AA8IA

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Posts Tagged CW

Ohio QSO Party 2010 – Summary

Aug 30

Posted by Mike in Contesting, QSO Parties | No Comments

(subliminal message – If you operated the OhQP this year, and especially if you were an Ohio station, please upload your logs to Logbook of the World (LOTW) and eQSL. Many people worked this contest in the hopes of getting a rare Ohio county confirmation. Do your part and upload your logs. It’s not difficult. If you want to know more about LOTW and eQSL, click on the link at the top of this page)

I put a tremendous amount of thought into OhQP 2010 operations from my home this year. That’s not to say that I put enough effort into optimizing my antenna system. I did not. However, I did manage to at least get the 80m dipole up in inverted-V fashion. It sure is a good thing, because I actually made more Qs on 80m than anywhere else.

80m was rocking, both on CW and SSB. Unfortunate for me is the fact that I didn’t take into account how important SSB operations would be if i wanted to reach as many stations as possible. My 80m Vee tuned fine on CW but would not tune on SSB. I could not resist the temptation to operate [at reduced power levels] on 80m SSB even though I couldn’t come anywhere close to tuning the SSB portion. I made quite a few 80m SSB Qs, all things considered. But, next year I will be sure to have an antenna that easily tunes on 80m CW and SSB. Even with my situation on 80m SSB, stations seemed to copy me without a problem.

40m was a bust band for me. Apparently I didn’t know when the right time was to get on 40m. I made some 40m CW QSOs, but I didn’t make any 40m SSB Qs. And I see that a lot of other Ohio stations made significantly higher numbers of Qs on 40m. So I was definitely doing something wrong there. There were RTTY contests going on, and 40m CW was a hard place to operate. I heard some CW mixed in with the RTTY, but in the cases where I did I tried to avoid making a contact. I wanted to be friendly to the RTTY contesting guys. Too bad there was a RTTY contest on the same day as the OhQP though. This did affect things.

20m was alright. On only operated CW on 20m. Not sure why I didn’t bother to seek out SSB contacts.

I made 1 QSO on 15m. 15m/10m were pretty much deader than a doornail.

  1. There were a ton of Ohio stations on the air. Kenny [K2KW] did an excellent job with PR for this event.
  2. Weather was beautiful in all of Ohio for the contest
  3. QRN was at a minimum [at least for me] in Ohio

    I did a lot of CQing. It was effective. The problem is that I obviously didn’t know when to quit. Well, I knew there were many times when I should quit, but I didn’t. At those times I either should have checked other bands or SSB, or I should have QSY’d to a fresh frequency. Failing to adjust when rates were really low was a fatal flaw for me.

    Another fatal flaw of mine was that I didn’t choose the right band for the right time in order to maximize my Qs on all the workable bands.

    I also failed to look for the mobiles until the very end. This meant that I didn’t get a chance to work any of the mobiles/rovers when they were moving around East Ohio. The exception is K8RYU — Ralph did a fantastic job and I was able to work 3 counties on 80m with him. The mobile ops are all fantastic. They can copy fast/slow, without the need for repeats. In the end I was able to pick up a couple of county mults from the mobiles. If I had been on the ball, I’d probably have been able to snag K8MR and KC8YJJ on one or more bands/modes while they were in BELM / CARR / HARR / COLU / TUSC.

    Lastly, I failed to think ahead regarding the significant amount of SSB activity that would be occurring. This is probably because I usually run CW-only and because I usually have a piss poor setup for SSB. As it turns out though, low power aside, I actually have a good SSB setup now. I definitely need to get the 80m Vee to work on 80m SSB.

    In the end, I’m a bit disappointed with myself. Failure to pay attention caused me to not get any Qs for most of Eastern Ohio. I heard COSH and TUSC, but they weren’t CQing when I heard them and I never managed to catch up with them when they were CQing. Not even sure if they did CQ.

    I had a great time this year. I’m sure it is my best ever OhQP score. But even before the contest was over I new I made too many fatal mistakes and that had I given proper forethought to things I could have increased my score a bit and gotten the close counties. I also know there were some errors in my logs. I guarantine it won’t be a prisitine log, which is going to hurt my score.

    I saw the 3830 reports of quite a few out-of-state stations that did a phenomenal job, including working various OH mobiles 10-15 times.

    Thanks to all of the Ohio and out-of-state stations that worked me.

