PODXS070 Three-Day Weekend Contest kicked off on Thursday night. I made 8 contacts on 40m pretty early. Some of my contacts were bonus stations. It ultimately got overwhelming with at least 2 other digital contests going at the same time.
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.
CQ WPX RTTY Contest
I did the CQ WPX RTTY contest over the weekend. RTTY is fun and more interactive than FT digital modes.
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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