Contesting

I recently participated in the 2010 NM QSO Party. This is the second year I've entered. This year the organizer changed the entry categories so if you have a driver you are in the multi-op category. My wife, K5AKS, drove so we multi-op'ed.

The QSO party started at 8:00 am MST so we drove over from Midland planning to arrive in NM by the start time. Unfortunately we ran into some thick fog on the way over so we got a late start. The first QSO was in the log at 8:39 am MST.

We had a great time covering 10 counties on the way to Taos. We arrived in Taos around 4:30 pm, which was near the start of the Super Bowl. In total we made 340 QSO's with 46 multipliers. With the addition of 50,000 bonus points for activating 10 counties with 15 QSO's or more our claimed score is 112,192 points. Not bad! That's about 2-1/2 times our score from last year. Of course, those bonus points really helped!

As always, I used CQ/X de NO5W for logging. However, this is the first time I've remembered to set up the GPS log so each QSO is recorded with the latitude and longitude of the location of the QSO. On my way home I started wondering if I could set up the GPS log in a KML file to display each QSO on Google Maps. I did some searching and found a program to convert a CSV file to KML format. After some gymnastics with Excel I had the GPS log in a format suitable for the conversion program. I was able to insert that KML file into a county map overlay KML created by CQ/X and, voila, my log was on Google Maps!

NO5W has now added that capability to CQ/X (as of patch 177-06) so I can skip the reformatting step and go straight from GPS log to KML file. That's a really nice new feature in CQ/X.

I'm looking forward to seeing the QSO party results which should be available around May 1.

This past weekend I participated in the NM QSO Party as an in-state mobile. K5AKS (my wife) and I drove over to NM on Saturday morning. Since the QSO party didn't start until 10:00 a.m. MST it was easy to get into NM from TX without having to head out too early.

We arrived in Hobbs about 30 minutes before the start of the QSO party. I rigged up my laptop, keyer, GPS, etc to get ready. The first problem I had was getting the GPS going. I use a Garmin GPS 18 USB. The GPS 18 USB uses a propriety format so to be able to use it with my logging program, CQ/X by NO5W, I have to use a Garmin program called Spanner. However, Spanner did not seem to be passing the data to the virtual com port I had set up. So, as a fallback I connected the GPS I normally use for APRS. It seemed to be working so I was in business.

I was a few minutes late starting the contest by the time I got the GPS going. Then the logging program froze. After about an hour battling that problem I finally figured out I had an RF problem causing the logging program to lock up. I had added a second antenna to my truck. In addition to my High Sierra HS-1500 screwdriver type antenna I had installed my Texas Bugcatcher antenna to give me the ability to quickly switch bands. In hindsight, the serial cable running to the GPS was picking up some RF from the bugcatcher coax. I quit using the bugcatcher and worked the contest with the screwdriver antenna and didn't have any more problems.

In total we drove through ten New Mexico counties. The route covered about 630 miles from Midland to Santa Fe. I finished with 259 QSO's and 47 mulitipliers. Of the 47 multipliers I only worked four NM counties.

The RTTY roundup was fun, as usual. We had four participants from Midland...myself, W5AJ, K5NAA, and WA5PFJ.

I finished with 667 QSO's and 72 multipliers for a claimed score of 48,024 points. The bulk of those were on 20m but I had 119 on 15m and even one QSO on 10m! I managed to work all the states so that should give me a jump start on the Triple Play award. Hopefully there will be lots of folks uploading their logs to the LOTW. I've already uploaded mine and as of 8:00 pm I already have 29 confirmations toward the Triple Play award.

The next operating event I'll be participating in is the NM QSO Party.

The ARRL RTTY Roundup is this weekend.The NCCC sponsored a practice run tonight from 0230Z - 0300Z.  I got in and made a few contacts on 40m to check if N1MM is set up correctly.  Everything looks good.


Tomorrow I will put up a dipole for 80m.  Tonight most of the activity was on 80m and my Carolina Windom just doesn't work on 80m without a tuner. There will be another practice run tomorrow night so I'll check out the 80m dipole then.


Hopefully I'll get a good start on the ARRL's Triple Play award!