Category: Contests

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wspr

WSPR-challenge

PA3FYM WSPR-challenge receiverThere is buzzing a new phenomenon at PI4RCG (our local HAM club): the WSPR-challenge. One prominent club member, Remco PA3FYM, founded this WSPR-challenge with Richard PE1ITR. Essentially they download the whole WSPR-spot-database once every night and parse it in a top 50. The result changes per day. This challenge only consist of reported spots to wsprnet.org. So you can sneak peak at wsprnet.org site to see your uniques. Since wsprnet.org only logs your reported spots, this challenge is actually a RX-only contest.
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contestingLast weekend I did some contesting. Not like 2014 (my top-contest year) when I made over 3000 contacts. This time in a more sober way. I only got a view hours to spend. Two major contests going on last weekend: PACC and CQ WPX RTTY. My favorite contestmode is RTTY, but I feel a little obligated to participate in the PACC as a Dutch HAM. I started the PACC in CW-mode. But after 10 contacts I concluded my CW-skills are not yet up to speed for contests. I switched to CQ WPX RTT, made 100 contacts and then my time was up. Sunday I increased my PACC numbers with voice to 50 contacts.
No spectacular results but it was fun to participate in a contest again.

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This weekend I entered the ARRL DX CW contest. It started out as a challenge to score 100 Q’s. But actually it went quite well and I just closed N1MM with 350 Q’s in the log. It was a nice picture to see all the American and Canadian amateurs all lined op in my band monitor. The propagation was quite good so I got a habit of CTRL+[down], call the station, do the exchange, CTRL+[down], next. It seems like the higher bands (20 – 15 – 10) are favorite, I never scored the most Q’s on 10 meter before! A good thing I left my Antron 99A on the roof. It turn out to be an excellent antenna for 10 and 15 meters. Only with a very few stations that didn’t copy me, I switch to the ZS6BKW on these bands. And that’s no guarantee I will work them.

Great adventure and my CW-skills are a little better now!