I’ve applied for a few WPX awards. This is the first certificate to actually show up. My first application was for 400 Mixed Mode. That hasn’t arrived yet. Today’s certificate was for 300 Digital Prefixes. And I applied for Mixed Honor Roll.
For those of you interested in what the certificate looks like, here it is:
WPX Digital Award #87
So my journey ended with ONN (Ontario North) at 1:27:25 UTC when I answered a CQ from VE3ZI on 3.541 MHz. That made a “Clean Sweep” with all 83 sections for the 2012 CW Sweepstakes. I worked a total of 107 stations to obtain those 83 sections (I was going for the sweep not the score). My last few sections were:
#83 VE3ZI ONN
#82 W1SFR VT
#81 KG2T NNY
#80 W4IX SC
Whew!
Had to go and break Ontario up into FOUR sections: Ontario-East, Ontario-South, Greater Toronto Area, and the killer: Ontario-North.
VE3 (Ontario) Section Map
As I type this, that is the LAST section I need for a clean sweep in the November CW Sweepstakes (and this is the first time Ontario has been broken into 4 sections). I have 5.5 hours left to go and certainly the band conditions are great, so I have some hope, but as I understand it, less than 500,000 people live in that region, many in small villages. I can only imagine the HUGE pile-up that will happen when the first Ontario-North is spotted.
With some research in spotting networks, I discovered that two stations were on the air for first couple of hours of the contest. VE3ZI and VE3CX. No other ONN stations were reported.
(Now with under 2 hours to go, still no ONN spotted — Sigh)
Lots of good things going on this month besides a chance to enter a turkey-coma on Thanksgiving. CW Sweepstakes is this weekend, and SSB in two weeks. CQ’s WW CW DX contest is just three weekends away, and the ARRL’s 160 meter contest is at the end of the month. My family won’t be seeing much of me this month!
I’m trying to use an Elecraft KAT-500 automatic tuner for the first time — things are still a bit rough around the edges with the firmware, but getting better. So far it is tuning my 435 foot diameter loop on all bands from 160 to 6 meters. I look forward to future firmware changes.
I did run the CQ WW SSB contest this past weekend in an attempt to get my Phone DXCC (I have CW and Mixed). It is embarrassing how poorly I did compared to world-class single operators, even when you take into account that I operated less than half of the contest. Of course I was running Search & Pounce the entire contest which is not how you get a good score. Unfortunately my goal for Sweepstakes CW & SSB is similar (to complete WAS Triple Play), so I will be running S&P in those contests as well.
While searching for MURS Radios, I ran across the Baofeng UV-5R+, a 5 watt, dual band, FM HT. This unit was sold by Amazon and was under $59 including postage. It included the radio, a LiPo battery pack, desktop charger, and a headset with PTT switch. I guess it was listed as a MURS Radio since it can xmit on any frequency from 136-174 MHz and 400-480 MHz, which includes the MURS Radio frequencies (151-154 MHz).
Baofeng UV-5R+
I can tell you that the manual is almost useless as it mainly simply lists the menus without explanation. I wasn’t able to program a memory channel until I discovered that you have to erase the channel first, and amazingly enough, you have to program the channel twice (first with the receive frequency, then a second time with the transmit frequency). But it was easy enough to enter the VFO mode and setup for the local repeater including the CTSS tone. Apparently, the Wouxon KG-UV series has become the de-facto standard for cheap Chinese radios, and it uses the same accessories, including programming cable, and I have one on order, hoping to find that the software tool makes programming easier than the keypad method.
At that price, I can afford to toss one in the glove box of each car and not worry about it.
With the addition of TT8TT and 3B9SP DXpeditions, my country count has reached 195. LotW is still at 141 with one QSL in hand. And Diamond DXCC is at 136.
The goal was to have 200 countries worked, with 150 confirmed in LotW by the end of my first year. I’m close but losing faith that I’ll get enough confirmations in LotW to satisfy that. Still not bad for less than a year of DXing.
This pretty much finishes the basic Independent Study Courses, except those specialized for various responders. See the ECOMM page for more info.
Easy/Quick Course. See ECOMM Pages for more info
This course was the only one I felt was specific to my needs as a Ham, although like most of the FEMA courses it is mostly concerned with how things fit within the framework of National, State and Local Government work. This was a short class, only 2 hours.
For more info, see the ECOMM Page.
This second certificate, with the exam taken on a weekday, showed up in under 90 minutes.
National Incident Management System Certification
