I almost forgot! In less than an hour from now this BIG contest will be over. Please enter your results by posting a comment to this posting so that we can learn about your efforts as well as record them on the club champions competition leaderboard.
Thanks…
73, Ken K3IU, Keeper of the Leaderboard
Club members,
This contest was especially fun for me because we finally solved the problem I have been having with my RM2 computer decoding RTTY from my K3. John, W1AN, told me he experienced trouble that sounded like what I have been having when he got ready to start this contest. He finally blew away the driver for the sound card on the RM2 and re-installed it. His problem disappeared. When I got home on Saturday morning, after a couple hours sleep, I re-loaded the sound card driver on my RM2, and since there were plenty of RTTY signals, I discovered that my system was working at least as well as I thought it should work.
So, I spent a total of about 6.67 hours playing on Saturday while I was supposed to be sleeping, working stations from home. I believe that included KI1G and W1DX both.
I also spent time at W1DX this weekend. We did a multi-one since there were only three operators. John, W1AN, will report on that effort. We had a good time, and I think we had a decent score.
Here are my results for my single-transmitter, all-band, high-power, assisted entry from K1DM.
BAND QSO Pts Zone Countries States/Prov 80 31 63 8 14 9 40 0 0 0 0 0 20 65 169 12 36 13 15 76 203 9 32 11 10 30 70 8 17 8 TOTAL: 202 505 37 99 41 SCORE: 89,385 Time in chair: 6 hr, 40 min (N1NN Logger)Mike, K1DM
IMPORTANT! The log submission deadline is Oct 4, 2013 at 7:59 pm local time.
73, Pat, NG1G
The original plan was to run as a Multi-2. With only 3 operators committed we made a last minute change to Multi-Single. In hindsight we should have run as a Multi-2 to maximize the club score and keep us all busy. With the band openings we had I would guess we could easily have added another 800-1000 Qs.
Operating the run station was more than a lot of fun in this contest. 10M was open both days as was 20M but 15M was definitely where the action was. It didn’t seem to matter where the antenna was aimed. SA, EU, AS, OC and USA were calling us at the same heading. We ran JAs for a couple hours each day. We neglected 20M and 10M while 15M was going. Wish we could have two runs going at the same time. Did not spend much run time on 80M and 10M. Mostly S&P and mult picking. A lot of the spots were not readable.
It’s fixed for now, buts some questions were raised with N1MM in understanding how to set RUN1 and RUN2 vs multiplier station for MS operation. Hopefully we can quickly clear this up since it may effect band change counts. The N1MM software did give us some headaches. Apparently there are some conflicting settings that stall the software when digital call stacking is chosen or an inadvertent mouse click is made. Sometimes the F4 LOG n’ POP would “not let go” and only a restart of N1MM would fix it. MMTTY worked very nicely printing, but we discovered there may be an incorrect setting in N1MM that causes it to lose its FSK COM port on band changing. Very puzzling. 2-Tone was available in a second window, but we found no advantage. The 5B4AGN band pass filters worked great also, They nicely following the K3 band data. The FSK and PTT signals from the PC connect to the K3 through the filter.
Thanks to Mike K1DM, Pat NG1G, Ken K3IU, John W1XX for being the tower and antenna crew the days before the start. This was not an easy task. Tramming up the antenna proved to be more of a chore than expected. And the three plus hours I spent Friday at the top took its toll. We were able to raise the 4el 20M monobander to 111 Feet, but, thanks to Murph, a check later from the shack showed the relay box at 80 feet up had an open RF connection. We weren’t able to use it in this contest, but it should be an easy fix for the next one. Having the 15M stack working on the rotor was a big plus. And thank you Nancy W1NAN, for keeping us nourished.
Worked KI1G on 4 bands, K1SD, K1DM, K3IU.
Tidbits.
Missed Zones: 37 and 39
Number of Ks: 481
Number of JA: 211
Number of DL: 198
Number of I: 138
73, John, W1AN
CQ Worldwide DX Contest, RTTY
Call: KI1G
Operator(s): KI1G K1SD KS1J K3IU KB1RFJ
Station: KI1G
Class: M/2 HP
QTH: RI
Operating Time (hrs): 48
Summary:
Band QSOs State/Prov DX Zones
————————————
80: 406 48 51 14
40: 941 50 87 29
20: 1174 51 99 35
15: 1410 44 100 33
10: 569 30 83 29
————————————
Total: 4500 223 420 140 Total Score = 8,880,003
Club: CT RI Contest Group
We had issues with the computers delaying RTTY transmission from 0 to 2 seconds which we tried to resolve with a reboot only to find that Microsoft was nice enough to be force feeding an update to the computer which took 1 hour to shutdown properly. I had tried several new things at once in the configuration so not exactly sure where the issues lies but will defintely address it now that it exists.
We repeatedly desoldered the loading coil from the 15 meter position of the bandswitch on the AL-1200’s, this occured multiple times on different amps and only on 15 Meters, need to look into what is going on with that.
Despite these issues, had a great time. Had a guest visit by WF1B during the contest and am hoping to bring him back into the contesting mix in the near future. Mike, KB1RFJ stopped in on Sunday and got some run time in on 15 meters, Welcome to the Jungle Mike !!!!
The new MOXON is playing real good as I expected, need to pick up a ring rotor and move the MOXON off of the mast with the high 20 so that they can be in different diections at the same time.
Some intermod but nothing major.
We ran MMTTY with 2Tone in clone window, results were mixed but most stations
printed easily on one or the other.
Great job by the operating team.
Thats it for now, time to regroup for the next one.
73, Rick KI1G
Congratulations on the great score guys!
I understand your grief with Windows updates. You will need to disable that annoying process which always happens at the wrong time. Also you will find most virus scanning programs will slow things as well. Nasty during a contest.
If you are running the AL1200s near full output you may want to be sure everyone knows to tune with full drive rather than increasing drive after tuning at a lower drive. I also read that If tuning is not set properly you can get high circulating currents in the tank circuit through the band switch which can melt the solder. This all has to do with the tank circuit Q being too high. Some of these things including arcing can also happen if you are tuning into a high SWR load or wrong antenna. There is lots of discussion on eham.
You can try backing off on the power. I also have some higher melt temperature 30/70 solder you could try, but we don’t know what Ameritron used.
Again, nice score.
73, John, W1AN
CQ Worldwide DX Contest, RTTY
Call: K1SD
Class: SOAB(A) LP
QTH: RI
Summary:
Band QSOs State/Prov DX Zones
———————————–
80:
40: 3 3 2 2
20: 1 1 1 1
15: 16 6 11 8
10: 8 3 7 6
———————————–
Total: 28 13 21 17 Total Score = 3,162
Club: CT RI Contest Group
Got on to make a few Qs during a rest time at home. Ran across W1AN and then, what a surprise, KI1G, who wanted to work me on other bands too! Big time fun.
73 James K1SD
I have made some headway with some of the issues that we encountered. I uninstalled Writelog and did a fresh install to clean out the .ini file that I have been accumilating for many years. I also used the new interface to MTTY and things are already noticably faster. I also plan to connect the computers directly together and then add another NIC card for the interface to the internet.
I have rewired the AL-1200’s for high fan speed and am looking at higher volume blowers to replace the stock one.
Hope everyone who played got their logs submitted, the deadline has now passed.
73
Rick KI1G
Correction. W1DX is in the log, not W1AN.