K5WW’s blog

Oh my dog…

K5WW — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 05:05:10 +0000

A 19 hour delay??? And the ARRL DX SSB contest isn’t even over!!

Things are getting better every day…

Update, March 4, 2012:

Ugh…

TU2T QSL received

K5WW — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 04:54:15 +0000

My 227th DXCC entity was confirmed today, courtesy of I2YSB and his OQRS: TU2T, from the Ivory Coast.

Thanks to everyone involved!

ZD7VC QSL received

K5WW — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 05:24:30 +0000

Bruce ZD7VC on St. Helena Island confirmed DXCC # 226 in my log!

TU Bruce!

Hohoho!

K5WW — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 00:01:13 +0000

What? Why not?????

K5WW — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:34:12 +0000

I received this QSL card for V31BD today.

But what if I really, REALLY want to???

Some people…

DXCC #223 confirmed!

K5WW — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 19:03:50 +0000

I received a beautiful folded 3D2R QSL card today! This was a brand new DXCC in my log. A million thanks to Hrane YT1AD and his team for putting Rotuma Island on the air; and processing the QSLs so fast!

3D2R QSL

7 QSOs on 4 bands in 3 modes (the 7th QSO is listed on a second, traditional size QSL card). Not bad! Thank you all!

10 Meter RTTY Contest

K5WW — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 00:34:11 +0000

This was a new contest for this year. I only had 3 hours to participate, from 2100Z until 2400Z. The first two hours were big fun! It got boring the last hour, as we approached sunset and the East Coast was already in darkness.

I was hoping this would be fun, and it was BIG FUN! Here’s what I saw when I fired up N1MM Logger, around 2000Z:

: 10 Meter RTTY Contest bandmap

Crazy! I haven’t seen this many spots on 10 meters RTTY in, well… I can’t remember! Too bad I could only get started 3 hours later.

Participation was very high. Thanks to Don AA5AU and Ed W0YK for organizing this one. As far as I’m concerned it was a big, instant hit!

2011 TARA RTTY Mêlée

K5WW — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 00:18:09 +0000

I didn’t have a lot of time to play in this one, only 7 hours or so. I scored better than last year, and the year before that. But not better than in 2008, when I logged 263 QSOs, so that’s a bit of a disappointment. I must have been up for a full 24 hours back then!

TARA RTTY Melee 2009-2010-2011

10 and 15 didn’t behave well, here. Up and down, open and closed. Better luck next time…

Slow, slow, slow…

K5WW — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 05:21:01 +0000

If you use the Logbook of The World as much as I do then you must have noticed how slow it’s become, recently. For most of November, really. I really started seeing it after I worked BX5AA and BD4CQ, both new DXCCs in my log, and I was desperately waiting for that LoTW confirmation. That took days to receive! What are they using there nowadays, Commodore 64s?? Hey guys, you might want to upgrade to the new C-64, available now; it comes with a 3.3 GHz CPU!

Anyway. They didn’t say much about what caused the backlog (can we call it BACKlog of The World now???). The only reason I remember seeing on the News and Notes page was that the CQWW and Sweeps logs didn’t make things easier:

Hey, I understand: shid happens. And it comes with a very wise bit of advise: “if you have already uploaded a log there is no reason to upload again“. Makes sense, why upload more to an already overloaded system? So we wait, patiently.

There were a few more updates, while they frantically tried to fix the problem:

An “anomalous series of events”…. Ooh, sounds like a case for Fox Mulder! And again, the same words to the wise: if you’ve already uploaded, don’t upload again!

So another week went by, and look, good news!

Fantastic! They are making progress – only 14 hours of processing time left!!!

But, erm… the good news didn’t last long, though. Here’s what they said on the 28th:

You caught up, but now there’s a 20 hour delay? What??? I must have a problem with math! But… as long as you’re making progress…

…

Wow, what? “Progress”??? Here’s what’s in the News section today:

A 22 hour processing delay! With the 160 contest and 2 RTTY contests this weekend, plus the ARRL 10 Meter Contest the weekend after that… I don’t think this is going in the right direction!

Worse: what’s with the “please upload it again” statement, all of a sudden? Big Bad LoTW ate your logs??? Seriously, what happened to some people’s logs? Did they just disappear? They may have: I just uploaded all my November QSOs again, and sure enough, I got several matches that I didn’t get earlier.

Not good guys, really not good…

So what else happened in November?

K5WW — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:51:42 +0000

Not a whole lot. Well, actually: quite a bit, but not much when it comes to amateur radio. Towards the start of the month I spent a little over 1,000 miles on the road. And towards the end of the month I was “down” by a very painful tooth. I eventually had to have that sucker removed…

Still, in between the many hours on the road and the dentist chair I did manage to work a few new ones. I made another QSO with V55A in Namibia in RTTY on November 1, a new DXCC on 20.

The competition for ZK2X on Niue Island was fierce, but that same day I managed to log my second phone QSO with ZK2X: ZK2X 1 Nov 2011 SSB 12m 2315Z. It’s a good thing I managed to have him correct my call!

I got TU2T in Ivory Coast on 3 bands and 3 modes, again a brand new DXCC. This recording is of the first QSO, on 15 meters. Not easy! Click to play. But yeah, everybody is still 59!

One guy I really liked working every time is Wim PJ4J. Wim is a fellow Belgian (though I don’t think we ever met there) and with a last name like his he just HAS to be a great “ham” When Bonaire gained seperate DXCC status there were quite a few stations on the air from the island; but the piles were so big that I only made a handful of QSOs back then. Thanks to Wim I got Bonaire in the log many more times now. Here’s a short QSO I had with Wim on 10 meters: PJ4J. Bedankt, waarde landgenoot! And thanks for uploading your logs to the LoTW, all confirmed!

Then, on the night of the 7th came the surprise of a lifetime, something I thought I’d never be able to put in the log with my simple wire antenna: BX5AA in Taiwan! I had been listening to 10 meters RTTY for a few hours, while I was doing some paperwork. I had stopped paying attention to the radio after a while, and hadn’t tuned the dial in at least an hour. Then, all of a sudden there’s a signal. I looked at the screen, saw Jimmy’s call, fired up MMTTY, and bam! – in the log!

: Jimmy BX5AA

Thanks for the new DXCC in my log, and for uploading your log to the LoTW, Jimmy, CUL!

On the 13th and 18th I worked ZD8F on 15, 20 and 17, all RTTY. Those were my first RTTY QSOs with Ascension Island, and all have been confirmed via the LoTW already - thanks guys!

I think that about wraps it up, for November. I’m looking forward to the TARA RTTY Mêlée and the 10 Meter RTTY Contest on December 3rd and 4th. Forty-eight hours of RTTY, yay!