AmateurRadio.com

Relaxing and contesting

Well as you know I was not on the air on Friday as the speed and pileups were just out of this world. So I managed to get things done around the house and hit the air on Saturday at 9am local time. At that time I found 10m to be dead but 15 was great! I was able to make 10 contacts on 15 meters with 500mW's...it's funny I am contacting folks who give me their power as 1KW and I am getting to them with 500mW's. Any way the conditions were great but I did take a break at around 1800 UTC as things were slowing down on 15m at that time and not yet picking up on 20m's. At around 1930 UTC I was back at it again but this time on 20m's for some reason I did try 500mW's but it was just not doing it so I slowly made my way to5 watts. That seemed to be the magic power for 20m. The bands were alive and healthy out this way and I had a blast!! I have been on a total of  7.43 hours and made 252 contacts (all DX contacts that is) that breaks a record here of almost 34 contacts per hour. I have not started to log contacts for the ARRL DXCC diamond jubilee so this was the contest for me to get that rolling. Up to this point I have 50 contacts toward the certificate.  Sunday is another day and I plan to get up early to pounce on some 10m contacts and 50 more DXCC's......dreams are free as they say..........

Before you knew it 00:00 came and the ARRL international CW contest was a go. During my first 1/2 hour 20m was open but only to non DX to me. So it was off to 40m's and it was alive and hopping! Here at VE3WDM the contest power is 5 watts or less. The band was crowed and the pileups long I did give a few DX stations a call but the KW powered stations going back to the DX really gave me no chance. I did hang in for the whole 1/2 hour but it was just not happening to night. I shut the rig down for the evening just to crazy out there, once the contest adrenaline cools I will get back on. I am looking at Saturday to give 10m, 15m and 20m a go for some DX soup.
Until then....contest on!!

The repaired key ready for action

I have not been able to get around to putting a post out there the last couple of days but I have been busy getting stuff done around the shack and shack related stuff. Some of the action here was been wanting to settle the Begali key issue. I found it to be sending dot's and dash's on it own now and then. The right paddle was sticking very badly so I took it apart. Low and behold  the coffee that splashed some weeks ago here at the operating desk also got on my key in a very hard to see place. So it's all cleaned up, working great and waiting for me to use it!!!

RufzXP happy again

On my laptop I have Ubuntu 11.10 and up until Friday RufzXP was working just great. It was installed using Wine (a program that allows Windows programs to run on Linux machines) along with Netframe 2.0 but for some reason it just went funky and would not load. The error message said Netframe 2.0 needed to be  installed BUT IT WAS!! I tried many times to reinstall it but with no avail. Yesterday I
took the jump and downloaded Virtualbox onto my Ubuntu laptop and installed WinXP. Virtualbox is a great program that allows you to run other operating systems within a "virtual computer" it creates. I now have Windows XP running on my machine and was able to install Netframe 2.0 and RufzXP...all are getting along just fine now.

The KAT2 which also has a "cat" hair

Finally I have started my Elecraft KAT 2 antenna tuner for the Elecraft K2 radio.If you enlarge the picture see if you can spot the cat hair.....Oliver knows he is not supposed to be playing with my toys....BUSTED! I also have picked up some nice headphones at a great price along with a nice carry case for a surprising low price as well....but more on that in another post. Finally my Nikon D60 camera I use to photograph most if not all my blog pictures was giving me troubles. The memory card would not stay in the camera. Each time I tried to place it in it just popped out. If it stayed in the camera would tell me it was not installed. The camera is under extended warranty but the turn around time is 6-8 weeks! I took it in and I demonstrated the trouble....but it functioned fine and has ever since.  Now it's time to get some radio time in as most of the household chores and running around have been done. This week it will be time to setup for the ARRL international CW contest coming up next weekend.

