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This weekend was the North American QSO CW party, and the on time is 12 hours, and I put in about 1/4 of that. The issue was that it was a great day outside, and the sunshine and great weather was calling my name. The exchange in this contest is your name and state or province. This not being a big international contest, the CW speed varied from a slow 25 to a nice 36 wpm. I had no issues with the radio....well, having said that, now and then I have N1MM+ contest software hang after sending CW. It can get very frustrating, and I have finally narrowed it down to the Silicon Labs software needed for the Icom to communicate with the PC. It has been documented that even milliwatts of power can cause N1MM+ to hang. When you're calling CQ contest at 34-38 wpm, a hiccup like this can get very frustrating. I have good quality ferrite chokes in place, great grounding, but one issue is that my antenna is a bit close to the shack. The stray RF is hit and miss, and then when the ground outside is wet from a heavy rain, there is never an issue. (antenna is the Hustler 4BTV vertical). Now, having said that, during the NAQP I had some hang issues, but then for no reason it all of a sudden just stopped and never happened again during the contest. Anyway, I digress.....during my run, my best QSO per hour was 97 and I love that as it is GREAT for the keyboarding skill, ICR (instant character recognition) and brain training. What I really like is one op comes back to you at 25 wpm, and then the next is 36 wpm. It's great to have this shift, and it really improves your CW contest skill. The other thing is that during these times, the page up and page down keys get lots of exercise. These keys increase and decrease the CW speed. If someone comes back to my CQ at 25 or less, I hit the page down to match the speed. This op may have seen me spotted on a cluster, so my call is known, but the exchange may not populate at his end. It's polite and also less repeats, and in no way do I want to come off as a high-speed op who, if you can't match me, then I move on. Above is the final score for a very part-time effort........BUT anytime in front of the radio is a great time.
2 comments:
Didn't know that about the page up/down keys, tnx for the tip. By the way, if the rfi problem disappears when your grounding is wet, you should first drop a bucket of water over it before the contest.. ;-). 73, Bas SM/PE4BAS/P
Good evening Bas, yes I was thinking that a day before the major CW contests I could water the lawn for a few days and solve the issue. Yes if you go to the N1MM+ website or google N1MM+ cw keyboard short cuts there are lots of things you can do.
73,
Mike
VE9KK
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