My Sunday Real Time Contest Adventure!

 

 

 

Sunday was my day to get some chores done and then sit down at the radio/PC to put in about two hours in the Real Time Contest. I had taken part in this relatively new contest in the past and had a great time.

The exchange is your report, serial number, and grid square. Another great feature of this contest is that you are allowed to self-spot, which is a real bonus for a small gun like me!

I sat down, thinking I had just two hours left in the contest. However, between the time change and forgetting to change a few clocks in the shack, my two hours quickly turned into one. And from there, things went downhill!

When I set up the contest in N1MM, I entered my FULL grid square, FN76nb. Not sure why! My first contact must have thought I was a poor op because he had no idea what I was sending him. On top of that, I had forgotten to include the 599 report. It might not sound like a big deal, but when the other station is expecting the exchange in a certain order, it can throw things off.

After the first couple of contacts, I clued in and made the necessary changes. BUT, in a CW contest, 599 is sent as 5NN. Well, once again, I'm not sure why, but I had entered 599 instead of 5NN. So, on my next contact, I sent two number 9s along with my full grid square!

Back I went into the settings and changed 599 to 5NN and my grid square to just FN76. All good to go, I thought!

Well, I sent the exchange, and after all those changes, something still didn't sound right. After the third attempt, I realized there was a backslash in the exchange! Back into the settings AGAIN to make another correction. Not sure how that appeared. 

Finally, the exchange was correct, and I had about six contacts in the log. I was feeling pretty good until I remembered something else. In this contest, you have to be logged into the Contest Online Scoreboard. If you aren't logged in, your score won't count!

So, I tried to log in, but for some reason, my PC wouldn't auto-fill the password. I looked up the password, only to discover it wasn't correct. Another ten minutes of fooling around, and I finally managed to get logged in. Once again, I was good to go!

One of the features of this contest is that you can self-spot yourself on the cluster. For me, this is great because it gets my call out there and hopefully brings some contacts my way while I'm calling CQ TEST.

You have to remember that I never run assisted, always unassisted, so I hardly ever use a cluster. Anyway, I have self-spotted before in contests that allow it.

N1MM didn't seem to be behaving as it should when it came to self-spotting. I kept hitting ALT+P, then checking the RBN (Reverse Beacon Network), but nothing was showing up.

Then I realized I had to log into the cluster first. AGAIN, the password was wrong, and more time was wasted while I sorted that out.

Finally, I made another contact, and it was time to self-spot and hopefully get some contacts going. I hit ALT+P, but nothing happened. I tried it a few more times, but I still didn't see my call on the cluster.

Then it dawned on me. I needed to put my own call sign into the N1MM contact window before hitting ALT+P. It seems N1MM was remembering the last station I had worked and was spotting that station rather than me on my frequency!

By this point, the contest had only an hour left, not the two hours I had originally planned. Between the time change, the incorrect exchanges, the passwords, and the self-spotting confusion, I had managed to turn what should have been a relaxing couple of hours of contesting into quite an adventure.

The final result? Ten contacts in one hour!

I guess you could say it wasn't exactly my finest hour in the shack. But hey, I had fun, learned a few things, and that's what it's all about. There's always next time!

Learning the hard way!

 

Once a month or so, I back up the SSD (Solid State Drive) on my PC. I do both a clone backup and an incremental backup. One clone is saved to another SSD, while a second is saved to a SATA connected drive. The incremental backups are saved to two separate SATA drives.

Why two backups for both the clone and incremental backups, you ask? Redundancy is my answer. Just in case things go really wrong! Yes, I also have an automatic cloud clone and incremental backup.

Anyway, this past month, I was doing a clone backup to the SATA drive. As you can imagine, it takes some time because the drive is nowhere near as fast as an SSD.

Partway through the backup, I needed my PC, and I needed it NOW! As the drive clones from one to another, a progress window appears with a Cancel button. I'd never used the Cancel option before, but this time I decided to give it a try. I cancelled the clone to the SATA drive, everything seemed to go well, and I was able to use my PC for whatever I needed.