    My Results


    Ohio QSO Party

    Call: AA8IA
    Operator(s): AA8IA
    Station: AA8IA

    Class: Single Op LP
    QTH: Toronto OH
    Operating Time (hrs): 12

    Summary:
    Band CW Qs Ph Qs
    --------------------
    80: 160 39
    40: 47 0
    20: 39 0
    15: 1 0
    10: 0 0
    --------------------
    Total: 247 39 CW Mults = 86 Ph Mults = 32 Total Score = 62,894

    What counties I did not work: ALLE , ASHT , BELM , BROW , CARR , COSH , DEFI , GREE , HARD , HARR , HIGH , HOCK , JACK , LAWR , MAHO , MARI , MIAM , MONR , MORG , MUSK , NOBL , PAUL , PERR , PIKE , PORT , STAR , TUSC , WYAN . 28 counties not worked! What the hell? Now, think about how many of those had mobile operations that I missed. I heard a station in BELM (probably mobile) but they were gone before I had a chance to throw out my call and find out their call. I heard [but did not work] COSH and MUSK.

    K9TM reports having not worked 8 counties. And out of those 8 counties he did not work, I worked 3 of them and heard 2 of them. That means that at the very least, there were operations in 85 of the 88 counties. So I missed at least 25 counties that I could have worked but didn’t.

    I worked 35 or 36 states. K9TM worked 47 states. So I wasn’t too far off. I didn’t do much on 40m or 20m. Had I put in more effort on CW/SSB on those bands, I probably could have picked up a few more states.

    I worked a few DX stations including IK2, G3, four DLs, HP9, OK2, and SP5.

    To sum it all up, I should have worked more 40m CW and I should have worked 40m SSB and 80m SSB. I should have made sure the Vee tuned on 80m SSB before the contest started and should have rectified that problem if it didn’t. I should have paid attention to the mobile routes / timelines so as to be able to catch some more mobiles in the “rare” counties.

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SSB Contesting – I’m not quite there yet

Aug 19

Posted by Mike in Contesting | No Comments

I rarely operate SSB in contests [or outside of contests]. There are many reasons for this. The bottom line is that for a very modest station (no amp, low wire antennas), a CW signal is likely to be copied better on the receiving end than an SSB signal. Plus it’s a lot more trouble to get the “best” audio levels on transmit for maximum effect on SSB.

A CW signal typically occupies around 200 hz of spectrum. Depending upon how fast or slow the keying, the occupied bandwidth varies. On the other hand, with most amateur radio equipment an SSB signal occupies around 2.7 khz (2700 hz) of RF spectrum, give or take a little depending upon whether you are using filtering on the transmit side to cut off the upper and/or lower ends of the audio spectrum.

If you have a 100 watt transmitter, more of your power is going to be used to produce a much narrower signal on CW versus SSB. The wider the RF signal, the more power you are going to need in order for that signal to reach the same distance.

For someone with good hearing, they can usually hear audio frequencies between about 300 – 3000 Hz. But there are certain areas within that audio spectrum where we hear better and where the audio is more intelligible on the receiving end under marginal conditions (weak signal, lots of QRM/QRN, etc.).

We all have differing voice ranges. The microphone we are using may not adequately pick up those audio frequencies that are most accentuated when we speak. The audio stages of the transmitter we are using may need to be tuned to produce the most power at the audio frequencies that are best heard on the receiving end under marginal conditions.

I have a stock microphone. I haven’t done any homework regarding the best audio settings in my FT-950 to tailor the transmit audio to my specific voice characteristics. A stock microphone usually doesn’t pick up the best of my voice characteristics. The stock hand microphone is inconvenient in a contesting environment because you have to pick it up and hold it in front of your mouth each time you speak, which means you do not have that hand free to operate the radio or type on the keyboard. It’s best to buy a high quality microphone with an element that can reproduce your voice well while at the same time accentuating those audio frequencies that are best for DXing/contesting and not accentuate those frequencies that are more difficult to hear on the receiving end. Ideally I’d have something like a Heil Pro Set (combination headphones and microphone) and a foot switch so that I can key up without using my hands and I can have good sounding receive audio while blocking out other localized noise in the room, etc. I actually have what I consider to be a great set of headphones already (Sennheiser HD-280 Professional), so I would likely want to get a good Heil boom mic / boom assembly / foot switch. Then I could change the audio settings on the FT-950 to respond most favorably to the audio it receives from the Heil Mic. This would allow for a nice audio response and the best “audio punch” to ensure I’m being heard as good as I can be heard on the receiving end.

