Only a few hours until NEQP starts! Is everyone ready?
I checked on how many members have added their 1×1 call signs to their qrz.com page and it’s only a few. It’s easy to do, and it would be great if everyone would do it, that way stations you work can get all the info they need right there. You might also want to let them know when you expect to be uploading your LoTW data (assuming you use LoTW).
Here are the instructions for adding the 1×1 call to your database: You will need to request that the qrz.com admin people add it. On qrz.com Under the “Contact” menu is “Help Desk”. Click on that and then click on “Contact the Administrators”. You’ll need to fill out the identifying information and then tell them that you would like whatever your 1×1 call is added to your database for the period of May 1-May 15, 2012, and what SE the 1×1 call is for. You’ll get an email back shortly telling you they received your request, and then usually within 20 minutes they will send another email telling you they made the change. Then you can log in to qrz.com, search for your 1×1 call sign, and then, using the “Edit” menu, add the Special Event info to the page.
Since there is no information on wa1rr.org regarding the Special Event, I would not send people there. I’d send them to your qrz.com site, and you should have S/E and QSL information for them there. You can use my page (K1W) as a guide if you want, just make sure you let them know to QSL via NG1G. Editing your “home call” qrz.com page with NEQP and SE info would be a good thing to do as well, check out my NG1G page.
Have fun!
73,
Pat, NG1G/K1W
Earlier yesterday I put K1U in QRZ.COM as an alias to my own call sign. Prior to doing this, K1U didn’t come up when a search was done for it. But one of the guys that wanted a QSL card asked about QSLing and said the information on QRZ’s K1U listing was confusing. So I went back in, did a search for KiU and instead of coming up as an alias for me, it came up as a CTRI Contest group call – which is fine – but in the detail tab there was QSL information stating “N4PJ QRZ logbook requests will not be confirmed.” I don’t know what that’s all about and I couldn’t edit it out, even after becoming the QRZ manager for K1U.
No big deal. I’m just putting this up here in case some of you guys run into the same problem.
Time to get back to it. Hope you’re all having fun.
73
Chris
Hi Chris,
Glad we got to work each other. I see what happened on the qrz.com site – they just forgot to change the QSL line – because the 1x1s are temporarily assigned the log book function on qrz.com is disabled I think. They should have changed it to your home call, so I can see how it might be confusing to people. But you have it covered, so I wouldn’t even bother notifying the admin people.
Hope to work you on some other bands!
73,
Pat, NG1G/K1W
Mano, mano… I sure hope others are hearing better than I am. I actually went out and chased my coax thinking it might be defective. I was able to put in a couple hours Sat afternoon/evening, and just a bit today, but had to go out during the middle of the day today and get out the ride-’em-around mower this afternoon. I hear nothing on 10 and 15 and only a few on 20. 40 has a couple of guys on the air that I already worked. It is very discouraging to try to get on the air and bang away with little or no results.
73, Ken K1K/K3IU
Hi Ken,
The bands have definitely been in better shape, but I did pretty well, all things considered. I made 302 Qs and even got in 20 RTTY Qs. I had some difficulty with fully switching back to RX, but only in RTTY, which is confusing. I’ll have to figure that out when I get a minute.
I uploaded my NEQP Qs to LoTW and it processed them in under a minute, and I already had 16 QSLs waiting for me. I wonder if we’ll get more certificate requests than we thought?
All in all, it was a lot of fun, and the 1×1 call signs greatly contributed to that. Kudos to Dave, W1CTN for the great idea! I hope everyone managed to get on the air.
73,
Pat, NG1G
Using the 1×1 c/s was certainly a highlight of NEQP 2012 for me. I used the spotting network to track our S/E calls and find needed mults…it placed me in Multi-op single TX category where no record score had been established in Newport County, RI. Heard/worked or saw spotted a dozen CTRI CG 1×1’s…wonder how many I missed?
550 Q’s made (~73k pts and 76 mults worked) with many, many interuptions both days due to busy family schedule…didn’t get much of a rhythm ’til the end. A brand new S4-5 power line noise and recent very sluggish computer rig frequency control also greatly affected my ability to be competitive in this one. I hung on to get thru NEQP but rig/computer equipment service/repairs now needed. At least 7O6T is in the log once! Agree that propagation was strange on upper HF with EU not so strong yet many spots late into the night! Hope many enjoyed using their 1×1 c/s this year. Now time to get the logs submitted!!
