The biggest contest on the 160 Meter band starts Friday night at 2200z (5 PM local time here) and runs until 2200Z Sunday eve…rules and full contest info can be found here: http://www.cq160.com/
It’s an all-CW event with a simple exchange for us: RST & state
The T32 expedition gang will be active as T32XX. HK0NA and VP6T DX-pedition stns were heard here faintly before sunrise this AM under less than ideal condx…who knows what the weekend will bring?? Not sure they’ll specifically be active but much other DX will be.
I’ll have limited participation Saturday eve due to other commitment. Hope to hand out RI a few times on Friday Night.
Good luck to all in this intra-club competition qualifying event. BTW, the SSB version of this contest is held in late February.
This contest is included in the list of contests counting towards the CTRI Championship competition. Sooo… join in if you can and then please post your results here by adding a comment to this posting.
I’ve started a spreadsheet for us to keep track of the items we think we need (or want) to bring to Puerto Rico for the 2013 CQ WPX RTTY contest.
Please review the spreadsheet, think about what may be missing from it (please note there are three tabs), and put it in a reply to this post. I will update the spreadsheet as needed and repost the updated version. If you are planning on going (we’re not asking for a commitment right now) and there’s something of a non-personal nature you will volunteer to bring, please note that in your reply post. I’ll include that in the spreadsheet.
I’m hoping this will also start some discussion in the CQWPX RTTY forum, a link to which you can find in the links bar at the top of this web page.
CW from top left: W1AN, K1DM,NG1G,W1PN,W1XX. N1HRA,KO1H,KA1CQR not shown.
Update: The plaques are in and the results are official. When parts of this article were first published we thought we had a good chance at breaking the US record we set in 2007. The results are official and the club holds a new US record, and a winning score for 2011 North America. Read more for the story of how this was accomplished.
N1HRA NG1G W1AN K1DM
What a wild ride! In the week before the contest we put together a multi-2 effort at W1AN. Minutes before the contest started, Mike, K1DM asked what call sign we were going to use. Good question! No one had given any thought to that, and as this is a prefix contest, Mike thought it might be good to use NG1G. So we decided to go with that and one can only figure it helped, since we might have been the only NG1 in the contest.
All together we had 8 operators from the club take part, and it was great getting N1HRA, KO1H and KA1CQR in the chair and catching up on old news. This was Chuck’s first time in a multi-op contest with the club, and what a good one to start with. Chuck brought new member Chip, N1MIE, with him, and I enjoyed a good chat with Chip while I put Qs in the log on 15M.
Pat Pondering Pileup
We started out on 20M and 40M but after 13 20M Qs decided to go down to 80M. 40M was hopping but 80M was slow going, with signals being tough to decode. By the time we went to 20M and 15M at 1222Z, we had 493 40M Qs and 305 80M Qs in the log. We spent the entire day CQing on one frequency on 20M, and divided our time on 15M between CQing and S&Ping. Our S&P rates stayed high, as we were consistently answered on the first call. Starting just before 2200Z, W1AN worked a nice pile of JAs and socked away more mults. At the end of 24 hours we had over 1,600 Qs in the log and things were shaping up for a run at the US record we set in 2007 at KI1G. This was the first time in a RTTY contest for both Ed, W1PN and John, W1XX. With just a little instruction (apparently on a strict one-hour limit) both men were clicking away like pros in no time.
The Sat/Sun overnight dragged a little, as it always does. But we managed to add 200 Qs on 80M and over 300 Qs on 40M. By around 1600Z we had hit 7M points. Shortly afterward, unbeknownst to us, a Class C solar flare had occurred, causing our rates to plummet. However, the Two-of-Three Johns (W1AN and KO1H) soldiered on like QSO robots, eventually putting the ribbon on the whole shebang at over 8.4M points. Depending on how many mistakes we made, we have a good shot at beating the US record we set in 2007, raising the bar just a little higher for next year.
Whaddayou mean, QSY?!! I've been on this freq for hours!
There seemed to be an unusual number of stations duping us. It was very frustrating and although it was our policy to work all dupes, it slowed us down on more than one occasion.
Many thanks to everyone who came out to support the operation and contribute to our great score! Everyone seemed to have a good time. A special thank you to John, W1AN and Nancy for hosting the operation. Nancy takes such good care of us with plenty of great food and drink! They are wonderful hosts.
We had no equipment failures. No lightning strikes, floods, power outages, or other disasters, man-made or natural. There was nary a hiccup to be had except for Writelog’s timed CQ function causing some havoc. Perhaps using a different call at W1AN confused Murphy, who might have been hanging around my house looking for me. Sucker! John’s station is a pleasure to work. There’s nothing like being a big fish once in a while!
Other than K3IU, KO1H, and KA1CQR, I’m not sure of what other club members we worked. Thanks for the Qs guys!
