News items for tag radiocontesting - Koos van den Hout

This weekend was the morse edition of the Scandinavian Activity Contest and I decided to participate, mainly to get some more morse contesting experience.

I made 74 contacts, even some on the 10 meter band which cooperated Saturday afternoon.

PE4KH - NON-SCANDINAVIA EU PA

Band      QSO   Points   Multipliers
------------------------------------
80m          0       0       0
40m         13      13       9
20m         55      55      22
15m          0       0       0
10m          6       6       5
------------------------------------
Total       74      74      36

Dupes:     0
Invalid:   0
QSO Total: 74
Score:     2.664 (Diff: 2.664)
CATEGORY:  SINGLE-OP
BAND:      ALL
POWER:     LOW
OVERLAY:   NONE
STATION:   FIXED

This weekend was the IARU HF World Championship contest and I was planning to participate. This is one of my favourite contests. I made sure the software was all set up correctly before the weekend.

This year the IARU-HF contest is also the World Radiosport Team Championship, this edition in Bologna, Italy. I see 58 stations active in the WRTC, I have 41 in my log.

I participated on the 10, 20 and 40 meter bands, I had no access to 15 meter this time. In total I made 212 contacts, all in Morse. The results according to my contestlogger:

Band   160   80   40   20   15   10
QSO      0    0   18  170    0   24
Mult     0    0   14   33    0    9

Pts: 654  Mul: 56 Score: 36624

Only a few contacts were outside Europe, not a lot of DX this time. Local interference on 20 and 40 meters limited me to stronger stations. I called CQ on the 10 meter band for a while since I was able to hear returning signals in the noise, that only gave me one contact, but with a station at the World Radiosport Team Championship, so that was cool.

The log submission website gives the calculated score as Raw Score: 566 Qpts x 56 Mults = 31,696 (212 QSOs) so just like last year I still have to look at the calculations.

This weekend is the IARU HF contest and I will participate. This year it is extra special because the IARU HF contest is also the World Radiosport Team Championship which is in Italy this year.

I will try to get the WRTC calls in the log, but I'm also looking forward to getting contacts all over the world. I will concentrate on morse and maybe get some phone contacts too.

Last weekend was the CQ World Wide WPX Contest CW organized by CQ Amateur Radio magazine. The term 'WPX' stands for 'Worked All Prefixes'. The objective of this contest is to get contacts and exchange information with as many different other radio amateurs using morse code. Points are awarded for each contact, based on which amateur band and whether they are in the same or different continents. Multipliers are calculated from the number of different prefixes contacted. The prefix of my callsign PE4KH is PE4.

The score in this contest is calculated from the points per contact multiplied by the number of unique prefixes. This makes a station with a rare prefix popular so radio amateurs get special calls or go to special places to be that rare prefix.

This is also one of the big contests with a lot of participation from all around the world. In the days before the contest there were already a number of stations set up in special places busy on the air making contacts, testing their equipment and their setup to get the maximum score in the contest.

This testing in the days before the contest already allowed me to get a number of new countries in morse in my log: Azerbaijan, Antigua, Argentina, Madagascar and Hong Kong.

In the contest I made 171 contacts: 33 on the 10 meter band and 138 on the 20 meter band. With 215 qso points, 138 multiplier my claimed score is 29670 points at the moment. I had fun in the contest and all the practice with callsigns and serial numbers in morse has helped!

During the contest I added Australia, Qatar and Kaliningrad as new countries in morse in the log. I have now had morse contacts with 101 countries in the world, and now I'm waiting for confirmations via Logbook Of the World.

Update

I received a very fast confirmation for Australia already from VJ3A Steve. That was a 16490 kilometer contact with morse!

Thoughts

In preparing for this contest I considered adding an antenna to get access to the 15 meter band. Now looking back I think I might get different contacts (more countries maybe) on 15 meters, but it would not have added a lot of contacts.

This weekend was the His Majesty The King of Spain CW Contest and I participated. There wasn't a lot of time due to other things in the weekend, I was making contacts in the contest for less than four hours on Saturday evening and less than two hours Sunday.

