46 and counting…

Having decided to give this blog a bit of a subject matter makeover to have less of an obvious amateur radio focus, for the benefit of any readers who aren’t amateur radio operators, let me explain.

9M8Z is the callsign of an amateur radio operator in East Malaysia.

WPX SSB is an amateur radio contest run annually at this time of year.

WPX stands for ‘worked prefixes’…but enough of that!

SSB stands for ‘single sideband’ which is a form of spoken communication used on shortwave bands.

The sum of which means that I, with my amateur radio station and personal callsign G0RIF, made contact with amateur radio station 9M8Z in East Malaysia this past weekend in the WPX SSB contest.

That’s a distance of some 7000 miles using only 100 watts of power (about the same as your average pre energy saving light bulb) and a simple wire antenna. This kind of thing impresses me.

Dean Amateur Radio 9M8Z, SSB, WPX

One mans DX is another mans chip-shot. Your equipment, conditions, the frequency in use and any number of other factors all contribute to making certain contacts worthy of the term ‘DX’.

Case in point my attempt at a 2m SSB contact with Simon (2E0HTS) some 87 miles north of me. How hard could it be? After all, I’m a HF DX’er and I regularly work stations thousands of miles away. This should be easy, right? Wrong!

I embarked on this little exercise because I’m interested in working a bit of 2m SSB up into Burton-on-Trent where I’m getting to know a few of the locals through the Burton Amateur Radio Club. To that end Simon and I arranged a sked (a pre-arranged contact for all you non-hams out there) to see if we could establish a contact on 2m SSB.

We agreed that he would call me as he was likely to have the ‘bigger’ signal (50 watts into a homebrew IO loop beam he uses for working amateur satellites with great success). I waited and listened…and waited…and waited. At times I could tell he was there, down in the noise, but it just wasn’t readable at all. If I wasn’t hearing his 50 watts he was never going to hear my puny 8 watts into a simple 3 element beam!

We gave it our best shot but it wasn’t to be. We moved to 80m and had a quick chat (which was nice…thanks Simon!) and I’ll look forward to chatting with him again soon. For now though it seems that 87 miles on 2m, for us at least, was ‘DX too far’. I’m certainly gaining a new found respect for all the VHF/UHF (and beyond) DX’ers out there. I’ve also learned that DX need not be the other side of the world. Sometimes it isn’t even the other side of the country! It’s all relative.

Dean Amateur Radio 2E0HTS, antenna, DX, G0RIF, SSB

As of today I have 127 countries worked on CW. That’s about 127 more than I expected back when first licensed in 1991! Back then it was SSB all the way even though the 12 word per minute Morse test was still a requirement for access to the shortwave bands.

I do have a few Morse contacts in the log from those early days but they really were few and far between. The ease with which I could make contacts on 10m and 15m SSB meant that there was little incentive for me to knuckle down and spend time perfecting the fine art of CW and achieving CW DXCC seemed nigh on impossible.

Fast forward to June 2007 when, having been back on the bands for the best part of two years, I decided to dust off the cobwebs and get back on the bands with a bit of the old Morse code. I used a cheap old Chinese straight key for a while but then moved on to using the keyer in an Icom IC-703 working CW contests with about 8 watts output into my 20m dipole. I subsequently moved on to a K8RA iambic paddle (a beautifully engineered bit of kit which I am still trying to really become proficient with) and higher power levels (although always well under 100 watts). I also adopted computer keying for contests and DXpeditions where the exchanges are short and sharp.

The net result of all of this is that since June 2007 I have worked those 127 countries on CW. In the same time period I have worked 121 countries on RTTY and only worked 96 countries using SSB (where the overall country total is now at 112). A reflection of the relative levels of activity on the respective modes where, as you can see, SSB is currently my least used mode. How things have changed since those early days!

Dean Amateur Radio CW, DXCC, morse code, SSB

Listening in to 20m a lot today and 17m at times hoping to hear a good signal from Iraq. Checked CW, RTTY and SSB on all the spotted frequencies - nothing.

Conditions were a bit grim yesterday but seem worse today. I’m seeing many others reporting nil heard with them so not just me.

Maybe 40m tonight…maybe…

Dean Amateur Radio CW, RTTY, SSB, YI9PSE

A tip for you. Planning late is the same as not planning at all. It you want to do anything properly make sure all he planning is done well ahead of the event. Case in point, WPX SSB 2010 when I’d ‘planned’ to get out and operate G0RIF/p from Piggot’s Bottom.

I say ‘planned’. It’s probably more accurate to say I’d ‘intended’ getting out and stringing up a few temporary antennas amongst the trees at Piggot’s Bottom - there had been precious little actual planning. It was a busy weekend one way and another so time was limited but come Sunday afternoon I had a chance of 3 or 4 hours on the bands. Time to get out and work a few!
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Dean Amateur Radio, Life... antenna, portable, SSB, WPX

First things first - I’m not by nature an award chaser. However, entry to the DX Century Club (DXCC) is something I’ve had in mind ever since I was first licensed. It’s the award that most hams will identify with as being the one to work toward.

There are various DXCC awards for the common modes of operation and for stations contacted on any of the individual amateur bands but the most basic of all is the ‘mixed’ award for confirmed contacts with 100 stations across all bands and all modes.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, a few days ago I applied for the DXCC mixed award and the DXCC 20m award…through the ARRL Logbook of The World. I’ve been a LoTW user for about 4 years now and I used only LoTW confirmations when applying for the awards. This is a lot easier than submitting precious QSL cards for checking. Payment is all done online and I hope to receive the certificates before too long.

All being well I’ll soon be in a position to apply for my DXCC RTTY (currently 84 confirmed on LoTW) but beyond that I need to work hard at increasing my CW and SSB totals (currently 80 and 65 respectively). Time to hit the bands and make some contacts! CQ de G0RIF…

Dean Amateur Radio ARRL, CW, DXCC, LoTW, QSL, RTTY, SSB

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