Hi Gang! The Annual Post Holiday Dinner or you may prefer to call it the CTRI Annual Awards Luncheon is scheduled for Saturday, February 4 at Gregg’s in N. Kingstown at 12:00 noon. We will order from the normal menu. Let us know here if you will be coming. Spouses and guests are welcome! Looking forward to seeing you!
73,
John, W1AN
The address is:
Greggs Restaurant
4120 Quaker Lane – Route 2
North Kingstown
An Index To Posts has been added to make it easier to find things on the member site. There are hundreds of posts on the site and more are being added daily. All of these posts have been indexed by title and the index is only a click away: Click here to get an index of all the posts It is possible to find information in several other ways as well, e.g., Search by content, Search by Tag, etc. Search for words in content On most pages there is a right hand sidebar containing information about the site and functions you can perform. Among the most useful of these is the Tags area which contains a list of all the tags that have been assigned to the Posts and a visual clue as to how many posts are associated with each tag. If, for example, you wanted to see all posts tagged as relating to antenna-work you could click on that tag to retrieve the posts. List of Tags associated with Posts The value of the information contained in the site increases daily. Using this data is only possible if it can be found when needed. In this Post I have shown you three ways to retrieve Posts that may contain the information you seek. These methods depend for their success on your cooperation when you create a Post. First you must title the Post with something relevant to the contents of the Post. Second you should tag the Post before you Publish it. In the right sidebar of the Post Edit screen is an area called Tags which contains all the tags already in use. If one or more of these match the content of your Post choose it(them). If they don’t fit your Post then creat a new tag or tags. Doing these simple things will make it much easier in the future to retrieve the info. Choose relevant tags
I reserved suite 114 at Boxboro today (under my name), which if memory serves me right is the suite we have used in the past. Now that we have somewhere to stay, let the fun begin as we figure out what we’ll do to make this Boxboro as much fun as those in the past.
If you are familiar with the interactive meeting notice skip down to “Topics“. This is an interactive meeting notice. What, you may ask, is an interactive meeting notice? As the phrase suggests, it is a meeting notice which requires interaction by the readers. For example: we need to have topics for presentation at the meeting; we need presenters; we need volunteers to provide lunch; we need to know who is coming to the meeting so the quantity of lunch portions may be determined, and so on. This post will be updated as interactions (comments) are appended.
Topics
Establishment of club goals for 2012
Contest Report
Election of new Treasurer
Future of the Yahoo reflector
Holiday Dinner
Special Event 1×1 callsigns
Discussion of pile-up operating strategies/protocol
Lunch provider: Lunch fixins by: W1PN
Coffee and Drinks by: W1AN
Members who will attend: K3IU, W1XX, KS1J, W1WBB, NG1G, K1DM, KA1GEU, W1AN, W1PN
This is to notify you I will be giving my notice of resignation from my position of Treasurer of the CTRI Group.Effective as of the next club meeting date January 14,2012.
The reason for this is a change of direction I am making for the New Year.I am getting involved in a New Church in my local area, and my wife and I are beginning to get somewhat active in BVARC in Woonsocket.My wife and I are trying to be more active in similar interest and activities.I have enjoyed my time and involvement with the ctri group over the years I have been a member.Especially the antenna work crew involvement.As you know I am not at active contester.I did participate in the New England QSO party.and the Local VHF simplex grid contest. And had I a great time doing those events.I feel this is the time to make some changes for the New Year for both me and my wife.I will turn in the ledger with balance information, and will turn over the clubs fund balance by making a personal check from my checking account payable to who ever takes over my old position or who ever you designate to make the balance out to.The current balance is as follows:$593.56.
Just a reminder that logs for last month’s ARRL 10 Meter Contest are due to ARRL NLT Jan 10. This event was marked by outstanding participation by CTRI CG and most members who were active have already submitted their logs. For the few who may have been active that weekend but have yet to submit, there is still time! ARRL is just a few logs shy of 5000 for the event…and every point helps the overall CTRI club score.
…and logs for the ARRL 160 M Contest are due NLT 1600Z Tuesday Jan 3!!
Good luck to those participating in ARRL RTTY Roundup this weekend — the first significant contest of the New Year! The contest calender is very busy for the next few months with a big contest just about each weekend…check out the convenient calendar link at the top of the webpage for general dates.
The following two weekends after RTTY Roundup will have the North American QSO Party CW, then Phone. These events are excellent for accumulating needed U.S. states on all the HF bands 10-160m. The exchange is simple too — name & state! This event is only 12 hours long too (max 10 hrs for single-ops). We may put teams together for these events if there is interest (teams consist of max. 5 single-op **UNassisted ops**only).
ARRL’s January VHF Sweeps coincides with the NAQP SSB during the 3rd weekend in January for the VHF’ers among us.
