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This weekend I entered the CQ WPX RTTY contest and the PACC.

I really like contesting in RTTY-modus! I’ve setup N1MM with MMTTY and that works fine. Did a relax contest weekend, doing breaks left and right, didn’t miss a hour of sleep. Most important thing is to have fun! Speaking of fun, I also did participate in the PACC contest which I entered for a few years now. It always was great fun doing it. This year for the first time I didn’t like it anymore. 2 Things that bothered me: I don’t like voice contests anymore. It’s so noisy! The whole band seems full. When I called CQ on a frequency that seemed free, after a while I heard a response for another station. So apparently the frequency was occupied only I was unable to hear it. And the other thing: the PACC should be around the Dutch Amateur. So IMHO Dutch amateurs should call CQ and others should S&P. But not during the PACC. There are so many amateurs in this little country and less (like it seems) foreign participants. Tuning around the bands I heard many foreign amateurs calling CQ PACC. That seemed weird to me. Low and behold I scored 50 QSO’s and I was done with it. Back to CQ WPX RTTY contest! Need many more practice on this CW-thing. I want to do CW-contests. If the are as much fun as the RTTY-ones I would really enjoy doing them.

Sadly I didn’t hear Jim, K5ND 🙁 I even set an cluster alarm on his call and let run HRD Logbook on the background so I would be alerted when he’s spotted somewhere, but no luck. Maybe more luck next time Jim! I already read you scored quite nice on this one! Congrats!

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Finally! My first try was at 10-27-2010. 1322 attempts later I’m arrived at lesson 40 of the 40 lessons in total at Learning CW Online website of DJ1YFK. This is how long it can take if you don’t practice every day. Sometimes I even abandoned the training for months, thinking I’ll never learn the code. But today I reached a milestone: the last lesson!

I’m learning Morse code with the Koch method at a character speed of 15 words per minute and an effective speed of 6 words per minute. So now I know all important characters at this speed I’ll continue training on lcwo.net to gain better actual speed. Also I start training copying call signs with Morse Runner which I tried a few times before and I’m now able to do runs. And….. last but the most important: I’m gonna make real contacts on air! Only made CW-contacts so far with Digital Master 780, so they don’t really count. 

My target is to put away the microphone and only make contacts in Morse code. Hopefully at speeds between 20 and 25 wpm. Maybe even participate in contests with Morse code. I’ve somehow got the idea I’m half way now. Let’s move along!

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Last weekend I entered the RTTY-contest part of the Greek Triathlon contest. Because we had some family visiting the house in the afternoon, I didn’t had much time for the whole contest. I looked in the schedule and find out the first part of the contest (0:00 – 7:59 UTC) is RTTY only. Because we’re only one hour later then UTC, I figured I could get up real early and make a few contacts. So Saturday morning I got up at 5 o’clock AM (4:00 UTC) and flipped on the radio. Then I struggled with N1MM again for a full hour to switch from SSB-macro’s to RTTY-macro’s. It took me a hour to figure out I had to type “RTTY” in the call log box :S.

After a few hours of search & pounce I collected 26 contacts. I didn’t participate in this contest before so I don’t have any comparison. But I had to search the bands with a magnifier to find stations. The result of a few minutes of giving CQ: 0 replies. So I quickly returned to S&P. Well, at least I earned 1 extra points in our regional divisional league (25 contacts represent 1 point).

Next weekend I’ll participate in the PACC-contest. I read in the contest calendar this is also the weekend of CQ WW RTTY contest! So maybe I switch forward en backward between these two. Because I really like to meet Jim, K5ND in the CQ WW RTTY 🙂