WQ6X Wanders WEIRDLY thru a Wonky WAE WeeKend

wOw!  It don't get ANY Weirder than the WAE Ssb weekend.  It was the Weirdest of times.
In recent days, I have been troubleshooting ethernet settings between aWindoze-7 laptop
and RRC-1258 box.  On Friday, with some IT-mentoring, what seemed hopeless was in fact
nothing more than an errant sub-net address behind the RRC-1258 internet interface box.

Client commitments kept me in Alameda early Friday evening, missing out on the first of the
openings to EU on 40-meters, the Saturday evening EU opening was also missed due to running
the NA RTTY SPRINT.  Triple Space-WX disruptions over the weekend made for signals full of "buckshot" and weird signal fading.

While 20-meters was "kinda-open" on around midnight, only a handful of QSOs actually made it
to the log.  Starting up at 14:00z, 20-meters was still marginal, altho 15-meters was "wide open",
at least until another Space-WX storm hit to essentially render propagation worthless.  Unfortunately, after 3-hours Saturday morning, only 10 QSOs made it to the log - the rest of the day was a BUST.

Shortly before the 00:00z SPRINT RTTY contest, a necessary gender-changing connector could not be found in the RTTY equipment bag - OOPS.  The decision was made to run the FT-2000 (with its TI-5000 interface) locally, except the Xmit audio path was not producing any audio tones.  

Quick thinking produced from the Bag-de-JUNK a pair of 1/8" stereo patch cables enabling
cross connecting the laptop with the microphone plug.  Being a direct connection, the speech compression needed to be dialed down and the MIC-gain set at around only "5" to prevent
overloading the transceiver when feeding it AFSK RTTY tones.

While after the contest, the Reverse Beacon Network (RBN) documented the fact that WQ6X
was being heard throughout USA and Canada, participation in this RTTY GiG was WaY less than expected, weird Space-WX notwithstanding.  Only 37 stations made score submissions to the 3830 Website: 15-HP, 21-LP & 1-QRP.  WQ6X took 16th place overall and 3rd place for CA.

The typical SPRINT contest run like this: 2-hours on 20-meters (altho I lost 35 minutes cobbling together the proper RTTY cabling), transitioning to 40-meters for approx. 1.25 hours, transitioning to 80-meters for around 45-minutes, with some back and forth during that last hour between 80 and 40.

Having missed the 2nd (and final) 40-meter WAE opening, with little being heard on 20-meters, it was off to bed to get an earlier start on 15-meters Sunday morning (15:30z).  After 11-QSOs, a switch was made to 10-meters, hearing CR6K (on 28465).  He asked for "QTC?" giving me the 1st opportunity pass a book of 10 QTC messages.  After that 10-meters was a no-Show for the rest of the contest.  As the day continued, I was able to pass all but the last-4 QTC messages.  At LEAST I could say
that I gave the WAE GiG as good as effort as the Space-WX would allow.

One of my biggest complaints with working EU stations in DX contests is that they send CW too
fast (35+ wpm generates more repeats than it saves time) and they speak their callsigns too rapidly. 

Have you ever wondered why your rate is slow?  Maybe it's because you blurt-out your callsign
too rapidly.  If we can't figure out your callsign, then YOU are wasting yours and EVERYONE
else's time.  Take the time to REHEARSE saying your callsign SLOWLY, then after awhile,
you can say it just a bit faster.

After the contest weekend, there are STILL Space-WX storms "raging" around the globe.

DiD YOU work the WAE and NA SPRINT RTTY contests?

Is WQ6X in YOUR LoG?

WQ6X CONTEST BLoG - PosT #700

700 POSTS?...   Say WHUT?

In the process of reflecting about where this Contest BloG facility has been during the last 11
years, it occurs to me that it would be useful to show a BLAST From the Past about the 100-post milestones.  This Blog accomplishes that goal.  Some posts were not at the time realized to be
milestone postings.  The links below will take you directly to those milestones, recognized or not.

1. (100th) - January 11th, 2017
   
   
   
   BLOG #100 was such a monumental accomplishment at the time
   that it was given a major Blog header.
   
   
2. (200th) - December 12, 2018
   
   
   
   While Post #200 was not officially acknowledged, it occurred during
   a time period when WQ6X was running NX6T remotely from my Alameda office. 
   While I still have the office, I have not run any remote operations from there in some time.
   
   
3. (299th) - December 31, 2019
   
   
   
   Not wanting to miss out on Post #300, a warm-up post (#299) was posted FIRST.
   
   
4. (300th) - January 03, 2020
   
   
   
   When you consider that Blog Post #100 made reference to the WP2/WQ6X operation,
   it seems completely appropriate to harken back to that same time period for Post #300.
   
