ARRL DX SSB 2024

Setup

The SSB part of the ARRL DX Contest this weekend was a phone contest contacting DX stations only. I used the X6100 running 10W and 41-foot random wire out front window from Mountville.

Exchange

The exchange was:

  • Me: 59 <state> (PA, papa alpha)
  • Them: 59 <tx power>

Score

My raw score for my 42 contacts was 3 * 42 * 37 = 4662, but I’m sure some logs may be busted, so it’ll be less. I qualified as low power, limited antenna.

I logged directly into QRZ.com. I could take time to understand their entire callsign and then call back.

Logs I submitted:

START-OF-LOG: 2.0
CALLSIGN: KC3WWC
CONTEST: ARRL-DX-SSB
CREATED-BY: adif2cabrillo.com version 3.0.1
QSO: 14318 PH 2024-03-02 0331 KC3WWC        59  PA     VP5M          59  100    1
QSO: 14288 PH 2024-03-02 0416 KC3WWC        59  PA     V3O           59  1000   1
QSO:  7227 PH 2024-03-02 0438 KC3WWC        59  PA     KP4AA         59  1000   1
QSO:  7191 PH 2024-03-02 0455 KC3WWC        59  PA     EI7M          59  1000   1
QSO:  7181 PH 2024-03-02 0500 KC3WWC        59  PA     TM6P          59  1000   1
QSO: 14271 PH 2024-03-02 0609 KC3WWC        59  PA     EW5A          59  1000   1
QSO: 14264 PH 2024-03-02 0612 KC3WWC        59  PA     WP3C          59  100    1
QSO: 28379 PH 2024-03-02 1622 KC3WWC        59  PA     OM0R          59  1000   1
QSO: 28396 PH 2024-03-02 1645 KC3WWC        59  PA     OL8W          59  700    1
QSO: 28455 PH 2024-03-02 1707 KC3WWC        59  PA     SP8R          59  1000   1
QSO: 28499 PH 2024-03-02 1726 KC3WWC        59  PA     YT1X          59  1000   1
QSO: 28516 PH 2024-03-02 1728 KC3WWC        59  PA     IO5O          59  500    1
QSO: 28586 PH 2024-03-02 1735 KC3WWC        59  PA     TK4TH         59  500    1
QSO: 28582 PH 2024-03-02 1742 KC3WWC        59  PA     E70T          59  1000   1
QSO: 28589 PH 2024-03-02 1757 KC3WWC        59  PA     P40L          59  1000   1
QSO: 21280 PH 2024-03-02 1826 KC3WWC        59  PA     SP8R          59  1000   1
QSO: 21294 PH 2024-03-02 1830 KC3WWC        59  PA     II2S          59  500    1
QSO: 21298 PH 2024-03-02 1837 KC3WWC        59  PA     EW5A          59  1000   1
QSO: 21322 PH 2024-03-02 1843 KC3WWC        59  PA     II2Q          59  500    1
QSO: 21330 PH 2024-03-02 1850 KC3WWC        59  PA     SN2B          59  1000   1
QSO: 28649 PH 2024-03-02 2244 KC3WWC        59  PA     LT3E          59  1000   1
QSO: 21445 PH 2024-03-02 2318 KC3WWC        59  PA     P40L          59  1000   1
QSO: 21420 PH 2024-03-02 2322 KC3WWC        59  PA     8P5A          59  1000   1
QSO: 21345 PH 2024-03-02 2350 KC3WWC        59  PA     PJ5/SP9FIH    59  100    1
QSO: 21338 PH 2024-03-02 2352 KC3WWC        59  PA     ED8W          59  1000   1
QSO: 21290 PH 2024-03-02 2357 KC3WWC        59  PA     ZF1A          59  1000   1
QSO: 14237 PH 2024-03-03 0013 KC3WWC        59  PA     TM6M          59  1000   1
QSO: 14247 PH 2024-03-03 0020 KC3WWC        59  PA     9A1A          59  1000   1
QSO: 14258 PH 2024-03-03 0022 KC3WWC        59  PA     IO6T          59  500    1
QSO: 14258 PH 2024-03-03 0025 KC3WWC        59  PA     TI1T          59  1000   1
QSO: 14272 PH 2024-03-03 0028 KC3WWC        59  PA     LP1H          59  1000   1
QSO: 14284 PH 2024-03-03 0035 KC3WWC        59  PA     IO5O          59  500    1
QSO:  7194 PH 2024-03-03 0048 KC3WWC        59  PA     SP8R          59  1000   1
QSO:  7258 PH 2024-03-03 0101 KC3WWC        59  PA     J62K          59  1000   1
QSO:  7236 PH 2024-03-03 0241 KC3WWC        59  PA     NP4Z          59  73     1
QSO: 14330 PH 2024-03-03 0312 KC3WWC        59  PA     II2Q          59  500    1
QSO: 28308 PH 2024-03-03 1457 KC3WWC        59  PA     S55OO         59  1000   1
QSO: 28327 PH 2024-03-03 1511 KC3WWC        59  PA     9A7V          59  1000   1
QSO: 28367 PH 2024-03-03 1526 KC3WWC        59  PA     NP2J          59  1000   1
QSO: 28369 PH 2024-03-03 1532 KC3WWC        59  PA     SJ8R          59  1000   1
QSO: 21285 PH 2024-03-03 2332 KC3WWC        59  PA     HK1T          59  1000   1
QSO: 21338 PH 2024-03-03 2343 KC3WWC        59  PA     T42T          59  1000   1
END-OF-LOG: 2.0

