2011 ARRL RTTY Roundup [update]

The 2011 ARRL RTTY Roundup Results have been on the ARRL-site for a little while now.

I made it to 10th place and 3rd place in Europe (DX SOLP). As this was my first full 24hr SO contest in years I’m pretty happy with the score.  Of course I was also first in Belgium but there’s nothing to brag about with almost no competition whatsoever (the only other ON stations who entered a log where ON6AT with 215 QSO and ON8NT with 101 QSO).

Of course there is lots of room for improval!  The todo list is growing and growing but soon I’ll have a few weeks of holiday so I hope to be able to do some work in and around my station.

@ON5ZO: yes I know, the first thing to solve is the “turn 4 rotary switches every time” problem 🙂

Mixed feelings…

Yesterday I participated in the 80m SSB UBA Spring contest. A few months ago I posted “I won my first contest 🙂” about my win in the 2010 edition of this very same contest.

So of course I wanted to try and get at least the same score as last year.

Since my friend and neighbour Luc ON7KZ wanted to participate also this time I could expect a little more competition than last year. Moreover Luc lives about 500m from here so we could expect a little QRM from each other. But, nothing better than a little hamspirit and we both decided to participate in the QRP-class (10W SSB). Thanks Luc! Moreover, as I knew Luc’s antenna was best at 3.620 MHz and mine was set at 3.580 MHz (digi-part of the band) I decided to make mine a little shorter so Luc could concentrate on the lower part of the band (3.600 to 3.650)  and I mostly used the higher part of the band (above 3.700).
QRP power and good receivers and we didn’t get any QRM at all from eachother!

Now why do I have mixed feelings?

Last year my score was a little above 21000 points with 145 QSO, this year I had about 25% less QSO and about 45% less points. Luc ON7KZ was only about 1000 points behind me at the end of the contest.
Now the question is why is the score of this years effort so much less than last year? Same station, same antenna, same operator, same computer, same logging program… but a different callsign (last year I used ON5MF, this year I used OQ6A)

  • Was there less activity than last year? Did the beautiful weather and Paris-Roubaix keep the operators away from their stations?
  • Was I less performant than last year?
  • Of course when using QRP it is impossible to keep a frequency and run for the full contest but was it worse than last year?
  • Did the competition have the same low QSO-count as I have?

So this leaves me with a lot of questions which I guess will only be answered when the results of the contest get published.

Now, let’s have a look at the contest calendar and prepare for next effort!

We won the DL-DX RTTY contest 2010!

Last year we set up our UBA KTK club station (ON6CK) to compete in the DL-DX RTTY contest in the multi-multi category. See my post about this contest.

A few days ago the organiser published the results on his website.

Not a lot of competition but anyhow we took first place worldwide in the multi-multi category. Not bad for a bunch of inexperienced operators (in digi modes) and for an average station in the middle of the city!

For now I’m trying to get a crew together to compete in the SP DX RTTY contest from our club station. Maybe this win will help me find more operators!

 

2011 ARRL RTTY Roundup

A little late but I finally found some time to write a little (public) report for my first full 24 hour single op contest effort in years. As you read a few weeks ago I had to quit the EU PSK63 QSO party about 7 hrs into the contest due to what now appears to be a faulty flatscreen monitor.

During the holiday season I have been to Istanbul for a few days so I didn’t have any time left before the contest to modify/improve the station so except for a new PC-monitor the setup was essentially the same as for the EU PSK 63 QSO party. So my entry class thus was what I should call ‘handicapped SO2R’.

The first contest tip you get from the really succesful contesters is prepare your station well in advance and TEST EVERYTHING, and of course I followed this rule to the letter: Continue reading 2011 ARRL RTTY Roundup

Pretty frustrated after EU PSK63 QSO Party

I quit…

Or at least my PC forced me to by deciding to let me down about 0630hrs in the contest. Due to a for now unknown reason  the N1MM-loggerFldigi combo froze and I had to reboot the PC. But, after rebooting and starting Windows XP, both displays stayed black. After some trying (rebooting multiple times, disconnecting and reconnecting all cables,…)  I could get an image on only one of the displays but in the wrong resolution. Setting the resolution back to the correct values again gave me a black screen. This time I could not get back to the one working screen any more so after about an hour I decided to quit the contest. Yes I know, winners never quit, quitters never win… but it’s pretty hard to work a digi-mode contest without a computer, don’t you think?

but I learned a lot… Continue reading Pretty frustrated after EU PSK63 QSO Party

One week before the contest, an update of the todo list

As published about 2 months ago my next contest will be the EU PSK63 QSO Party on november 21.

Time to have a look at the old todo list:

  1. Make/buy and put up antennas for the missing bands: 40m, 80m, 160m
    => mostly done, 3 inverted V dipoles on 3 separate ON7FU current baluns (and 3 feedlines), only thing left to do is retune the 80m dipole for the digimode frequencies
  2. Study the rules of the contest and try to figure out a good strategy
    => done (I guess)
  3. get my shack cleaned up:
    1. make/buy a rack for all the gear
      => done (see the pictures in a previous post)
    2. reroute and label all cables (for the moment I must have enough cables lying around the shack to wire up a full Boeing 747)
      => mostly done, some cables are still fieldday style but everything is working
  4. Install a second display on the PC
    => done
  5. Continue reading One week before the contest, an update of the todo list

Yes, we definitely won the UBA 2010 SSB-fieldday

The results have been updated on the UBA-website and now we’re sure, we (the ON4KB/p team) won the UBA 2010 SSB-fieldday in restricted category!

A member from an other competing station complained about some missing multipliers in their score so the logcheckers recalculated everything.

These are the final scores: Continue reading Yes, we definitely won the UBA 2010 SSB-fieldday

We won the 2010 SSB-fieldday, or not?

We (the ON4KB/p-team) had a good feeling after this years SSB-fieldday. As in the last few years we competed in the ‘restricted’ category: 40-80-160m.

The claimed scores also showed us on top with a few thousand points more than our next competitor ON6CK/p (our clubstation).

The day before yesterday the final scores were published on the uba-website and indeed showed us on the first rank above ON6CK/p: Continue reading We won the 2010 SSB-fieldday, or not?