If you don’t have your transmit audio optimized, you won’t drive your signal with much power. On my FT-100 with the stock microphone, it was all I could do to get 50-60 watts of RF out when I would speak into the microphone. And what I really want is to be able to get as much of that 100w of power out when I speak into the mic.

So for now, SSB contesting is not very good for me. CW is much more effective. I’ll do it, and I’ll probably do some SSB in the Ohio QSO Party on August 28th and will likely participate [for a while] in the NAQP SSB contest this coming weekend.

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WAE DX CW and QTCs — the sky is falling

Aug 16

Posted by Mike in Contesting | No Comments

I’ve been reading dialog on the CQ-Contest “reflector”. Reflector? Call it what it is, it’s a damned mailing list. The software running this list is the same software that has existed for ages [in internet years at least]. M A I L I N G L I S T

Ok, I’m done with that rant. Back to the topic. People — (a few NA contesters) are rambling on about exchanging QTCs, being requested to send QTCs by the EU guys, and possibly trialing a WAE CW whereby QTCs are both sent and received. You’d think the world was coming to the end. They are saying (1) that they don’t want to receive QTCs and (2) that they don’t want to be nagged to send QTCs. Some say they are in the contest just for fun and that being interrupted by an EU station who wants to know if they have QTCs is annoying and ruins their fun. Read the rules — the spirit of the contest involves QTCs. If you don’t want to send any, then don’t. But don’t bitch about being asked if you have any to send by an EU station.

To this I say:

  • If you don’t like sending and/or receiving QTCs or don’t like being nagged for them, don’t operate in the contest. There are 101 more productive ways to spend your weekend anyway.
  • NA isn’t putting on this contest — shouldn’t be our job to make up the rules, just to follow them.
  • Are you afraid that having to reliably copy QTCs would require you to up your skills? This must be it. There are some phenomenal NA contesters. Certainly they are a few who are up challenge, no?

I know what you’re thinking… Who the hell is this Mike guy? He’s running a low dipole and 100w and has been “contesting” for a few months — He sure has some nerve interjecting. Perhaps you’re right. But sit back and think about what I’m saying. I had enough difficulty figuring out how to send QTCs, especially when having to worry about whether the EU station would even be able to copy my weak station reliably enough. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to think about having to copy QTCs as well. You know, some of those guys are sending/receiving at 50+ wpm. I’d have to really up my game, and I’d be hard pressed to do it. BUT, I like the spirit of the contest — passing some sort of traffic instead of just the simple RST SERIAL.

Let’s not forget that sending/receiving QTCs is not a requirement. And if you are wanting to up your score, you certainly benefit from sending/receiving QTCs. If you’re in it just for fun and don’t care about a score, then simply don’t send/receive. But don’t complain about being asked for QTCs by an EU station.

I really liked the idea that by sending QTCs I could increase my points while at the same time I could help, in some small way, the EU stations to do the same. If they are game for receiving them [by far the more difficult of the two], then certainly I’m glad to oblige them. I am at the bottom of the pack as far as score. I’m competing against only myself. I operate in these contests to have fun, improve my code copy, and possibly get some additional LOTW confirmations.

The vast majority of contests require only a minimal exchange, no additional traffic to pass. If you don’t like the thought of sending/receiving QTCs, spend the WAE weekends with your family and have some fun outside of ham radio.

UPDATE: I just read a post on the CQ-Contest mailing list that sums it all up quite nicely. I won’t quote it. Read it here: http://lists.contesting.com/pipermail/cq-contest/2010-August/091329.html . I agree with this contester wholeheartedly.

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Worked All Europe DX Contest – CW (Aug 2010)

Aug 15

Posted by Mike in Contesting | No Comments

I first heard of this contest within the past month. I had no intention of working it. At the last minute I decided I would jump on and see what’s up. I had read about the passing of QTC traffic, but I didn’t plan on doing that. I was bored and figured it was a good chance to work some more Europeans.

From my perspective, this is a very active contest. I noticed that a large number of the EU participants were asking “QTC?” I’d just tell them no or nil. I then decided I’d check out the documentation for N1MM to see if I could figure out how to send some QTCs. I didn’t find anything useful. Then I was reading the eham.net forums and saw somebody post a question about sending QTCs using N1MM. KB3LIX gave a detailed rundown of how to send the QTCs. I did a few tests and then started tuning around listening for stations who were likely to ask for QTCs along with the basic QSO.