Problems

I had some problems conveying my call over phone:

  • Stations heard my “3” as “2”
  • Stations don’t expect “WWC” (“whiskey whiskey charlie”), and hear it as “VWC” (“victor whiskey charlie”).

I made 42 valid contacts, and 4 were outside my privileges as general. I’m not accustomed to thinking about the boundaries in the SSB portion of the bands.

For my future reference, I noted voice ranges for general:

  • 3800-4000 khz
  • 7175-7300 khz
  • 14225-14350 khz
  • 21275-21450 khz
  • 28300-29700 khz

Question on Tuning SSB

During the contest, people were tuned all over the place and not aligned on 1 or 0.5 khz. I tried to align with them, but sometimes higher was easier to read, but does that shift my voice for them? RIT/XIT may have been the answer for longer contacts, but not for this quick stuff. A woman’s higher voice confounded me a bit as I tried to fine tune.

Conclusion

I had great fun yelling my callsign all weekend, and it’s the most I’ve ever used my microphone.

arrl  contest  ssb  dx 

Day of Radio

ARRL/FCC/ARCC in Harrisburg

KA3TKW and the 21 repeater group hosted a lunch with representatives from the ARRL, the FCC, and the ARCC.

POTA

I stopped at State Game Land 246 near Middletown to activate on 10m FT8/FT4.

I used 2 different antennas: - initially used Grabil whip fully extended, shorted coil, w/ tuner - 12.5m EFRW thrown into a tree Both antennas seemed to perform similarly. I was skipping far: lots of contacts came from Oregon, Washington, and I even got Alaska.

Clipperton DX

Later that day, I also contacted the Clipperton DX station, TX5S, on 40m via FT8

RTTY Round-Up

I participated in the RTTY Round-Up.

Trouble with fldigi/R1CBU

I screwed around lots trying to get fldigi talking to the radio. R1CBU software works great with wsjt-x, but fldigi and flrig completely failed to connect. It wouldn’t key the radio. Switching back to stock software on the radio worked fine with flrig, but where’s the fun in that.

For flrig, I could tell it that it was an older version of the radio (X5105?), and it would key and set frequency, but flrig wouldn’t read back the frequency when updated at the radio.

I ultimately got fldigi talking to R1CBU by using flcat with an xml file for G106.

Then I could “tune” power output following instructions in fldigi manual.

Working!

I started making some contacts on 10M and 15M. It’s much more like voice contacts: yelling back and forth on the same channel. I’m using macros and sticking to those for the contest. They’re on the 3rd page of macros in fldigi.

I’ve made at least a few contacts, so I’ll submit them to the contest

rtty  hf  arrl  contest  r1cbu  flrig  fldigi