46 and counting…

This weekend is the IARU HF championship - a contest for both SSB and CW for the 24 hours commencing 12:00 UTC on Saturday the 11th of July. Bodo in Nigeria (see previous post) would be active as 5N0HQ and I was hoping I might get a contact at some point over the period of the contest.

I set about working a few stations, initially on SSB but then moved to 15m CW where I’d seen 5N0HQ spotted. Although I wasn’t putting out a huge signal I was concerned when no one, not a single station, responded to my calls on CW. I should mention at this point that having made some SSB, RTTY and PSK31 contacts since getting the FT-950 setup, I still hadn’t logged a single CW contact. I began to wonder if all was well with my interface configuration.

I’m using the CwType software by Sergei (UA9OV) for sending contest exchanges. This communicates with the radio via a MyDel SB-2000 radio interface unit which also handle rig control and RTTY FSK keying, as well as audio in and out. Although it seemed to be keying the rig and I was hearing the CW tone in my headset, on closer inspection the radio was just sending a steady tone and wasn’t being keyed to send the CW characters. It turns out I had the wrong setting in the CwType software - the PTT port pin was set to RTS when it should be set to ‘NONE’. Keying is then via the DTR pin to send the CW characters. Having made that change I got a response from the next station called…and several more after that.

So having made the change and realised the error of my ways, I’ll be back on the hunt for Bodo in his 5N0HQ guise. I fear I may have missed my best chance of a 20m contact but I’ll see what I can do if he pops up on 40m this evening. At least now I’m sure the setup is working as expected so any failure to log him now will be down to the propagation gods!

Dean Amateur Radio 5N0HQ, CW, CWType, FT-950, IARU, RTTY, SB-2000, SSB, technology, UA9OV

curtain antenna in use by 5N0OCH

Bodo (DL3OCH) is in Nigeria involved in the construction of a new shortwave broadcast facility for the ‘Voice Of Nigeria’. While there he is QRV as 5N0OCH until October 2009. He currently has a great signal into Europe by virtue of his being able to use the huge curtain antenna at the radio station (an array of 16 dipoles aiming north - see picture). I hadn’t paid much attention until recently because I already have a QSO with 5N47NDP from 2008 but a few nights ago I spotted his RTTY signal and thought I’d try for a QSO, since when I have tried (without success) on 20m RTTY and 12, 30 and 40m CW!

Despite the fact that Bodo is in Nigeria until October and is active most evenings, the pile-ups are still huge and there are many stations working him time and time again, much to his dismay. He is now shaming the guilty parties with a ‘599 dupe’ report. He is also making repeated requests both on his web page and on air that people don’t dupe, hopefully allowing weaker signals to be heard amongst the pile.

I will persevere to get a QSO with Bodo because I figure the pile-ups will eventually abate and it’d be a new one for me on both CW and RTTY should I get either or both of them in the log.

Dean Amateur Radio, Blog, Pictures 5N0OCH, CW, DL3OCH, RTTY