It was at this point that I realized that I just wasn’t getting good signals into EU for some reason. I don’t know if it was propogation in general or my soggy antennas (from storms this weekend). I was certainly hearing a lot of EU stations well enough to make a contact, but I just didn’t think they would be hearing me well enough to want me to send them any QTCs. Surprisingly, a lot of them were asking.

I still have plenty of QTCs to pass to EUs. But I really don’t want to send 10 QTCs to some EU station and then force them to have to ask for re-sends because of my weak signal. And, in the off chance that they need a re-send, I’m likely to freeze up. In fact, this happened more than once. The last time I had said I was sending 5 QTCs. After the first one the EU station asked for a re-send. I sat there staring at the keyboard, my mind racing with thoughts of what keystrokes I was supposed to hit in order to re-send the current QTC. My mind went blank. (it was ALT-ENTER for the record). Eventually I sent back to the EU station “sri sri nil”. He sent a “tu 73,” which was very gracious considering I made him go through all of that with no gain. What an idiot I am.

I had been sticking to sending only 2 or 3, even though I had plenty in my queue to send 10. I did this because I figured the less I have to send, the less likely there will be a problem.

Sunday comes along. I fire up the radio. I look for stations. All the ones I am hearing are either too weak and they aren’t asking for QTCs, or they are stations I’ve already worked who asked for QTCs the first time I worked them and I declined.

I read where it is perfectly fine to re-establish contact with the station to send QTCs later. One person said to simply make another QSO (a dupe) and then send the QTCs. One of the EU guys on the forum responded indicating that you could just simply establish contact and state that you have QTCs from the onset…. no need to have another dupe. No? Not sure of an easy way around that, at least with N1MM.

Still some confusion here, as well as my cold feet when it comes to trying to send QTCs. I’d really feel much more confident if I knew that I had a good signal. That’s silly, I know. But it definitely affects my performance when my weak signal is always in the back of my mind.

I really like the idea of QTCs… passing additional traffic during a QSO. This is much more difficult for the receiving station in my opinion. In this case that would be the EU guys. I’m thoroughly impressed that the vast majority of the time they don’t ask for repeats, even with 10 QTCs at a time being sent to them. I have to wonder how many of the American ops could perform equally as well if they were accepting QTCs. I know I’d be asking for a lot of repeats. The EU guys are simply very talented and very efficient. They obviously don’t have a problem trying to pass as much traffic as possible even under marginal conditions. My hats off to them.

I’m hoping to jump back on very shortly to try and give away a few more QTCs.

My apologies to IR2C, who had to deal with my inability to pass QTCs under pressure. I said I’d send 5, and after the first one he asked for a repeat and I gave up and said sri. Also my apologies to DL1IAO – I said I’d send 2, accidentally hit CTRL-Z after the first one instead of just hitting enter, and everything stopped. I stumbled. I said sri. He sent back confirmation of 1/1 and moved on. Thanks to S59ABC, who accepted multiple QTCs from me on 40m and 20m with no requests for repeats. I was impressed. I should have sent them 10 and be done with it, but I sent a few each time. OQ5M was weak to me, and I figured I must have been much weaker to him. Nevertheless, OQ5M asked for QTCs – I sent 5, and he required no repeats.

I need a 20m beam for this contest… or at least something directional. I suppose even a vertical for 20m would improve things over my low-slung dipole.

I’ll append my score to this post once I’m finished and have a summary. Great contest. Great ops. My hats off to all of the EU ops. Very professional and courteous exchanges.

ADDENDUM: I got on the air for the last 2-3 hours. I was glad I did. I made a few more Qs and got the nerve to start unloading my QTCs. I got to send two batches of 10 and then a few smaller batches. I also got to reconnect with IR2C and was able to give him 10 QTCs that I had initially tried to do [but failed] yesterday.

20m seemed to be in much better shape this afternoon. Much more fun.

