Indigo Foxtrot…

I wrote back in June that I was making good progress toward working 100 countries since moving to Lichfield in September of 2008. Well I can now report that coming out of the CQWW CW contest this past weekend I have now reached that milestone - 100 countries worked from this location.

The details are 100 countries worked with 74 on CW, 66 on RTTY and 60 on SSB. This includes 8 all time new ones in the form of Anguilla, Desecheo Island, St. Maarten & St. Eustatius, Bermuda, United Arab Emirates, Alaska, Montserrat and the British Virgin Isles.

This brings the overall numbers to 170 worked with 119 on CW, 122 on data modes (RTTY & PSK31) and 111 on SSB. Here’s to the big push towards 200!

Dean Amateur Radio, Blog CW, DXCC, G0RIF, Lichfield, RTTY, SSB

It is always nice to receive QSL cards and the beauty of the bureau system is that you get a lot of cards delivered all at once. It’s great to then look back through the log and remember some of those contacts.

Many contacts can be short & sweet though - this is the case with contest or special event stations who are intent on logging as many contacts as possible as quickly as possible. The cards shown here from OE2008A and HB2008VC are from two such special event stations setup to celebrate the Euro 2008 football tournament co-hosted by Austria and Switzerland. There were many such stations and I received over 30 of their cards in my most recent delivery, a mix of Swiss and Austrian stations for SSB, CW and RTTY contacts.

a selection of the more colourful QSL cards received from the bureau

Here (bottom right) you can also see the card received from Peruvian station OA4WW, this means that of 168 countries logged I now have 151 of them confirmed by paper QSL (rather than some electronic form such as LOTW or eQSL).

Dean Amateur Radio, Pictures bureau, CW, Euro 2008, G0RIF, LoTW, QSL, RTTY, SSB

A chance to try and work a few new ones. Unfortunately I only heard one station that would have been a new one for me, ST2KSS in Sudan on 15m, a band on which my antenna doesn’t work particularly well. I tried to call him many times but he had lots of loud stations calling him whenever I could hear him (and he was never more than strength 7 with me) so no QSO resulted.

Over the two days (in what amounted to about 2 hours operating) and making only selective calls I logged 35 stations (40m=17 20m=9 15m=8 10m=1) in 32 different countries - they were:-

Aland Islands, Balearic Islands, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, European Russia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Jersey, Kaliningrad, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Madeira Island, Morocco, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Tunisia, Ukraine, USA and Wales.

Not a bad little haul but no new ones. I’ll hope for better luck and better propagation for the CW contest at the end of November!

Dean Amateur Radio antenna, contest, CW, propagation, SSB

C37NL QSL card

This is the card that arrived today from Andorran amateur radio station C37NL for an SSB contact back in early July of this year - this is a new confirmed country for me. The C37NL call was granted to Jose (EA7KW) who was invited by the Andorran Amateur Radio League to operate from a brand new shack on a hilltop near La Rabassa, located in the ‘Naturlandia’ amusement park, home to the 5.3km world record length helter-skelter ‘Turbotronc’.

Dean Amateur Radio, Pictures Andorra, C37NL, QSL, SSB, Turbotronc

Advocates of CW (Morse code) will often cite its advantages over other modes like phone (by which they usually mean single sideband (SSB) these days). One of those advantages, a side effect of it’s narrow bandwidth (meaning that the transmitted energy is ‘focused’ into a narrow signal), is its ability to ‘get through’ when other modes can’t. They’ll tell you that CW will get you the QSO more times than any other mode, such as for instance when conditions just won’t allow you to conduct a phone contact.

Case in point - this years RSGB (radio society of Great Britain) IOTA (islands on the air) contest, held this past weekend from noon UTC Saturday to noon UTC Sunday. It’s usually a good measure of both your antenna and conditions because many of the participating stations on islands will be running modest power with simple antennas (unlike other major contests where the ‘big guns’ are out with their huge antenna systems and powerful amplifiers). Bottom line is, in the IOTA contest your station needs two basic attributes - good ears and a good radiated signal. This boils down to one fundamental component - your antenna (or antennas). If you can’t hear them you can’t work them and if you can’t make them hear you you also can’t work them.

What I found when trying to work a few of the stations was that more often than not it was VERY difficult getting them to hear my SSB signal (and even those who could hear me were reporting me as ‘weak’). Using CW on the other hand usually resulted in them replying to my first or second call.

Over the weekend I worked around twice as many stations on CW as I did on SSB (all of them European stations on either 20m or 40m) and all of the SSB contacts were hard work! Not to mention those SSB stations I tried to contact and just didn’t get through (after calling several times even when there were no other apparent callers). A very clear demonstration that, all else being equal, CW will get you the QSO where SSB might not.

Dean Amateur Radio antenna, CW, IOTA, morse code, RSGB, SSB

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

simple setup with the Yaesu FT-857

Just a quick one following an enjoyable 5 hours out in the sun working mostly 20m SSB portable from Barr Beacon. Myself (G0RIF), Richard (M0SNR) and Luke (M3VVB) took the usual assortment of wires, cables and poles to see what we could throw up & see how it worked. As is often the case the Par End Fedz 20m dipole was pressed into service in a vertical orientation, suspended on a 10m pole - this also supported a quick & dirty 15m dipole hastily constructed from the remnants of the broadside doublet previously tested.

You may recall a previous post in which I’d had a less than fulfilling time with the doublet so for now it’s back to resonant antennas and coax feedlines. Todays results suggest that the 15m dipole works well, although the 15m band wasn’t particularly busy so only a few stations were worked.

On 20m the vertical performed as expected, which is to say, pretty well. Nothing particularly exotic but worked DX both east (RV9LM) and west (W1OP) with a good selection of European stations, many of which were participating in the Portugal Day contest. A contact of particular interest was with Geoff (G8BPN) working 20m mobile while on a driving holiday in France, logged as F/G8BPN/M.

Dean Amateur Radio antenna, dipole, doublet, FT-857, G0RIF, portable, SSB, vertical, weather

Following the recent post regarding countries worked since moving to Lichfield, I had a quick check last night to see what progress I’d made towards my DXCC objectives.

Just to recap - I aim to work at least 100 countries on SSB, CW and datamodes (RTTY and PSK31). I also want to work 100 countries on each of 10, 12, 15, 17, 20, 30 and 40m bands (basically all the bands where my antenna works).

In the first instance I’m concentrating on getting the 100 countries on each mode and the scores to date are:-

• 109 countries on SSB
• 116 countries on CW (morse code)
• 129 countries on datamodes (117 RTTY, 74 PSK31)
• 168 countries worked in total

Of the 168 countries worked I have 151 confirmed (QSL received) with 146 by paper card and 110 LOTW (Logbook of The World).

Dean Amateur Radio DXCC, G0RIF, morse code, PSK31, QSL, RTTY, SSB

Surprise, surprise. Tonight on 17m (18.141 MHz) YS1G work a clutch of mostly NA stations simplex SSB. Those EU stations who did work them (no doubt with far better antennas than I have here) were reporting them ‘weak but workable’.

A welcome break form long hours of CW or just looking to chat a bit before they settle in for another long day at the key/paddle? Whatever their thinking they were inaudible here which is in line with every other day this week when they only really start to peak into Europe on 17m after 11pm my time.

Dean Amateur Radio, Life... dxpedition, SSB, YS1G