The next time I started my PC, a message popped up informing me that drive H was being repaired! There was nothing I could do but sit back, watch, and hope the repair went well. Drive H was the SATA drive that I had been cloning to, and it was the drive I had cancelled the operation on.

Fortunately, everything worked out, and the disk was repaired. Lesson learned! Sometimes things don't work out quite as planned, and I have to learn the hard way.

Having said that, if the drive had not been repairable, it wouldn't have been a problem. It would simply have been replaced with a shiny new SSD! 

A new keyboard

 

Because I do a lot of contesting, my keyboard gets a serious workout every year. Recently, some keys started becoming unreliable. I’d press a key and nothing would happen until I tried again—sometimes several times. I considered taking the keyboard apart and cleaning the contacts, but it looked like I’d have to practically destroy it to get inside.

My Lenovo keyboard had served me well, but this was the second one I’d worn out. The membrane seemed to be failing, leaving certain keys hit-or-miss. That’s especially frustrating during a CW contest: when a letter doesn’t register as I’m typing a call sign, I press it again—and sometimes end up with too many of that letter.

I’d been thinking about switching to a mechanical keyboard. If a switch fails, it can be replaced. The key-caps can be customized, and the keys can be remapped. It was time for a new keyboard, I chose the full-size Keychron C2 Pro, which had excellent reviews.

It came with yellow switches, which are relatively quiet. I can rest my fingers on the keys without accidentally activating them. Mechanical switches come in different types, often identified by color, with different characteristics. It’s worth reading up on them to find the ones that suit your typing style. 

My first change was to replace the F1–F12 key-caps with ones labeled for my N1MM macros. As shown in the photo, the keys glow blue. You can turn the lighting on or off, and it’s a welcome feature in the shack early in the morning or late in the evening.

The keyboard can also be remapped using Keychron’s software. I wanted to move the backslash key to the Windows key’s spot—the second key from the left on the bottom row. The software’s AI made it easy: I described the key I wanted to move, where I wanted it, and what I wanted the Windows key to do instead. It handled the remapping for me.

That placement is ideal when operating SO2V (single operator, two VFOs), because the backslash key switches between VFO A and VFO B. With the key in its usual spot, I had to move my fingers away from the home row and then find my way back to type a call sign. In the heat of a contest, those extra movements cost time.

I also discovered that I tend to rest my fingers heavily on the keyboard. During quiet moments, I was sometimes pressing keys without meaning to and entering repeated letters. I asked Keychron’s AI how to prevent that, and it adjusted the keyboard settings. The problem stopped, and it worked great for me. The Keychron keyboard is a nice addition for both contesting and blogging. 

WAG contest 2026

It was time for a relaxing weekend behind the radio and key. The annual running of the Worked All Germany (WAG) Contest was on the calendar for this weekend.

Band conditions were not too bad, considering what the solar numbers had been just a short time ago. I was able to put a few new items that were recently added to the shack through their paces during this contest, but more on that in another post.

For this contest, I found that search and pounce was the way to go. I entered in the CW-only category (surprise, surprise!) and, with only 100 watts and no assistance, I found that calling CQ (running) was hit and miss.

I was up early on Sunday morning, listening to very weak German stations just above the noise floor. But I hung in there, and as propagation loosened its grip on them, I was able to make contact. As the sun rose, I could see leaves falling from our maple tree through the shack window, along with frost on the roof of our shed, as the temperature sat at -3°C.

I find it very interesting how propagation can sit on a signal and then, all of a sudden, let it go, allowing me to hear the call sign and make the contact. Then, just as quickly, the signal is gone and back in the grasp of the propagation gods once again!

This is when you have to listen, work at it, and stick with a contact to get them into the log.

As you know, if you are a regular reader of the blog, I also use HamClock, more specifically, the Open HamClock Backend. The VOACAP DE-DX feature in this program is amazing.

In contests such as WAG, where you can only work German stations, I can see the propagation paths from my QTH to Germany. This is done by selecting Germany as my DX propagation destination. The program then displays the best propagation paths from my QTH to Germany. You can see this from the top picture the DE-DX path per band. 

The final results below.