   
5. (400th) - March 24, 2021
   
   
   
   For Blog post #400, I was too busy running remote contest operations to even notice.
   
   
6. (500th) - May 13, 2022
   
   
   
   This Blog post happened in the middle of our 10th year of the Contest Blog.
   
   
7. (600th) - July 16, 2023
   
   
   
   This milestone happened so quickly that I almost missed it - now it's JUST a Number.

With my usual uneven Blog posting timeframe, my estimation for Blog post #800 is that it will make a nice Christmas present ending 2025 - assuming of course that we all make it through the NONSENSE of 2024.

C U Next Year.

WQ6X SPRINTs thru another WEIRD All Asia Contest

Over the years, the All Asia Ssb contest has increasingly become a disappointment. 
Last year. I guess was LESS of a disappointment, IF you ignore all the intentional QRM
that weekend.  ([CLICK HERE] to revisit that weekend).  Behind this year's disappointment
wasn't something propagational, nor operational; this year, it was IP-induced disappointment.

While there are two internet access points @ the W7AYT QTH, the computers behind the scenes
are a pair of antiquated Windoze-7 laptop installations, altho one is "newer" than the other.

The 2024 All Asia contest blindsided us by eliminating the power level categories for non-Asian stations.  NoT only would running QRP be a WASTE of time, running Low Power (LP) puts me
in the same category as any single-op station running All Bands @1500-watts.

Having likely already missed a 20-meter opening, the operating plan was to get sone sleep,
opening the All Asia contest on 40-meters around 09:00z (in fact 10:00z)..  Working a couple
of stations via S&P convinced me that running a frequency might be quite productive.  Settling
in on 7.160 to run a frequency, 4 QSOs made it to the log before the internet connecting began dropping out.  Attempting to resolve it brought yet another Windoze-7 BLUE SCREEN.  After the lengthy restart and reconnection, 2 more run QSOs made it to the log in time for yet another dropout.

In summary, 2-hours of flitting between the Stations #1 and #2 computers resolved nothing.

At 6am I called it quits and went back to bed. With no state QSO parties happening during the weekend, intermittent time was spent futilely diagnosing the IP failure.  With the internet not happening, a last-minute decision was to switch from running QRP SPRINT remote from Ramona,
to running Low Power (LP) from the East Bay (EB) section - either way, it's still "Ron in California".

While the SPRINT contest is run unassisted (internet spots are a waste of time), it was informative to look at the Reverse Beacon (RBN) Stats after the contest and compare those stats to what actually made it to the log.

20-meter operation offered the opportunity to run either the tuned 8JK Cobra sloper, or the 10-meter Long John yagi, which, as it turns out, acts like Buddi-Pole on 15 & 20 meters.  Without thinking, later in the evening, when the switch was made to 40-meters, the first two QSOs were made using the 10-meter Long John.  The BiG surprise in this year's SPRINT was working KI6RRN/KL7 (Axel) twice and later discovering that we were teammates on the SCCC #2 team.

The SPRINT contest brought us a plethora of Tune-Up Turkies (TuTs), altho it would seem that BOTH 20 & 40 meters sport embedded carriers at the same Cw-band offset, unique to each QTH.  Other operators operating in the vicinity of each specific location have reported the same [unmodulated] carriers, at the same frequency offsets.  For this SPRINT-edition, the outside goal was to put 100 QSOs into the Cw log - which turned out to be 87 - with KI6RRN/KL7 the final log entry. 
 

Further attempts to resolve the "IP" failure were fruitless.  After the contest, an 8-QSO SB-40 Log
was submitted to the JARL.  The main accomplishment for the weekend was adding 2 more contest events to the 3830-score list for WQ6X, giving us a ToTaL of 90 radiosport events thus far for 2024.

DiD YOU run the NA SPRINT or the All Asia contests?

Is WQ6X in YOUR LoG?

WQ6X Works Weekend 5 for a WEIRD Working Radiosport Experience

As the HF bands SOAR at the ToP of the current sunspot cycle (Cycle-25), radiosport events
seem to be WEIRDER than EVER.  Based on this last weekend, I wrote yet another installment
of the Blog concept "Why you should NoT call me", using Saturday's COQP and Sunday's TNQP QSO Parties as yet another backdrop for the topic.  ([CLICK HERE] to read that.)