73, Bill K1B (W1WBB)
Boy, several times I thought for sure I had lost an antenna – conditions were really crappy here. No activity on 80 or 10 here and spent most of the first day S&P looking for multi’s. Got all the 7 area stations quickly and quite a bit of DX in ARI and other-wise. Managed 89 multi’s and 764 Q’s with a lot of effort !! I did work 10 CTRI 1×1″s, but 20 meters isn’t great to work so close !! Managed to better than double last year score, with 98,612 total here. Using the 1×1 certainly required some operating procedure changes, as many stations just kept asking for more letters!! Overall,it was an enjoyable effort. Thanks for the idea – congratulations !!
Norm W1BYH / W1B
Greetings and look forward to seeing everyone at the CTRI meeting on Saturday as I will still be in town.
Enjoyed working as the weak link at W1AN’s using his K1T callsign – not much issue with the 1x1s, when someone asked is that the call “roger, roger” and if they needed more explanation I just said 1×1 and/or special event callsign. Nothing that took a long explanation other than a few that wanted to know what the event was!
Better score than last year as last year I didn’t show up until sometime on Sunday, but then I had a BIG run (unfortunately SSB) when I got on and ran most of the end of the contest. John had run the night before on mostly SSB as well (in fact almost 1/2 the Qs the first night), so even though last year we had over 700 Qs and 84 mults, last years score was 66K. This year I was going to be no help on CW but John decided his effort should be in CW with the better score/QSO and it paid off!
This year he had me run (SSB) the first night and he ran Sunday morning (although I didn’t show up until 3 hours after the start of the contest!). In the end we had about double SSB to CW QSO but more similar points between the 2 and 112 mults to help out.
This year 40 as well as 20 were workhorse bands while 80 was non-existent even though we tried it multiple times. I am surprised looking at the small number of contacts we made on 15M as I “felt” like it had been open much of the day, but apparently a few good contacts gave me that impression (worked Yemen on 15) but no one was there and similarly with 10.
Fewer QSOs than last year and 50% better score – way to go W1AN! (N6ERD – you ARE the weakest link! 🙂 ) I do have stamina 🙂 )
We missed 7 sections – 2 states, ND and AK (never heard or saw spotted), and AB, YT, NL, NU, NT.
We worked 39 New England Counties, but those weren’t a priority as they don’t count for us.
Sunday this year was a VERY different experience than last – instead of a solid run for the last 3 hours I was running around begging for a few QSOs to push us over 100K – John handed it over at 98K and wanted me to finish it off (putting me under pressure!), but my QSOs take 2x as long to get there so we cut it close! A last minute Barbados mult on 20M did the trick!
So clearly conditions were much different from last year on Sunday – I wasn’t around on Saturday to judge but 20M was open very late Saturday night, although not loads of people on. Perhaps Cinco de Mayo is to blame for what seemed to be less busy bands – only made 18 contacts who wanted ARI numbers – if they were there, I did a bad job of mining those QSOs!…
It was definitely a lot of fun and a success by modifying our strategy, though I had expected to do a lot more QSOs but that “feels” to me to have been attributed to conditions on Sunday being worse!
It will be interesting to see how scores look this year compared to last – I did get called during the contest by N6KI in San Diego who was complaining that 20 meters had virtually shut down on them (hilltop site with 360 degree views and a steppir).
Wow, already seeing some very nice scores! Here’s what I managed to pull off at my station. It seems that in general, except for the real big contests, 300 Qs is about what I’m good for.
I was able to work 26 ARI contest stations and quite a few 7QP and INQP stations, and even found a few DX stations specifically looking for NEQP contacts. I took a few minutes to work 7O6T, which added a new country to my count. Boy, there sure were a lot of US stations who need to learn how to operate in a pileup! The constant calling forced the operator to take a 5 minute break, during which time I still heard people calling. As soon as he came back on, the constant calling resumed. It’s amazing anyone is willing to be DX with behavior like that.
Anyway, conditions, as some have already noted, were not so hot. 40M on Sunday was HOT, and I worked lots of SSB and CW. I was happy to get 20 RTTY Qs, and hope there’s more RTTY activity in the future.
Worked 13 of our 1×1 stations, and I hope that wasn’t everyone who got on. Remember, we have through the 15th to use these call signs, so please take some time to get on the air and give out some contacts!
