This weekend I wanted to score some contacts in the Ukrainian RTTY contest. Saturday night at 21:00 local time I set down, opened a new log in N1MM with the appropriate contest and went off. But after 4 or 5 contacts I noticed N1MM keeps sending number 001. In the logging windows it shows the correct number but MMTTY keeps repeating 001 with each new contact. Aaargh, searching N1MM manual of several thousand pages didn’t come up with a solution. Double checked contest layout, all seems correct. Restart N1MM a few times. After an hour of searching I gave up. I didn’t had the time or the energy to search any more. I did want to participate in the contest for only a few hours anyway, now I blew the whole thing off.
Next time do some test sending exchanges first long before the contest starts!
Tag: N1MM
Multitasking contests
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!
Greek Triathlon Contest
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 🙂