antennas? – but when I’m in the right mood I do find contests fun. And the CQ Magazine contests are, in my opinion, the best of all. Even though I’ll never submit a log that appears more than a few lines up from the bottom of its category, I still get a buzz from that feeling of taking part in a big event. For those making a serious effort it is a big event, and I know that they do appreciate the points they get from working little popgun stations like mine. The big contests are important events in the ham radio calendar, and those who don’t wish to participate can always use the WARC bands or a different mode for those few days a year that a big event is on.

Last year I didn’t even feel like switching on the radio for the contest, so this year’s effort marked a bit of a personal milestone. As I am only taking part for fun (though why else would anyone participate?) I thought at first that I would use the KX3 and make a QRP entry. But I soon changed my mind the afternoon before the contest when I tried to call some of the contestants who were checking out their stations and not one of them even acknowledged my calls. I decided that this contest is not the place for QRP, so I used my K3 with its 100W PA instead. Despite this there were still a few stations who didn’t seem to hear me call. I guess they were not using Elecraft receivers!

I take my hat off to those who do submit QRP entries, particularly those who in the spirit of QRP use simple wire antennas. Roger G3XBM deserves a special mention as from the look of it he did as well with 5W from his FT-817 and halo antenna as I did with 100W and a dipole.

I set myself a target of 100 contacts and thought I would start off on 10m and see how it goes. In the event I made 128 contacts and there was so much activity on Ten that there was no need to try any other band. I amassed (if that’s the right word) 203 contact points and 53 multipliers for a submitted score of 10759. Time spent was the main limiting factor: I spent a few hours on Saturday and slightly less on the Sunday, and didn’t operate during the evenings at all. I could have submitted a check log but by sending in a normal log I will have the added interest of seeing how far from the bottom of the category I have come!

During the contest I took time out now and again to make tweaks to my logging program KComm. I actually found a bug that has still got me scratching my head. If you enter the contest exchange (CQ Zone in this case) as a single digit (such as “5”) the value is not written to the log file. I worked around it by remembering to use two digits (e.g. “05”). Hopefully I can fix this before the CQ WW CW contest.

There is not much worth noting in my log. South America and Australia are notable for their complete absence, though I did hear a couple of Brazilian stations. Gotaways were Vietnam and Thailand. They would have been all-time new countries for me, but I just couldn’t crack the pileups. New countries I did get were Ceuta & Melilla, Greenland, Tajikistan and Kosovo, which set me scurrying off to get a new wf1b.dat that included this new entity.

China I have worked before, but I missed a second Chinese station in a different zone because I just could not make out his call. I think some operators don’t realize that if they spoke a bit more slowly and used a bit less compression (okay, a lot less compression) they would make just as many contacts and would have their call entered correctly in a lot more logs. One station told me “we have worked before” as a result of a logging error by me because the first time I mis-heard his call.

All in all it was a fun weekend. Now back to WSPR!

There are three excellent ham radio activities going on this coming weekend. Check these out and see if there is an activity that catches your interest. This is written for people in Colorado but items #1 and #3 are North American wide.

1. ARRL September VHF QSO Party – noon MDT on Saturday until 9 PM MDT on Sunday    http://www.arrl.org/september-vhf
2. Colorado FM Sprint – a mini version of the September VHF QSO Party,
   using FM only on these bands: 146 MHz, 222 MHz and 440 MHz
   Saturday from noon to 7 PM MDT
   http://www.qsl.net/k0yb/Colorado_FM_Sprint.html
   Suggested frequencies: 146.58, 146.55, 223.5, 446.000, 446.100 MHz FM simplex
3. North American Summits On The Air (SOTA) Weekend
   SOTA activations all over North America
   http://na-sota.org/NASOTA_Weekend.html
   Go here to see announced summit activations: http://www.sotawatch.org/
   VHF contacts are usually on 146.52 MHz
   (Note: this frequency is NOT allowed for contacts in the
   Sept VHF QSO Party and Colorado FM Sprint)
   HF contacts are on frequencies listed on sotawatch.org

Wow, lots of stuff to choose from!

At the very least, I’d suggest getting on the air Saturday afternoon to see if you can work some of the VHF contest stations. They are likely to be some mountaintop SOTA stations active at that time, too. Some of these folks may try to work the VHF contests AND do the SOTA thing on the same expedition.

73, Bob K0NR