This morning, it occurred to me that this last radiosport weekend (#5 in August) was truly a bullet-point list of WEIRD things which came together over the course of more-or-less 32 hours:

• For the 1st-time in like forever, I [seemed to be] prepared in advance for these QSO parties to be a Slam-Dunk.  When it was all over, it was clear that they were BOTH Slam-Donks.
• On Saturday, starting on 10-meters and working our way down turned out to be an auspicious action.  It would seem that moving from 10 down to 15-meters and then
  down to 20-meters was correctly timed to avoid the already steadily decreasing MUF. 
  The upper bands were closed for the rest of the day.
• Saturday afternoon, around 20:35z, for some inexplicable reason the COM port facility (COM4) was no longer keying the radio.  The problem was clearly on the K3 end of things in Ramona.  Calling on another NX6T operator, he made a weep thru the N1MM software and Device Manager's COM port settings, finding nothing out of order.  The decision was switching to Ssb with the idea of troubleshooting it after the COQP was over (at 03:00z).
• Tuning around 20-meter Ssb looking for COQP stations, at 00:11z on 14244.72,
  I encountered CW code groups being sent.  Some of it sounded like standard Morse
  code and some of it did not.  As quickly as it appeared, it then disappeared.
• By 01:00z with the Space-WX intrusions there were hardly any hearable CO stations
  that could hear my QRP signal.  Tuning 75-meter Ssb, no Colorado stations were heard.
  
• Later in the evening after tooling around on 3.849 Ssb, without thinking,
  on a whim I switched N1MM to 80m CW and pressed [F4] sending "WQ6X"
  flawlessly - HuH?  We'll be ready for Sunday's TNQP mixed-mode extravaganza,
  right? NoPe.
  
  
  
  
• Sunday's TNQP started just a bit after at 17:00z.  Lingering Space-WX problems
  kept signal levels way down.  2 contacts each on 15 & 10 meters made it to the log. 
  Then, just like yesterday (and almost exactly the same time), the COM4 keying circuit again stopped working.  Not hearing any stations on Ssb, the decision was made to take a break.
• Coming back at 23:53z a handful of Ssb contacts were made on 20 and 40 meters. 
  At 02:15z, on a whim, I switched to 40-meter Cw finding it was once again keying PERFECTLY - HuH?  15 minutes produced 3 more Cw QSOS.
• By 02:30z, with 30 minutes to go, I bounced between 20 and 40 meters, Ssb and Cw, finding nothing new.  Bottom line is that despite the poor Space-WX, the TNQP showed
  poor participation.  Had there been MORE TN stations, they would have shown up in the consistently near-empty bandmap.
  
  

The only thing of valuable that can be said about this weekend is that WQ6X managed
to run yet another pair of state QSO parties running only QRP power.

After 03:00z (8pm Sunday evening), I returned things back to their regularly scheduled programming for Sunday evening.  After all the WEIRDNESS, it would seem that WQ6X took 3rd-place for QRP in the Colorado QSO Party and 2nd-place in the Tennessee QSO party.

In reading comments from the QSO party message reflector, it would seem that POOR radio conditions were experienced nation-wide and in particular North/West of Colorado and Tennessee.

DiD YOU work COQP or TNQP?

How many Colorado and Tennessee stations made it to YOUR Log?

Even FURTHER Reasons YOU Should NoT Call Me

This BLOG Entry is continuation of a late-August tradition, posting yet another installment of why YOU [probably] should NoT call me.  The most obvious backdrop for this are the State QSO Parties - in particular: COQP and TNQP, rounding out the Labor Day weekend.

On May 15, I posted a compendium on the subject of Why YOU Should NoT Call me ([CLICK HERE] to review that stuff).  Here are some things that come to mind from this last weekend's COQP and TNQP State QSO Parties.

• Stations calling in from W6 / W7 are often louder than the WEAK QSO Party stations (often mobile) that are calling in on my run frequency.
• A K5 station calls in - I press F-11 "COQP only" - he sends a LENGTHY 73 message obliterating the other calling stations.
• While running a frequency on 7.039, in retaliation for my sending "TNQP only", the run frequency became a member of the NTF - National Tuneup Frequency
• If I work the station ("you're 5-NINE, California") and other stations hear that, then they are motivated to call in like the first idiot.  Pressing F-11 is an attempt to remedy that situation.
• Or, I can just call CQ as if he can't beard.  The problem here is that the idiot might keep calling in, obliterating the weaker desired stations.
• When I call CQ in an other state QSO Party I sign WQ6X/6 so that it is properly spotted by the (RBN) Reverse Beacon Network.  I follow this with WQ6X /CA (notice the SPACE), to further reiterate the fact that I am NoT in the state I am calling CQ to work.

If I signed WQ6X/CA (w/o the space), it might generate conflicting RBN entries.

You've read all of my diatribes detailing reasons why other stations should [probably] NoT call me.

What are YOUR Thoughts on all this?