My Results

WAE DX Contest, CW

Call: AA8IA
Operator(s): AA8IA
Station: AA8IA

Class: Single Op LP
QTH: Toronto Ohio
Operating Time (hrs): 7.5

Summary:
Band QSOs QTCs Mults
-------------------------
80: 0 0 0
40: 5 3 12
20: 77 84 48
15: 5 0 6
10: 0 0 0
-------------------------
Total: 87 87 66 Total Score = 11,484

Club: Mad River Radio Club

Comments:

First time working WAE. The QTC thing is an interesting concept. Knowing how poor my sig is compared to a contest station's sig, those EU ops did a fantastic job copying my QTCs. Took me a while to figure out what to do with N1MM and sending QTCs -- I found some help on the eham.net forums.

I was skeptical about offering QTCs to the EUs because I figured they'd end up having to ask for many repeats, get frustrated with me, and then nil the whole event. I guess I didn't give them enough credit. They were all patient and courteous during all of my exchanges, and I appreciate their efforts. In the
end I was able to unload nearly all my QTCs and was happy to do so. I wasn't even going to get back on in the last three hours except I felt I needed to try and overcome my fear of going through the QTC process - and I felt I had to seek out those EU guys who I initially tried to give QTCs to and then froze up. I
actually found IR2C and one other one near the end and passed a full ten to each. That made me feel better about my previous tries with them. Really strange how I'm so afraid of failure when it comes to contesting.

Thanks to the EU guys for some great fun. I really enjoyed myself. Hopefully next year I'll have a little more gain and directivity towards EU.

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CQ WW WPX (CW)

May 30

Posted by Mike in Contesting | 1 Comment

Just in the nick of time, and with the help of the family, I got the shack table, equipment, computer, etc. set up.

So far I’ve been able to tune up and work stations on 80m, 40m, 20m, 15m and 10m. The Alpha-Delta DX-EE is performing far better than any previous wire I had, even on 80m. And, remember that the DX-EE is a 42-foot parallel dipole. On 40m it has coils and it shortened.

The first hundred contacts were made using a paddle and copying exclusively by ear. On Saturday I built a CW keying interface that runs off the parallel port. I also snagged CWGET, which is a great code copier. I set up N1MM to use the CW keyer interface and it worked flawlessly, although I am not too familiar with using N1MM just yet….been a few years. CWGet is only used to verify what I’ve already heard. I do not need to rely upon it to copy CW, but it certainly helps to have it available.

I was not using any DX Cluster spotting. It would be very useful, but I am not submitting my logs in the assisted category and thus cannot use a cluster.

As of now, I’ve made about 206 contacts. I wonder how many will be invalid. Hopefully not too many.

Station setup currently is:

Yeasu FT-100 (running 100w)
LDG AT100Pro tuner
Alpha Delta DX-EE 40-10m parallel dipole
Computer
Signalink USB interface
Parallel port CW keying interface
CAT control cable
N1MM logger for contest logging (making use of CAT control and CW keying interface)
CWGet (making use of Signalink USB for sound input)
HRD+DM780 (for digital modes and casual logging)

I have no complaints. Everything came together at the last minute and I’ve had a great time working the WPX. Not sure if I’ll fire up the station for any more contacts today. It is family day, so I probably won’t.

I worked a handful of stations on 3 bands and I think one station on 4 bands (not sure about that without looking at the logs).

i definitely enjoy working CW contests more than SSB/digital. The WPX sure was fun.

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I Love CW

May 24

Posted by Mike in Posts | No Comments

A little after midnight I was tuning 40m CW portion on my Yaesu FT-100 and Alpha Delta DX-EE (40-10m parallel dipole, shortened on 40m). Given that this dipole isn’t a full size half wavelength on 40m, you’d think it wouldn’t hear very well and you’d think it wasn’t going to do much good on transmit. It has been surprising me all week though.

Ok, I’ll continue… I was tuning around 7000-7025 and came across 8P6ER on 7001.1. His signal was S9. I heard him in a QSO with another ham. I listened for another 10 minutes as he ran through some more contacts. The whole time, when Gary would throw out a CQ, he’d have a pileup coming back to him. I’m sure I was hearing nearly a dozen of them myself.

After one of his CQs I threw out my call along with the rest of the peanut gallery. No joy. I did it a second time, nothing. After another minute or two Gary CQ’d again. I heard stations trying to get back to him and I nailed the paddles on my MFJ keyer. Lo and behold, I hear .- .- —.. ..–.. (translated AA8?), from Gary. I nearly fell out of my chair. I felt like a kid in the candy store.