Giving PSK a go

On Wednesday I spent some time familiarizing myself with HRD's DM-780 and getting some custom macros setup. In time I am  going to try out Fldigi and see which program I like better. The only reason I started with DM-780 was the K3 is all setup with HRD so I am half way there when it comes to PSK. So how did it go...well I am operating at 5 watts and there were some stations calling CQ but I was not able to grab their attention with my replies. I setup DM-780 to send info up too PSKreporter but up to this point and including today I just don't seem to be spotted at all. I am not sure if my setup with PSKreporter is wrong or I my signal

Action on the band

is not getting out. I do see on my LP-100 watt meter there is 5 watts getting to the antenna but whether it is readable or not I am not sure. Besides I am still getting the hang of PSKreporter as well so it could be operator error at this end. Also today I was involved in the NAQP CW contest but am now just taking a bit of a break. I was calling CQ on 40m CW a short time ago and KC9SNC came back to me. Our QSO was going well and the CW speed was very comfortable for me.......then came the contester's right over our QSO!!! Now they may not have heard us as I was QRP at 5 watts but that brought the QSO to an end. I did email Matt and gave him some more info about my station and that we may have better luck next time. So up to this point I have not been able to make a PSK contact maybe I will give Fldigi a go on Sunday and see if I can bag my first PSK QSO. It's now time to head back to the NAQP CW contest......and try not to QRM anyone who is not involved in the contest!!!

Contest time

Well another CQ WW DX CW contest is in the books here at VE3WDM many out there who participate in contests like to set goals. I'm no different but before I set my goals I like to make sure I understand reality first. I am never going to win in these world wide contests I just don't hang in there long enough to get a world class QRP score going. Also I just don't have an "out of this world" antenna setup, I am running with an indoor attic fan dipole. So with that understood my goals for this contest were as follows...
1. Relax and have fun contacting hams all over the world.
2. Run most if not all the contest QRPp at 500mW's.
3. As I finish a contact check out the ham on QRZ.COM and learn about them and their station as I cruz for another contact.
4. Beat my miles per watt record of 8325 miles per watt.
5. Try to beat the 300 contact wall.........never stood a chance as I was doing to much of goal number 1 and 3!!!

I got a late start on Saturday around 10:30 a.m local time, yes the contest did start on Friday but that was dinner and a movie at home with Julie. I was very impressed  how open the bands were like 10m and 15m's those two bands were my staple bands for the whole contest. Below is a highlight of the top contacts for the weekend all with 500mW's.
contact                     Miles                Miles per watt (.5 watts)                  Kilo's


1. ZS4TX                 8368                16737.20                                        26935.91
2. EM2T                   4742                9484                                              15263.91
3. 4O3RR                 4695.2             9390.32                                         15112.26
4. IR8C                    4568                 9137.34                                         14705.12
5. HG1S                   4415                 8831.18                                         14212.41
6. 9A1P                    4360.22            8721.85                                         14036.46
7. S50K                    4358.0              8717.05                                          14028.74
8. IR8C                     4290.22            8580.43                                         13808.86

Keeping track of mileage

 Over all I made 106 contacts out of that 84 contacts were made with 500mW's 21 with 5 watts and one contact on 40 meters with 50 watts. It seems that on 40m I just was not cutting it and to make a contact I had to raise the power to 50 watts. So that was the last contact on 40 meters. As for beating records I was thrilled to contact ZS4TX which got me 16737.20 miles per watt!!!!! Not only that in this contest I was able to make 30 contacts that topped my 8325 watt per mile record. Now running 500mW's did bring my QSO count down as there was lots of repeats I had to do. I just want to thank the op's out there who stuck with me and asked over and over again for my call instead of just moving on.

Earlier I did say that I was never going to win a contest but in closing I have said this before in the blog..............there should be a QRPp category. There is QRP but running 5 watts is  different from pumping out Milli-watts. Well change does take time and maybe in time there will be a spot just for QRPp. 

        106                                             77                               23,408

The Elecraft K3 in action

It was a  late start to the contest it was  10:30am local time Saturday when I got into it and the bands were just hoping!! I started on 10m and over the coarse of the day just jumped between 10m and 15m. In the past 20m was the staple for me and most of the contest I would just camp out there. So far in this contest I have not even seen 20m as the other two bands were great with DX. I am operating 99% of the time QRP at 500Mw's. I am very surprised at the results and how far such little power can go from my attic dipole. Now and then I would pump the power up to 5 watts if I they were having trouble making me out. Now running this low of power does mean lost of repeats on my part (thanks so much for all the op's and their patience) so my QSO rate is really down. I did try 40m this evening but it's very busy with station that are running loads of power. The one station I did contact in Europe I finally made it to him at 50 watts. That for me is WAY to high as far as power goes I am just not sure at that level if I would am causing any interference to neighbors electronics. So I just shut things down for the night and am hoping to get on Sunday nice and early and take advantage of 10,15 and possibly 20 meters. Hope to see you in the mix up!!!