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Posts Tagged ‘Contests’

No contest

March 26th, 2012 |

At the weekend I noticed that the CQ WW WPX phone contest was on. I’m not a fan of phone contests – hollering your call into a mic over and over again is not my idea of fun – but I thought it might be interesting to see what I could hear or work on 10m when so many stations were on.

In the end I only made a handful of contacts. It was just too manic for my current state of mind. I couldn’t remember the serial numbers I was given before typing them into the log, so I would have to wait for the station I worked to make another contact and see what the next serial number was. I much prefer CW contests using a code reader to print up the exchange so that I can just double-click the information to enter it error-free in the log.

I’ve just started my final cycle of chemotherapy and it has knocked me back a bit. So I think I’ll stick to pastimes like WSPR and JT65 that have a more relaxed pace until I’m feeling better.

ARRL DX CW contest done for 2012

February 20th, 2012 |

Author: Mike VE9KK

Action on 20m

Since my setup does not allow me to be even close in the top running I try to come up with some goals before each contest,I find it makes the contest more interesting. Since this contest hosts a load of DX and the ARRL is offering a Diamond DXCC challenge certificate for 2012 I decided to begin my DXCC country collection. During this contest I was not concerned with the number of contacts, concerned about spending to much time on making a certain contact or my hourly QSO rate. I was set on DXCC country hunting and working toward the 2012 DXCC award.

Contest highlights

As always I operate the contest QRP at 5 watts but I also I was able at times to drop the power down to 5mW's. My longest miles per watts in this contest was 9339 miles per watt.
I was able to collect 65 DXCC countries during the contest.
I made it into Japan and Hawaii with 5 watts I tried lower power setting but it was not working.
All bands (for me that's 10,15,20 and 40m) were open at one time or another and I had contacts on all these bands.

Contest downside

This was the one and only downside I found for the whole contest.....at times when I came across rare DX and rightfully so there was a pileup. I found some stations would continue to send their call even over the DX station who was trying to answer a call. It's hard to find a hole to enter your call when (and they were very few) operators keep sending their call no matter what is going on in the pileup.

To wrap it up the contest was great and propagation sure was not as good as in weeks gone by but still good. Operating QRP meant I had to send lots of repeats but the patience's of the DX op's was outstanding. This contest gave me a good boost toward my DXCC award.

Day one (for me) of the ARRL CW DX contest

February 19th, 2012 |

Author: Mike VE9KK

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..........

Opening thoughts about ARRL CW contest

February 18th, 2012 |

Author: Mike VE9KK

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!!

So what’s been going on………

February 12th, 2012 |

Author: Mike VE9KK

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.

ARRL 10 Meter Contest

December 12th, 2011 |

Author: Bob KØNR

Usually I don’t focus on the ARRL 10 Meter contest, especially when the solar activity has been so low. However, band conditions have really picked up and 10 Meters is alive and kicking. We have quite a few new Technicians that are discovering the wonder of worldwide HF propagation with even a modest station.

I decided to operate from our cabin up in the mountains. I haven’t been happy with the performance of my trap dipole on 10 Meters, so I wanted to try something different. I pulled a twinlead J-pole antenna out of the basement and strung it up in a tall pine tree. This basically gave me a 1/2-wave vertical on 10 Meters and I was pleased with the performance.

I had a great time with the 10 Meter contest, operating for part of Saturday and Sunday.

You’ve got to like a contest that has:
- Only one band, so no fretting about which bands to focus on
- CW or SSB, take your pick or do both
- Lots of DX
- Work anybody anywhere
- You can sleep at night and not miss anything

I mostly searched and pounced around but did manage a few runs with my mighty wire antenna. Not being a real CW operator, I did decide that I would push myself to make 10 CW contacts. Most of those guys are going way too fast for me, but I got it done.

ARRL10M Score Summary Sheet

Start Date : 2011-12-10

    Band Mode QSOs Pts Cty
      28 CW    10   40   8
      28 USB  254  508  72
 Total        264  548  80

Score : 43,840

73, Bob K0NR

CQWW CW at 500mW’s

November 28th, 2011 |

Author: Mike VE9KK

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!!!

So how did things go???

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.

The contest ended for VE3WDM as follows

Number of QSO's Multipliers Total points

106 77 23,408