At that very moment everything on the radio was sounding mysterious – My 300 hz CW filter was kicked in and the attenuator was on to cut down on the nighttime noise. Hearing Gary’s booming CW coming through the speaker (directed at me) was exciting. It was an awesome feeling, and one I hadn’t felt since 1991 when I CQ’d on 10 meters and heard XE1MMJ (Maria) come back to me for my first QSO.

I finished the contact with Gary, logged it, and am now sitting back listening to dead air, with the hollowed out sound of a CW filter kicked in.

What made Gary come back to me instead of the dozen(s) of others calling him? I’m pretty sure it had nothing to do with a strong signal. All I know is that it never would have happened on SSB.

Who says CW is dead? Certainly not me. And, there are obviously still some really good folks hanging out on CW who are willing to give the underdog a chance.

Thanks, Gary, for making me feel like a kid again!

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Manchester Mineira All Americas Contest

May 16

Posted by Mike in Contesting | No Comments

I was bored, a lot of people were in Dayton, and this weekend was a good weekend to play in a contest.

The MMAA is a CW-only contest on 80m / 40m / 20m / 15m /10m. It is a 32-hour contest, of which I worked 5 hours off and on. Participants are those living in South America and North America. I worked a few stations on 15m, most on 20m, and 2 on 40m.

It was fun and relaxing. I worked 18 stations, two of them on two different bands. Score was somehere around 370. Yeah I know, pretty damned weak. A real contester would do 300K+ in this contest. So I guess I’m about 1/100th of what a real contester is.

Next year I should make many more contacts since I’ll have a better antenna system. And, supposedly the MMAA will turn into a 5-continent contest starting next year.

It was nice to brush up on my CW. I’ll do more CW contests since it’ll always be my favorite mode. No matter how you slice it, it all comes down to Morse Code. If you haven’t learned CW, you’re losing out. No doubt about it.

Thanks to the CWJF Group for putting on this nice contest. It was a pleasure working many new SA stations.

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HF Station back on the air

May 2

Posted by Mike in Antennas | No Comments

Although I’m still working on a decision regarding other antennas for HF, I decided last week to string up a dipole with the help of a friend. It is a 40m diapole in a V configuration. However, it’s essentially a horizontal V because that is my only option at present.

I dragged all of my equipment out of the mothballs and managed to get it all hooked up in a very disorganized way. I bought a Signalink USB from DX Engineering to use for digital modes. So I’m currently using a 20-amp PS, a Yaesu FT-100, the aforementioned dipole and Signalink USB, and an LDG AT-100Pro tuner.

This weekend a few QSO parties were going on including the 7th Call Area QSO Party. I made a single CW contact, almost a dozen SSB contacts, and a few PSK31 contacts.

Jay, N8SJS, encouraged me to get into the digital mode action on HF, which is why I ended up getting the Signalink USB. We hunted down signals this weekend and I made a few more PSK31 contacts and a DominoEX contact. With the help of the PSKReporter website I was able to determine that others were hearing me on the various bands on PSK. This is really handy. Jay conned me into downloading and installing Ham Radio Deluxe, which I was familar with using a few years back. This is a great program for operating the digital modes and has just about every feature known to man in it. It’s a large program suite and taxes a computer a bit, but my laptop handles it with no problem.

I ended up hearing John, AC8JB, pick off somebody on PSK right before I was getting ready to. It was cool to hear another local [he's from Wellsville] working HF.

Although I realize the pattern of this dipole and its efficiency on the various bands is very unpredictable, it tunes up all the bands I wanted to work with no problems using the LDG tuner and I am able to make contacts. This is great, because now I don’t feel so much pressure to make a decision on other more expensive, cumbersome antennas. I can take my time thinking about what to get next.

I need to get some new coax. I’m using garbage RG8X that is at least 10 years old for HF. I have LMR-400 here and i may put that on. I need to put a coax choke in place to try and curb some RF from coming down into the shack. I also need to get everything set up on a desk and get the station grounded as best as possible.

I have a USB-to-Serial converter ordered so that i can use my serial CAT interface on the laptop [which lakes a bonafide serial port as we all know them]. This will make using HRD / DM-780 that much nicer.

Although thunderstorms were predicted all weekend, we had no T-storms and only had rain. This was great. I really enjoyed this weekend on HF and hope that by next weekend I’ll even have more fun.

Some good sites to monitor DX and band conditions:

DX Summit
PSKReporter
vhfdx.info

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