Posts Tagged ‘CW contesting’

The morning MST mini contest


 


Each Monday morning at 1300Z and 1900z I take part in the 1-hour medium-speed CW contest or MST as it is called. Medium speed is 25wpm or less and the exchange is your name and progressive contact number or serial number as they call it in contesting. During the mini contest this morning I was calling "CQ MST" and as always I also have loaded on my PC screen the reverse beacon network website as seen in the picture above. This allows me to see how my signal of 100 watts is getting out. This morning as I was calling on 20m I was shocked to see my signal strength into ZL4YL New Zealand and MM0ZBH Scotland.

Taking the side road……

This weekend the LZ dx contest was up and running, I have never taken part in this contest and I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of activity. It's a 24-hour contest that started at 8 am out my way and it gave me a nice workout for the upcoming weekend for the CQ World Wide DX CW contest. I took part for about a total of 4 hours and made 120 contacts for a score of 13,110. 


Midway into the contest I was taken down a side road for a pleasant surprise. At some point on Saturday afternoon calling CQ contest was slowing down on 20m. I decided to make a left turn and head down the 10m side road. There were very few LZ contesters there but I did notice a commotion on the waterfall. When I went to investigate it was H44WA DXpedition in the Soloman islands calling CQ North America (CQ NA) and he was all alone. I put the Icom 7610 in split and dual mode (hearing both VFOA and VFOB) and made the mental change from CW contesting to CW DXpedition. After a few short tries, I was in the log. I was glad I made a left turn and took a side road from the contest.

Rainy weekend adventure.

 


This weekend was the running of the Worked All Germany contests or WAG. This contest supports both CW and SSB within the same contest. As for me, it was strictly CW....go figure eh!. As happens now and then just before the contest there was an atmospheric burp and the K index moved to 5! The good thing about this is everyone is affected so your still kinda on the same playing field more or less. 


 

This is a 24-hour contest that starts at noon Saturday my time. With the poor solar conditions, there was lots of fading in and out (QSB). This resulted in lots of repeats and contacts that started at S7 and ended somewhere in the dust. I take this as an opportunity to sharpen my CW skills and learn more about the Icom 7610 filtering. This time around I took advantage of the two independent receivers the 7610 has. I had a split screen of the band I was on and the next band that could in time show some excitement. This came in very handy today when I noticed 10 meters coming to life. I swapped out 15m for 10m as it seemed to just jump to life. I had 51 contacts in just 1.5 hours and that was during so-so band conditions. I entered the contest as single operator/all band / low power (100 watts). It was a very rainy weekend here so that made it very easy to stay in the radio chair and plug along.


 

VE9KK the world of CW 2023-10-13 19:38:00

 

A new addition.....well I did have it in the past and sold it....don't ask

As you know I enjoy my CW contesting and am always looking to make things more easy. When contesting I use N1MM+ logging software which works great. During non-contesting times I use Win4icom radio control software. As a side note this software by VA2FSQ Tom is great and very well supported. He also offers radio control software for Yaesu and Elecraft as well, I have used the Elecraft radio control software (Win4k3) and it was great as well.


When contesting there are times when radio adjustments are needed such as filter settings, APF settings and digi select. To get to these adjustments you have to dig down a few menu settings to get where you want to be. Then I came up with what seemed to be an easy solution......but as they say, nothing is easy.
Using Win4icom the multi-menu changes could be done with one mouse click! With Win4icom you can use multiple 3rd party programs and N1MM+ is one of them. After setting up Win4icom and N1MM+ to speak with each other via virtual com ports I was good to go.......so I thought. 
Win4Icom software


The communication between the two programs was all good except for the N1MM+ cw macros would not key the radio and send the CW message. That is a big issue when contesting, I contacted Tom from Win4icom and he informed me that Win4icom does not support the use of DTR over virtual ports. He then informed me to overcome this issue I needed the Winkeyer from K1EL. The funny thing is I used to have a Winkeyer but sold it! 


