Worked Crozet FT8WW

Posted on January 3, 2023 by robert

I had put about six hours into trying to work FT8WW on 30m during his first week.  I found that propagation wasn’t the greatest as he was decoding around -22.  My luck changed yesterday (Jan 2), as signal levels were much higher.  In the afternoon I had my first response back, although I did not copy a 73, so I tried later at night.  At that point the signal levels were much improved, and it took about 30 minutes to break through.

Not very much after the contact, he updated ClubLog, and I saw that I had a confirmed contact in the system:

I’m looking forward for a chance to work him on 20m CW as well.

 

Posted in DX, FT8 | Leave a comment

Goal Review and New Goals for 2023

Posted on January 1, 2023 by robert

2022 was a good year in terms of my goals.  I was able to complete all 5.

  • Teach a CW Academy Course (Winter 2022)
  • Teach a Technician Course (Spring 2022)
  • Conduct NCRC’s first electronic VE exam (Spring 2022)
  • Build my QRP-Labs QCX 20m Transceiver (Actually did 30m and 40m)
  • Participate in 120+ CWTs for the CWops Gold Medal (Completed 163)

I’ve had to cut back on my activities for health reasons (easy to find new radios, not so easy to replace body parts).  But I still think I can manage some decent goals for 2023

  • Teach a class (either Technician or CW Academy)
  • Participate in 120+ CWTs for the CWops Gold Medal
  • Build my QRP-Labs QDX Digital Transceiver
  • Activate 10 new parks in CT or obtain award for hunting 1000 parks
  • Obtain 50 States Parks on the Air award

Perhaps I might be able to complete more than one of the “or” goals and manage more goals, or perhaps I might come up with another one to add to the list (50 states award added Jan 4).

Notable in other areas, I completed my 10th year as Secretary of the Newport County Radio Club, and saw the membership grow to just under 200 (it was in the 20s when I started a decade ago).  I did apply for, and receive an ARRL grant to build out our electronic testing resources.  It wasn’t a particularly good year for DX for me (likely because I was busy with other things, as well as pandemic travel restrictions).  Hopefully 2023 will be better (as I sit in front of my rig trying to copy FT8WW’s weak 20m CW signal).

 

 

Posted in CW Academy, CWops, CWT, Education, Gear, QCX-mini, QRP | Leave a comment

Happy #163 CWT for 2022!

Posted on December 28, 2022 by robert

While there is a chance to work two more CWTs this year, family is visiting, so I will let my paddle cool off until 2023.

I finished the year with 163 CWT contests completed, which is more than enough (>120) for the CWops Gold Medal.  I decided to do some data analysis, which produced the following:

Total CWTs

163

Total QSOs

3666

Unique Calls

771

Top Dozen

K7RL

51

N4BP

49

DK9PY

43

N7US

37

NT6Q

37

N5RZ

34

EA1X

33

K0WA

32

K3WW

32

KM0O

32

N0TA

32

N1LN

32

I was surprised that I had worked 771 unique stations during the year, but also surprised that I hadn’t worked my top dozen even more times – but I guess that comes from hearing many calls many times.  Thanks to all 771 stations that made 2022 so fun!

There will be a new rush to work as many CWTs as possible in the new year.  Can’t say that I’m looking forward to those 2 AM contests, but perhaps the transmitter will warm up the house a tad bit during winter!

Posted in Contests, CW, CWops, CWT | Leave a comment

ISS Cross Band Repeater QSO

Posted on December 19, 2022 by robert

While I’ve worked the ISS using their original cross band repeater a few times in the past, I don’t recall if I’ve worked it using the new gear on 145.990 (PL 67.0) / 437.800  (V/U).

Thanks to Magicalmike KO4PDI for the QSO!

By the way, lots of the information about the ISS Cross Band Repeater is out of date, especially many of the popular sources for the SATPC32 Doppler.SQF file.  The correct entry for the DOPPLER.SQF file is:

ISS,437800,145990,FM,FM,NOR,0,0,Cross Band Repeater

And the correct entry for the SATPC32 SubTone.SQF file (at least for the Icom IC-9700) is:

ISS,67.0,$3F,1

And don’t forget to set select T1 within SATPC32

Satellite Station: Icom IC-9700 being controlled by SATPC32. Antennas are M2 eggbeaters.

