We won the DL-DX RTTY contest 2010!

by Jurgen

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!

 

Designing antennas using a genetic algorithm?

by Jurgen

A few days ago I found a nice piece of software on the internet: BoxCar 2D. This is a way to design a car using a genetic algorithm: a population of cars is created at random and then tested on a track chosen by the user. Then the best cars ‘mate’ to get a next generation. Together with a set mutation rate the cars improve over the generations.

Warning: watching this is addictive, it’s far better than television!

My programming skills are rather limited but I wondered if someone maybe could design antennas using one of the (mini)NEC engines and this genetic system?

Update: it seems that this is not such a new idea, at least for developing antennas. A little googling for ‘genetic algorithm antenna’ gave me some 160000 results 🙂

SuperNec seems to be great software for this but at $6080 it seems I’ll stick to Eznec and MMANA for a while.

2011 ARRL RTTY Roundup

by Jurgen

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

by Jurgen

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-logger +  Fldigi 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

by Jurgen

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

by Jurgen

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 →