I then ordered the Winkeyer and waited for it to come in, when it did I followed very closely the installation instructions for the Winkey. When I started both Win4icom and N1MM+ low and behold all the macros worked like a charm! But as always there is always a hiccup when dealing with computers, software and hardware. 


I had my 9A5N touch keyer connected to the Winkeyer port and then I tried to send code from the key it did not work. I have an early edition of the 9A5N key and it does not like the Winkeyer. I solved the issue by connecting the touch key directly to the Icom 7610 radio.
So now I am off to the races and can have Win4icom, N1MM+ and Winkey all happy and working together.

Hold on folks!


 

 Now that I am retired long weekends seem to sneak up on me as when I was working it seemed they never could come fast enough. As with CW contesting they just don't seem to come fast enough  but space weather has a way of sneaking up and spoiling the contest....well that is what I used to think anyway. In the past, I would faithfully check out the space weather to get a sniff of upcoming conditions for a weekend contest. If things looked rough I would either skip the contest or dip my toes in it just to see how the ride would go. 


Recently I have changed my outlook on the dreaded solar storms. This weekend was the CWops open contest and it is divided into 3 sessions. I took part in the 2nd session only as I had other things on my agenda for the weekend. From 9 am local time to 1 pm is session 2 I jumped in even with a Kp index of 5. I understood it was going to be rough, and I most likely will not beat last year's score but I have decided to use the poor conditions to hone my CW skills. 


In the past when calling CQ contest and having a station come back to me who was almost non-existent and fading in and out I struggled. Now I have the opportunity thanks to the poor solar conditions to practice this skill! I had a ton of fish on 40m and 20m just waiting for me to dig them out of the mud and toss and turn with them as we both faded in and out.


That was how I spent my 4 hours in session 2 of the CWops CW open contest. My score was not the greatest but that was not my goal and considering the poor conditions I would have been frustrated. Instead, I used it as a learning session to work weak and fading stations. When I say weak at times their signal was not even moving my S meter and fading as well. 

Below is my final score and I ended up operating for 3 of the 4 hours as I started late by 30 minutes and I took some breaks. 


 

Reverse Beacon Network surprises

 Last weekend I took part in the WAE DX CW contest and most of the time when I calling "CQ contest" on my second monitor I have the RBN or reverse beacon network up and running. The main reason for doing this to see where my signal is reaching and if it is targeting in the case of the WAE contest Europe. Now and then I see my signal has been spotted in both interesting places and far away places. This contest was no different, on Sunday morning I was spotted in New Zealand by ZL3X multiple times from 4dB to 11dB, VY0ERC in Eureka in Nunavut at 7dB and finally 5W1SA in Samoa at 8dB. Nice to know my 100 watts are getting out there!

The IARU contest….DONE!

 


 

Good afternoon all.....The IARU contest has come and gone. This one is a CW and SSB contest but as for me, it was 100% CW. The WRTC (World Radio Team Championship) happens alongside this contest. These folks are the best of the best and competing both in CW and SSB to be the best! This year's WRTC was held in Italy and all the WRTC stations are designed so no one station has an advantage over the other. The power is maxed out at 100 watts as well. For more info click on WRTC. 


Ok well, I am not even close to qualifying for a WRTC team member but I did take part in the IARU contest this weekend. I took part for about 11 hours of the 24-hour contest (social engagements cut into contest time) and for the time I was on the air it was great. Propagation was good and some highlight contacts were KH6, JA, ZL and UP2L in Kazakhstan to name a few. I found my average running (calling CQ contest) speed was around 32 wpm. My contest code practice is paying off as I have no issues when someone comes back to me at 36-38 wpm. I don't call CQ contest at that speed as I feel it limits my score. I have an Icom 7610 at 100 watts with a Huslter 4BTV not a KW of power and huge beams. My best one hour run was 60 QS0's in the log BUT at 2100 things were HOT and I had to pull the plug after 30 minutes and my count was at 50 QSO's. I have to keep my dear wife loving my hobby which means radio does not trump our social things.
I had no technical issues at all....finally and had a great time. 


 Now the above score is not earth shattering at all but last year my total was 84 QSO's.



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