73,
Pat, NG1G
NG1G, Multi-Single
Band Mode QSOs Pts Sec 7 CW 35 70 0 7 LSB 108 108 17 14 CW 25 50 7 14 RTTY 16 32 5 14 USB 78 78 11 21 CW 12 24 7 21 RTTY 4 8 3 21 USB 24 24 10 Total Both 302 394 60 Score: 23,640Call: W1M
Operator(s): W1XX, K1XA
Station: W1XX
Class: M/S HP
QTH: WAS RI
Operating Time (hrs): 20
Summary:
CQ Qs Phone Qs
————————————–
549 1077
————————————–
Mults = 113 Total Score = 245,775
Club: CTRI Contest Group
My station is not set up for multi operation using only one transceiver. So it was essentially like a SO but using 2 operators. I hauled K1XA from out of ham radio retirement to operate. We had a poor man’s version of “shooting fish in a barrel” though. We had a lap top set up in the kitchen on the DX Cluster. When a juicy multiplier showed up (on the Cluster)on the band on which we were operating, a hardcopy telegram was hand delivered (by Western Union) to the operator. We picked up about 10 multipliers that way. It actually was better than the “fish” method as we were 99% running and the operator was not distracted from running by sifting through inoccuous calls posted. Conditions were definately down from last year….and the Q count was almost 200 less than my SO last year. But the multiplier increase beat my SO score from last year by 4K points. It was nice to share the operating. Hope you all did well. 73!! — Whiskey One M E X I C O !!!!!!!!
Was over at Dave’s house and due to all the rain my antennas had been slow getting up – I commented that I only had 2 contacts as W1J – he put me in front of his rig and said go for it (40M) – he spotted me and I ran for just under 3 hours and made 337 contacts using his 40M rotatable dipole (but didn’t rotate it 🙂 ).
Ran fast and furious for times and explained the Special event others and still had an overall rate of 119/hour! Worked a guy that said I was #8 for him so he’ll be looking for 2 more (tried to give him Dave (sitting next to me) but he had already worked him). He was really weak but worked him fine. The key is to spot yourself so the people that want you can find you.
So now my log won’t be so sparse for the special event! Thanks Dave!
Cheers,
Dan N6ERD/W1J
Dan, that’s great! I plan on getting on the air a little later today, but more importantly quite a bit this weekend. You’re right – self-spotting is a sure way to let others know where we are. That’s amazing how you could work such a high rate while taking the time to explain the special event!
73,
Pat, NG1G/K1W
Great job Dan! Like Pat, I plan to activate K1B this weekend quite a bit as well. Should we concentrate on domestic contacts where, I assume, there is likely the most interest in completing the 10 QSOs with unique CTRI 1×1’s and qualifying for the certificate…ie. where to point the beam/what bands to use these last 3 days??
Bill K1B (W1WBB)
I would think we’d have the best chance for success by concentrating on domestic contacts, but one never knows what DX stations will find interesting. As wild as conditions have been, I’m going to keep a close ear on the skip zone and try to work as much of the US as I can. I figure during the day, 15M/17M might be good, and 20M if it doesn’t go too long, and then at night 40M and 80M. I probably won’t bother with 160M since I can barely be heard across the street. I’m hoping to work a lot of stations on RTTY. With the increase in popularity maybe a lot of hams still need RI for that mode.
73,
Pat, NG1G
Dave had the dipole which isn’t terribly directional – I got a lot of domestics (sorry I’m late responding) but quite a few DX as well – I ended up with 193 US contacts, 10 VE and 100 other DX.
I worked an R7 last night and he asked who the QSL manager was so I don’t know if he’d worked others or just likes special events… (or perhaps wants a county).
Cheers,
Dan
I think the key was to spot yourself and if you work enough people off the back of the beam, it’s your cue to turn it around and work the few other guys off the back. That’s what happened last year when I was operating NeQP!
73
Dan
N6ERD
Tried running today with non-ideal antennas – very strange – on 15 I worked N6HC booming in, then he was S0. I worked another LA station similar results. I worked two more stations – both from AZ, and that was it. Not a single station closer than AZ. I was using a vertical dipole with one end 80′ up, either I skipped all close, or 15 was only open to EU and West Coast…
Two more bands 15 mins and no callers so I am done for the moment with 4 hours to go – may try 40 later.
73
Dan