I made 77 contacts, 7 on the 10 meter band, 55 on the 20 meter band and 15 on the 40 meter band. Propagation wasn't cooperating very well although there were some interesting openings. One opening on the 10 meter band resulted in a contact with Nepal on the 10 meter band, a completely new country in amateur radio for me.

Update

And the contact with 9N7AA Robert in Nepal is already confirmed! Thank you!

Update 2023-05-26

I had a contact with HZ1TT Ali in this contest and that contact is now confirmed, adding country number 85 to the list of confirmed countries in Morse.

Update 2023-06-20

Results are in: 74 valid contacts, 120 qso points, 52 multipliers giving a total score of 6240. Ranking #253 single operator multiband low power dx.

I was looking for an opportunity for morse contacts and saw the UK/EI DX Contest CW 2023 in the calender for this weekend. So I participated, with some last minute additions to my contest logger.

My original idea for this contest was that this would make stations from all parts of the United Kingdom active in Morse, including entities I still want to get in the log. From the parts of the UK I don't have Guernsey and Jersey in morse and I'd like to get Northern Ireland confirmed.

That plan did not work out, from the UK I only heard stations from England and Schotland. Checking the Reverse Beacon Network confirmed this, very little activity from those parts of the UK. I made 68 contacts total, 48 on the 20 meter band and 20 on the 40 meter band.

What did work out is that all the practising I did in morse at contest speeds seems to help, I had less trouble decoding callsigns and serial numbers. I regularly practise contest morse with the Contest trainer by Hanz YL3JD.

This year I participated in the EA RTTY Contest again. This is a contest organized by the Spanish Amateur Radio Club Unión de Radioaficionados Españoles and they organize nice contests!

I participated Saturday afternoon and Sunday end of the morning. Other things needed my attention in the weekend too. I ended with 56 contacts, 53 on the 20 meter amateur band and 3 on the 40 meter amateur band. The 40 meter amateur band was mostly unusuable during the daytime due to interference. I thought I was going to end the contest with less than 50 contacts, but calling CQ I had a last minute sprint with 11 contacts in 10 minutes.

This year I participated in the EA PSK63 Contest again. This is a contest organized by the Spanish Amateur Radio Club Unión de Radioaficionados Españoles and they organize nice contests!

This is a 24-hour contest between 12:00 UTC on Saturday and 11:59 UTC on Sunday. Contacts were made Saturday afternoon and evening, and Sunday morning. The last contact was logged at 11:59 UTC on Sunday! I went for the 20 and 40 meter bands and checked a few times whether there was activity on the 10 meter band. In the end I made 182 contacts, 1 on the 10 meter band.

Besides the usual search and pounce approach (looking for other stations calling CQ) I also called CQ for periods. This got me a nice amount of contacts in a short period. The peak was 4 contacts within 2 minutes. With the new Yaesu FT-991A radio it's also possible to find a free frequency, center it in the passband at 1500 Hz and then turn the bandwidth of the receiver down. Big signals outside the passband have a lot less influence with this radio so I can receive signals on 'my' frequency better.

Past weekend was the ARRL DX CW Contest and I planned to participate beforehand on the 20 meter band like I did in the ARRL DX CW Contest in 2022.

But this year the HF propagation was much better and I got contacts with stations in the United States of America and Canada on the 10 meter, 15 meter and 20 meter amateur bands. The contacts on 10 and 15 meters were most during the period of daylight in both parts, the contacts on 20 meters later in the day. In total I made 89 contacts:

Band   160   80   40   20   15   10
QSO's    0    0    0   16   37   36
Mult     0    0    0   11   19   17

Pts: 267  Mul: 47 Score: 12549     

Currently this gives me New Mexico as a new US state.

Past weekend was the Dutch PACC contest and I decided to participate at the radio club with the group and call CQ in morse. I sat at the radio together with another (very experienced) operator and we worked together. He was (lots) better at getting callsigns from the noise but at the understandable callsigns I typed fast and together we got a nice number of contacts in the log.

After about two hours fatigue was setting in so someone else took over. As an experience in morse contesting this was really nice for me. I also did some other stuff, there is always something to repair during a contest. And lots and lots of cables. This hobby isn't 100% wireless!

Two things to improve for the next time if I want to do this again: bring my own headset and make sure it's comfortable for long use and bring my own audio splitter and extension cable.