Tag: Contesting

Writer’s block?

by Jurgen

A lot of things have happened since my last post here but I didn’t really feel like writing anything about them lately.

A small summary:

  • we did the Region 1 SSB fieldday with the club station ON6CK/p (and came in second behind the OQ8A/p team)
  • the belgian guys conquered Rockall, congrats to the team!
  • the british guys decided not to go to Rockall. I don’t really understand the reasons, if all those who wanted to climb the Everest would have cancelled their plans because someone was there before them then only a few people would have done it. Moreover the pileups from Rockall will not be less for the second team going there than for the first one. And I still need EU189!
  • I finally ordered a new transceiver!
  • I modified my RTTY setup to do FSK instead of AFSK (with the FT990)
  • I made a portable setup to take on holiday

The last 3 of the list will probably be the subjects of some future posts!

So what makes me write this in the last hours of CQ WW SSB? I’m at the qth of my girlfriend and to tired to set up the portable station. Wedding parties are probably more tiring than 24hrs of contesting 🙂 Moreover we have to leave for an other party in less than an hour.

My next contest is in 3 weeks from now… still some work to do (the 4 rotary switches problem, remember?)

 

2011 ARRL RTTY Roundup [update]

by Jurgen

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 🙂

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!

 

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 →

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 →

We won the 2010 SSB-fieldday, or not?

by Jurgen

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? →

We made the newspaper again!

by Jurgen

The ON4KB/P fieldday team made the newspaper again, the full online article can be found at Het Nieuwsblad. The title says: ‘Radioamateurs have a successful training – ready for an emergency’

Our fieldday team + a visitor:
Top: Hugo ON7FU / Tom / Sofie ON3SC / Francis ON8AZ / Wim ON7WPE / Jurgen ON5MF / Jan ON4KB
Bottom: Tim ON5HC / Luc ON7KZ / Geert ON7USB

Preparing for next contest

by Jurgen

Normally my next contest should haven been the ON-contest 80m SSB on sunday october 3. But, my YL and I received a (short) helicopter flight for that morning and that’s something I don’t want to miss.

So my next contest will be the EU PSK63 QSO Party on november 21.

Okay, there’s a little over 2 months left but I still have a huge todo-list (more or less in order of importance):

  1. Make/buy and put up antennas for the missing bands: 40m, 80m, 160m
  2. Study the rules of the contest and try to figure out a good strategy
  3. get my shack cleaned up: Continue reading Preparing for next contest →

I won my first contest :-)

by Jurgen

As the frequent readers of this blog know I don’t own an amplifier and I like to contest. So what’s the solution to still be competitive a contest? Yes, enter the low power (100W) or the QRP-class (10W).

Every year the UBA-section DST of Diest organises the UBA Spring contest in 4 parts (each on a different sunday morning 0800-1200 local time) : 80m SSB, 80m CW, 6m and 2m.

In the UBA Spring contest there is no LP-class so I went for the 10W-class in the 80m SSB-part.

During the contest I had a pretty good feeling, not too much trouble to keep a run frequency for some time Continue reading I won my first contest 🙂 →