Tag: ARRL

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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!

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Just tonight I’m checking my first DXCC application at lotw.arrl.org. It says: “Account problem, please QRX” (see picture below). I guess there was a problem with my LoTW-account. But looking at the message a few minutes later it seemed solved? I’m not sure if everything is fine now and my first DXCC is on his way?

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Had a great time participating the ARRL Roundup RTTY 2014! Began with a good start, quit a few runs on 40m. Then switching to 80m, the ZS6BKW works excellent! With 261 Q’s in the log I went for bed around 0:00 local time. Again in the shack this morning around 6:30 am. I was doing all right when 20m opened up. Around 9:30 am I got another message from the neighbor 🙁 Again RFI in his pc monitor. So the ZS6BKW did help against that.. So I was forced to enter the QRP-section, running 5 watts. I must say, I’m amazed how many Q’s are still possible with only 5 watts. You have to call a few times more, but most of what you hear, you’re able to work!
Just turning off the power of my nice hand warm TS-590 (10:00 pm). 400 Q’s in the log, 45 DXCC and 26.000 points. Don’t you just love RTTY?