Posted on
by

Yes, my first CW-contest! This weekend I participated in the last big world wide contest of 2013 and in CW-modus none the less. OK I admit, my CW-skills are not yet at 25-30wpm so I had to rely on CW-skimmer for a lot of contacts. But it was the best CW-training I ever did! At the end of the weekend I started to copy calls at over 30 wpm.

I didn’t worked new countries this contest, but had great fun. Propagation was still good. Especially on 10 meters I made great contacts (even with New Zealand)! For this time of year I think that’s cool. I wonder how many months we can enjoy these good propagation at the top of the sun cycle.

Ending on Sunday night with 300 Q’s in the log and deep respect for my fellow amateurs who copy my call so quickly and error-less.
It was a great experience and I’m entering more CW-contests in the future. Maybe soon without CW-skimmer 🙂

Posted on
by

EchoLinkAs every weekday morning when I’m enjoying my breakfast around 6:00 am, I listen to our local repeater PI2NOS. For a while now this repeater has an Echolink connection. Amateurs who use this repeater almost every morning, driving to work and chatting with each other.
This morning a US-HAM, Jasper KK4UFD logged in the repeater via Echolink. It was 12 o’clock pm at his QTH and he was preparing for a night sleep. The dutch amateur was driving to work as every morning and they had a fun chat about HAM-licenses, the weather, and some other subjects.
It’s great to hear a 15 year old US-kid talk to a 51 year old Dutch guy and (besides the language differences) have a really nice conversation about HAM-related subjects.
We do have a GREAT hobby! 🙂

Posted on
by

This weekend I entered the Work All European RTTY contest 2013. Saturday morning I was up early (5:30 am) to first switch on the radio. Of course the first band to enter this early is 40 meter. Unfortunately my set-up isn’t complete RFI-free on 40 meter. So when putting too much power out (around 60/65 watts) my keyboard is doing nasty stuff like put my computer in standby-modus or messing up N1MM. That’s a real pain because sometimes 60 watts is just a little short on power when a station hears you but keeps calling: “YOUR CALLSIGN? YOUR CALLSIGN??”. You know he will copy you when you’re able to power up to 100 watts.
But around the time the sun arise, I switched to 20 meter and on 20, 15 and 10 meter I can operate at full power.
I noticed quit quickly some “QTC-traffic”. Really no idea what it was (great preparation ;-)). I noticed the QTC-stations appear in green in N1MM. After working 2 of those stations who asked both if I wanted QTC and I passed, I googled what it meant. Found a great video from K8UT. After seeing this video I really want to give it a try. The first time exchanging QTC everything went OK. But the second time some lines broke up in transmission. I did panic a little ending up correct lines but then completely messed up the QTC exchange. Lessons learned: just click the lines that are ok, don’t think about touching those which are hosed! Just ask the hosed ones again. Check.

I think I did okay with my score. Propagation was good on 20 and 15 meters. 10 meters was so so. I heard a lot of DX on 10 meter but also extremely QSB which made it hard to work stations.