ARRL RTTY Roundup

Last weekend was the yearly ARRL RTTY Roundup, which I decided to have a dabble in, I found conditions very poor at best although managed to work 9M2 and E21. I was pleased that I managed to work some stations on 80m as the Windom seems to preform very poorly on this band.

Total operating time was around 4 hours give or take and summary below shows a very poor effort in my view.

 MODE   QSO S/P DXC DUP  POINTS   AVG
--------------------------------------
   80     3   0   2   0       3  1.00
   40    51   1  19   0      51  1.00
   20    48   0  10   0      48  1.00
   15     0   0   0   0       0  0.00
   10     0   0   0   0       0  0.00
--------------------------------------
TOTAL   102   1  31   0     102  1.00
======================================
         TOTAL SCORE : 3 264

Equipment: Yaesu FT950, 80m Windom, MixW for logging.

Goals for 2010

As we move into another year I’ve decided to set myself some goals to give me some focus, I hope I can achieve them and I’ll keep everyone regularly updated.

Revise and sit Advance Exam

After sitting the Intermediate exam at the RSGB Convention back in October 2009, I’m feeling keener then ever to finally take the last step to get a Advance (Full) UK amateur radio licence. I know from others that its quite a lot to learn and remember but I’m willing to give it a go and try and sit the exam at the 2010 RSGB Convention. this gives me 10 months to soak in all the information and swat up on my math skills.

Step 1: buy the revision book!

Learn Morse Code

Finally learning the code is something I want to do, and the guys down at G6PZ keep telling me to sort it out so I can take part in the CW Contests with them.

1 QSO Per Day Target

Last year my QSO number wasn’t that great outside of contests so this year I want to make at least 1 QSO per day every day so that’s a minimum of 365 QSOs personally I’m hoping to do more then that plus contest activity, it would be well into the thousands..

Launch Callbook.org.uk

Callbook.org.uk has been plagued with issues from the start mostly caused my Ofcom revoking the application process to access UK Callbook data and never doing anything more about it. I’m keen as ever to start this project and I’m going to be looking further into gaining the information from Ofcom and also including a number of other countries around Europe (If anyone has sources please let me know).

This will be no doubt a long process but I’m willing to give it another go, I can only hope Ofcom has a change of attitude in the coming months.

Weak Signal Propagation Reporter (WSPR)

WSPR Activity Map

During the last month I have been playing around with the Weak Signal Propagation Reporter (WSPR) on 30m seeing who could hear my 5 watts around the world, I was impressed to see its actually quite a lot of people even running low power on the Yaesu FT-950.

WSPR is dubbed as being a “protocol designed for probing potential propagation paths with low-power transmissions.  Normal transmissions carry a station’s callsign, Maidenhead grid locator, and transmitter power in dBm” and it stands up to it, last night I setup the radio around 5pm and left it on till 9:40pm transmitting on 40m.

Over that period of time WSPRnet was reporting the following

Hearing: CU4AEA, DC6MY, DF6MK, DF8TI, DG4BCL, DG7RJ, DH5RAE, DH8SA, DJ1GT, DJ6OL, DJ9NZ, DK1ER, DK3SML, DK8BZ, DL1SIG, DL2SCH, DL2ZQ, DL4FJ, DL5ALW, DL5RBD, DL6YCU, DL8FCL, DM2AUD, EW1CD, G3SUY, G3YSX, G4PEC, I5IAR, IQ3AZ, K1JT, LA6IKA, LA6TPA, M5LMY, MW0VVO, N2BJW, NU8D, OH2GAX, PA3MET, PD4JSE, RV6HW, RW9SZ, VK6BN, W3GXT, W3PM, W8DA, WA2RSX, WB4KLJ, ZC4VJ

Heard by: CU4AEA, DC6MY, DF4PM, DF6MK, DF9CY, DG0OPK, DG4BCL, DG7RJ, DH5RAE, DH8SA, DJ8LG, DJ9NZ, DK1ER, DK3SML, DL1SIG, DL5ALW, DL5RBD, DL6SCD, DL8FCL, EI7JQ, G3YSX, G4AXL, G8CZI, I2PHD, I5IAR, IQ3AZ, IZ3LCH, K1JT, LA6IKA, LA6TPA, LA9JO, M5LMY, N2AET, N2BJW, NU8D, OH2GAX, OH2MZA, ON3VHF, PA3FNY, SM7ETW, UT1PX, VA2RJ, VK6BN, W3GXT, W3PM, W8LIW, WA2RSX, WB4KLJ, ZC4VJ

This to me is an impressive amount of data, and shows when it might be possible to work such stations (maybe) I was pleased to see VK6BN on the list too.  The data collected is available for download via WSPRnet as CSV files daily, what I’d really like to see is this data available instantly via an API this would make the data much more useful to develop propagation tools.

I think next I will set it up on 80m to see what can actually be heard, as the 80m Windom really doesn’t seem to perform that well on the band!

OK DX RTTY Contest

I’ve spent a couple of hours today in the shack operating in the OK DX RTTY contest, conditions didn’t seem very special I started off at around 10am on 40m working the usual European stations but soon came across P40YL in Aruba then K1SFA. then soon moved to 20m to work some more Europeans, Russians and North America and to my surprise VK6HZ.

Made an enjoyable Saturday in the shack, look forward to a contest in the new year.

Summary:

 BAND   QSO
--------------
  160     0
   80     4
   40    34
   20    66
   15     0
   10     0
--------------
TOTAL   104
==============

Callsign: 2E0SQL
Equipment: Yaesu FT-950, Signalink USB, 80m Windom and MixW.