Dx

The new 107-ft (32.6m) EFRW in the backyard is doing OK, and I’m getting pretty lucky with low power on 10M FT8.

• Japan (10500 km): 5W, 2025-02-10 2245 UTC
• Norfolk Island (14000 km): 2W, 2025-02-11 2238 UTC

The 40m band was hot at 5:30am EDT. I got:

• Trinidad and Tobago
• Dominican Republic
• mostly eastern US otherwise

Switched up to 15m to get Finland, and I grabbed 1 local contact on 6m. I’ve accumulated 1800 contacts on QRZ, 1489 are confirmed, across 79 countries.

On the good old 12.5m EFRW, I’m trying 10m FT8 this morning. It’s going nowhere. 15m is much better.

Chasing Hawaii

I have ham-alert for anyone in PA, NJ, or MD spotting the Hawaii DXCC. I’ve been chasing Hawaii around over to 17m and other bands as they pop up, but I didn’t seem them much. It’s the last state I need of the 50.

10m is busy here in mid-afternoon, and I’m reaching south america on 5w. I got Suriname and Cayman Islands on 5w. then 10m maybe died again.

Pitcairn Island DXpedition

I just got the VP6G DXpedetion on 5w on FT8 on 28.0785MHz. That’s my first “OC”! I don’t know why they were shifted, but I saw it on the waterfall on my X6100, so checked it out.

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.

I assembled a new 71-ft (21.56m) EFRW and strung it up at Emily’s. It’s 5-6ft off the ground. I give it a 17-ft (5.2m) counterpoise and a 9:1 unun as usual. 2:30pm EST, 1W into it gets me midwest to a little bit of Europe on 10m. I’m not making many contacts, so I bumped up to 5W.

The antenna tunes on 40m too just fine. I’m getting a few more contacts there.

As a new strategy, I’m aiming for ALC around 1.0, instead of just below any movement. This allows me to not touch the power slider in WSJT-X quite so much.

I found the QRZ awards tab on the logbook, and applied for awards for which I’ve qualified. They now show on my profile.

I was using the horizontal dipole from the RTL-SDR v3 kit, fully-extended. I saw some good gray-line propagation into Asia.

• China
  • 17605khz in Indonesian
  • 17530khz in Vietnamese
• Taiwan
  • 15970khz Chinese
  • 15340khz Chinese
• Australia
  • 15460 Japanese and English - Reach Beyond Australia (HCJB)
• Philipines
  • 15250khz Chinese - Voice of America
• Cuba
  • 15140khz

I heard around 31m band (9700khz):

• Romania
• Cairo
• France
• Turkye

Also:

• 11620khz Romania
• 11850khz Kuwait
• 13590 Algeria
• 13790 Algeria

I used the fully-extended, large dipole kit and the RTL-SDR to successfully receive lots of 40m signals. It may have been especially busy, since it was Labor Day in the US and Canada. I found FT8 (40m and elsewhere) signals from St Lucia, Slovinia, South America, Cuba, and a little FT4 (40m).

I also found some BPSK31, RTTY/45, and still unidentified digital signals.