Posted in ISS, Satellite, SatPC32 | 4 Comments

Hit 20,000 contacts in my logbook

Posted on December 14, 2022 by robert

After uploading CWops Log #159 for this year, I hit the 20,000 QSO mark in LotW.  Most of those have come in the past couple of years and have been due to POTA or CWTs.  I started logging electronically back in 2011, so that’s a pretty low average over 11 years.  About 3400 of those have been in the past year.



Posted in CWops, LotW, POTA | Leave a comment

Completed CWT #150 This Afternoon

Posted on November 9, 2022 by robert

My internal goal for the year was to complete 150 CWTs, which I just did this afternoon.  Only 120 are required for the Gold Medal, but I wanted to get a few more under my belt.  Actually, in theory I could work another 30 if I tried really hard by year’s end.  I suspect I might pick up another 20.

Thank you CWops for a lot of fun this year!

Posted in CW, CWops, CWT, Goals | Leave a comment

Hunted 700 Unique POTA Parks

Posted on October 25, 2022 by robert

On October 21st, I received the Wiggn’s Acalpha award from ParksOnTheAir.com in recognition of having confirmation from 700 unique parks (out of 9,709 currently).

Posted in Activation, Hunter, POTA | Leave a comment

Island of St. Paul POTA Award

Posted on October 1, 2022 by robert

I’m always surprised at how inventive the Parks on the Air program is.  A week or so ago, I received yet another award, this one for working all the parks on the Island of St. Paul (pretty easy since there is exactly one park to work).  Thanks POTA!

Posted in POTA | Leave a comment

AMSAT DSTAR Reflector

Posted on September 19, 2022 by robert

While there isn’t a whole bunch of DMR activity in the New England area, one of the Talkgroups that is fairly active is 98006, which is the AMSAT Talkgroup.  That DMR Talkgroup has been bridged over to the DSTAR world.

Simply link your DSTAR radio into one of the XLXSAT, XRFSAT, DCSSAT, or REFSAT reflectors.  This means using a common link command like “REFSATCL” to join in.

Please note that using a Hotspot that is setup for BOTH DMR and DSTAR will cause some issues, since it will grab onto the first active digital service.  For example say you have linked into REFSATC and your hotspot is currently in the DSTAR mode.  As soon as someone uses the DMR AMSAT Talkgroup, then your hotspot will switch over to DMR mode.

If all you plan on using is the AMSAT Talkgroup, then turn off the DMR Mode in your hotspot.

Posted in AMSAT, D-Star, DMR | Leave a comment

N1MM running with Flex6600M & Maestro

Posted on August 25, 2022 by robert

I have been using a Flex6600M that allows me to operate “remotely” from my 3rd floor bedroom, if I don’t feel like navigating the stairs up and down.  After some firmware updates last year and a changeover to how I accessed the radio (direct IP address on my internal LAN vs. going through WiFi and the SmartLink servers), I had things working pretty well.

I didn’t want to risk doing anything until I had completed at least 120 CWT contests, which I did last week.  So this week I spent some time before the contests getting N1MM working with the Flex.  I wasn’t able to get things working correctly for the 1300Z one in the morning, but I had things running by the 0300Z one at night.  It really was as simple as loading the latest version of SmartSDRCAT onto my laptop upstairs and adding a port for their simulated WinKeyer.  The usual N1MM Radio setup applied, using the two COM ports identified in SmartSDRCAT.

I actually found out that I really couldn’t use the Function Keys in N1MM – they work, and CW is sent by the radio, but there is no sidetone.  This forces you to watch the Maestro Remote screen to see when the TX indicator turns off.  So I will continue to use my paddle and the Macro buttons on the Maestro Remote, which do generate a sidetone.

Flex Radio has a short YouTube video that describes the process here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Lql8RReUvA

 

Posted in FlexRadio, N1MM | Leave a comment