Posts from — July 2007

As many of you know, I moved my hosting site. In doing so, I lost my blogroll of other ham radio blogs and listings of clubs.

Much of that is now restored. You can check it out in  the K9JY Blogroll. There are some really good clubs and ham radio blogs there.

If you know of more, let me know and I can add them in as well.

Scot, K9JY

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I love Field Day. It’s a great opportunity to go out there, set up something simple or elaborate, and practice sending messages (i.e., contesting) under extreme conditions — with radio and laptop.

Can’t get much better than that.

Here are some pics of Field Day from Bryan, WA7PRC — and thanks for the link.

These are pictures from the Machias Radio Group.

Have any Field Day Picture Links to share?

Scot, K9JY

What’s the best antenna to have for contesting? Well, in my book, it’s the one you currently have because if you don’t have an antenna, you can’t contest!

I admire those that can put up killer antenna farms to work the world, but the vast majority of hams can’t do that for all sorts of reasons.

But different antennas will do better in different contests than others and we should try and focus our efforts based upon the strengths of your antenna.

For example, it may be that you have a love affair with 160-meters and have that single antenna on your property. If it’s a killer 160-meter antenna with great beverages, I’d suggest operating every 160-meter contest and single band 160 on multi-band contests. Your antenna will put you in the best position to do well in the contest.

For a long time, all I had was a multi-band vertical for contesting. When deciding to be in a contest, I focused first on domestic contests. The reason for this was that a vertical would most often lose out to a beam in a DX contest, but a beam was not as effective in a domestic contest. This is because beams, if at the right height, only hear well in one direction and domestic contests require you to hear in many directions at once.

The other aspect of a multi-band vertical is that they tend to do very well on one band compared to other bands.

For example, one of the verticals I had was 33-feet high; a perfect height for operating 40-meters as a half-wave vertical with no power losses from matching systems. Forty meters was also a good band in relation to beams as not many hams have 40-meter beams.

So in a DX contest, I’d try and operate 40-meters as much as possible because my antenna worked as well as most others in the contest.

One of the things you should look at in deciding which contests and which bands to work is the type of antenna you have at your location. Each antenna type and installation has strengths and you should try and maximize that strength in a contest.

Scot, K9JY

Yesterday I wrote about having “non-contest” goals if you were just starting out contesting in ham radio. There were four reasons to have goals .

But, if there are reasons to have non-contest goals, then what non-goals should one have?

There are two areas of non-contest goals that make sense to me. The first is personal skill-set goals. The second is station goals.

Skill-set goals

Skill-set goals are about what you as an operator can improve upon or learn about during a contest. For example, you have never really listened to 80-meters all night to understand how propagation works on 80-meters when there is lots of activity on the band. How early can you work Europe? Asia? North America? South America?

Or perhaps you try and work everything in the contest long-path to determine what works and what doesn’t with that mode of propagation.

Another skill set area is to learn about different modes in ham radio. Want to test how well you understand RTTY and how your software program works in that mode? A RTTY contest is a great way to find out. Or improve you Morse code speed. Or increase the efficiency at which you work stations moving up and down a band.

Learning about different aspects of radio in a compressed time frame is a great thing to do as a goal for a contest.

Station goals

Another aspect of goal setting involves station goals. A contest is a great way to test your station while there is lots of activity — and competition to work people — on a band.

Want to test that new antenna you just put up? Try it out in a contest. Some new ancillary device? Try it in a contest. New station layout? A contest will quickly tell you what’s right and what’s not.

Or, in a different station aspect, you could have an objective to work DX on 80-meters to get you to DXCC.

Contests, in other words, isn’t just about contesting. Contests offer a great opportunity to improve your skills or test your station capabilities.

Contests are not to be missed.

Scot, K9JY

Most contesting looks like a gauntlet to beginning contesters. You have to know the contest operating hours, what all the rules are for the contest, know the exchange, work on your code speed, figure out propagation for the contest — and then compare your newbie self to all those big guns in the contesting world.

Then wonder how you will ever compete.

The answer to that is to have goals for your contest participation. A lot of contesters write about having goals for a contest, of course. But they write about goals for a certain number of contacts, points, or perhaps year-to-year comparisons for the contest.

That works, of course. But, for starting out in the new world of contesting, I’d suggest having goals in different areas outside of goals oriented to the results of the contest.

Here are four reasons to have goals for the contest that aren’t related to the results of the contest:

You define success for the contest. If you are just starting out, you cannot be a world wide champion in the largest contest on the planet. But you can win on your personal goals, no matter your situation.

Limited time for the contest. Contests, at most, are 48-hours long. Since there isn’t a lot of time, having goals around the contest will help keep you focused during that short time.

Defines your elevator speech. When someone — friend, ham or family — asks you what you are doing in the contest, your goal helps define your 30-second response. “I’ve got a new antenna and I want to see how it performs busting pile ups. This contest is the perfect way to test it.”

Removes feeling overwhelmed. Opening up the volume on your radio the first hour of CQ WW and it’s easy to be overwhelmed with your 100-watts and a vertical. Having goals helps stay out of the overwhelmed area and instead gets you moving on your goals for the contest.

Once you’ve done a fair amount of contesting, having goals about the contest results (500 QSO’s in 12-hours on 20-meters) makes sense. But starting out, we should have goals about what we’re trying to accomplish in the contest — either personal skills or station capabilities.

Scot, K9JY

After the move to Bluehost (where I am very happy so far with everything), I sat down today and put together a project plan to get the WriteLog User Site back up here at this hosting company.

It’s no small deal.

First, the content needs to be updated.

Second, the entire site infrastructure needs to be set up.

Third, the information needs to be tracked and moved over to the new site.

So today was important. Getting the plan together along with the next actions to take gets all this stuff out of my head and into a place with a list, a check off for the tasks, and a roadmap to get it all done.

And, by the way, let me know what information you’d like to see on the WriteLog user site. I can’t guarantee that I’ll get it there, but it’s better than shooting in the dark.

Shoot me an e-mail via the Contact K9JY page or write it in the comments.

Thanks…Scot, K9JY