Many of our readers have probably heard about Joe Taylor’s (K1JT) WSJT family of protocols. As a result, I decided to create a batch of QSL card mailings to try to confirm the needed QSOs. It would be wonderful if all Hams used the online QSL’ing services (LoTW and eQSL) to confirm QSOs but this is far from the case.
#N1mm logger software willnot open but gets error message plus#
The combination of all of the new QSO’s made during the three contests I’ve participated in over the last few months plus the enhanced award tracking features in DXLab resulted in a large number of QSOs that needed to be confirmed. DXLab includes a very sophisticated set of features for DX’ing and award tracking. I recently switched to the DXLab Suite of logging and DX’ing programs to facilitate the tracking, QSL’ing and application tasks associated with these and other awards. These awards require QSOs to be confirmed using a combination of Logbook of the World (LoTW), QSL Cards, and some via eQSL (AG).
A Worked All Continents Award via EME (ie “Moon-bounce”).A CQ WPX Award of Excellence (A lifetime achievement award requiring many confirmed prefixes via all modes, continents and bands).An RSGB IOTA Award (100 Islands confirmed).A CQ Worked All Zones Award (confirmed contacts in all 40 CQ Zones).A CW DXCC Award (this would complete a DXCC “triple play”, 100 countries on SSB, CW, and Digital).A 5-Band DXCC Award (100 countries confirmed on all 5 non-WARC bands 80m – 10m).To these ends, I am working towards a variety of operating awards including: QSL’ing is also an important part of qualifying for operating awards which help to hone an operator’s skills as well as encouraging test and enhancement of your station. QSL’ing has often been referred to as the “Final Courtesy of a QSO” and its certainly a lot of fun to send and receive QSL cards from friends and acquaintances that you’ve made on the air from around the world. The other lesson learned is to use the voice recording capabilities of N1MM for my next SSB contest – after 6 hours of repeating my exchange, I had nearly lost my voice!Īll in all this was a great contest and I would recommend it to any new operator.
Those states are difficult to work on the higher bands and represent quite a few multipliers. I could have improved my score by moving to 40m toward the end of the contest and trying to work the closer in states in Areas 1, 2, and 3. Preliminary results are available and I had the top score in Area 1 and the 3rd single op participant overall! I had the most QSOs of any operator – but not as many multipliers. This has given me the confidence to operate SSB as K2K for the 13 Colonies Event the week of July 4th – I can’t wait!!īy the end of the contest, I had 246 contacts for a score of 11736. I continued to work the pileup for the rest of the contest – almost 6 hours and had a great time! The operators in this contest were very friendly and encouraging. After a few minutes, I started to get a constant flow of callers, which soon became a pileup! After some initial adjustment, I started to relax and enjoy myself and was able to manage the pileup. After determining that search and pounce was not helping my score, I found a frequency and started to run. I started out on 15m but soon moved to 20m. This took some getting used to, but by the end of the contest, it became second nature. But for SSB, you need to listen, understand, and type in everything – while giving out your own exchange. to get the exchange in the log, all you need to do is click on the words/numbers. The exchange had 4 pieces of information – Callsign, Name, State, and Year Licensed. With N1MM in a RTTY contest. In this contest, multipliers are US States and Canadian Provinces, and if you are a rookie, you get 2 points for working other rookies and 1 point for any other contest. I started out in search and pounce mode, trying to find rookies and multipliers on the band.
I thought the Rookie Roundup, on April 21, would be a great introduction to SSB contesting. I have operated seriously in several RTTY contests this year, but have been a little nervous about a serious SSB contest attempt because I don’t have much experience with SSB contacts, except for casually working DXpeditions, and working a pileup or two in Bora Bora with lots of help from Elmer AB1OC. A rookie is any operator who was first licensed in the past 3 years.
In addition to Rookies, experienced operators are encouraged to be “Elmers” and host new operators, or they can help by just making contacts with the Rookies. These 6 hour contests are a great opportunity for new operators to get started in contesting. Three times a year, the ARRL hosts the Rookie Roundup, in April for SSB, in August for RTTY, and in December for CW.
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