WQ6X Reprises W6J and assists NX6T to 1st-Place

Prior to the 2023 JIDX contest, I searched the WQ6X contest blog to review WQ6X's past participation in the April JIDX Cw contest.  This of course led me to review my use of the W6J
callsign back in 2012/2013.  From there I wrote up the Retrospective on W6J that precedes this Blog. ([CLICKI HERE] to read that.)  In 2019 I wrote a "BLAST from the Past" LooK at JIDX.  The rest is
(as they say) HISTORY.  Since then I have run every JIDX Cw GiG since, which brings us to the 2023 GiG.

[X] - 2022 - WQ6X Works a 7.5 Contest Weekend

[X] - 2021 - WQ6X Wangles another Weird Multi-contest Weekend

[X] - 2020 - WQ6X fakes another (JIDX x 2) + 5 Contest weekend

[X] - 2019 - BLASTS from the Past: JIDX Cw

The 2023 JIDX contests bring us the new Multi-2 category.  Instead of NX6T running as Multi-2,
we waited for our competition to "take the bait" and switch to that category, leaving the Multi-Single category to NX6T to win, as we have done in numerous recent JIDX contests.  It would seem that it was a sound strategy - a WiN WiN for everyone involved.

We had quite an array of Operators and GUEST operators.  VE4EA (Cary) gave KL7SB (Steve)
a tour of the WA6TQT Super Site.  Later (as you can see in the header-PIC) KL7SB also found himself in the OP seat doing an INCREDIBLE run on 20-meters.

When it was all said and done, NX6T made a resounding 1st place - our highest score EVER.
Because most contacts were on 10-meters, WQ6X as W6J submitted a 1st-place SOSB-10 score.

DiD YOU work the JIDX contest?

How many different prefectures made it into YOUR LoG?

A WQ6X as W6J Retrospective

I run so many ad-HOC radiosport weekends, it is a MAJOR undertaking, not only remembering
them all but remembering many of the significant (yet seemingly insignificant) details from each event.  This is why I publish what I do in this WQ6X Contest Blog.  Long after the Alzheimer's kicks-in, these Blog posts will serve to document the nonsense I spent my weekend-time with during the last 20-or-so years.  Additionally, truth be told, next time around I will probably do something like this
ALL OVER AGAIN.  (He Who does not Learn from the Past is DOOMed to Repeat It!")

Over the years, I have registered a number of different 1x1 callsigns for different reasons. 
Beginning in 2012 (before this Contest BLOG was begun), I made use of the W6J callsign
to make for a more unique JIDX Cw Experience.

• [X] - 2022: WQ6X Works a 7.5 Contest Weekend.
• [X] - 2021: WQ6X Wangles another Weird Multi-contest Weekend.
• [X] - 2019: BLASTS from the Past: JIDX Cw.
• [X] - 2016: W6J takes North America for JIDX 2016 CW contest.
• [X] - 2014: WQ6X operates 2014 JIDX Cw solo from SF East Bay.
• [X] - 2013: WQ6X Operates as W6J in the 2013 JIDX Cw Contest

During the years in between the above events, WQ6X joined up with the NX6T crew to create
a number of 1st-place operations.  The 2015 & 2017 operations were run onsite from NX6T when
we were operating out of the Fallbrook location.  From 2018 and beyond, WQ6X has put in operating time with NX6T running remotely.

I love using the W6J 1x1 callsign as it sounds very sonorous acoustically.
My theory is that if it sounds "melodic" it will attract more calling stations
due to the aesthetic nature of the W6J callsign

As it turns out, using a "simple" 1x1 callsign made a not-insignificant difference in 2023's
running of W6J at the QRP-level.

Have you ever heard or worked W6J during a JIDX contest?
Stay tuned - I may reprise the callsign again next year.

Stereo-CW Revisited (Yet Again)

It would SEEM that the topic of STEREO Cw (or even Stereo-anything in amateur radio) keeps coming up in the varied radiosport activities I engage in.  While distantly different, running a radio remote from Ramona or Anza (both in So. California), or running the FT-2000 locally (in Concord),
the audio output of ALL these devices end up connected to the SAME switch panel, and eventually find their way to the pair of Autek QF-1 a filters, which create the "Stereo Radio" effect.

The audio frequency "direction of movement" (low-to-high or high-to-low) can be reversed/altered
in 2 different ways:

• Switch between sidebands (Lower / Upper) on the transceiver.
• Set the audio filter frequency different for each ear (Ex.: Low on left - High on right)

Spend an afternoon tuning around the Cw bands and notice how the different audio filter frequency settings affect the direction and rapidity of tuning through Cw signals.  Then again, next time you are running a frequency, pay attention to how the stations spread out AROUND your listening experience, depending upon their offset from your run frequency.

I wrote motr

If need be, you can use the RiT/Clarifier control on your transceiver to shift the station you are working to a different "position" in the received passband.  With logging software like N1MM+ you can declare the F3 ("TU") key macro to "CLEARRIT" after each contact, returning the receive passband back to your original settings.

Because the QF-1A filters ALSO come with an auxiliary notch filter, you can remove offending
carriers (or other junk) as needed; something the digital notch filters can do w/o also eliminating
the Cw signals themselves.

Additionally, several filters can be series-cascaded to provide any additional filtering needed.   
I have accomplished this by way of MFJ-752 & MFJ-784 filters (for the left ear) along with JPS
NIR-10 & NIR-12 filters (for the right ear).  Because any of these filters can be switched out-of-line, virtually any combination filtering and Stereo-Cw effects can be created to enhance the listening experience.  I wrote more about this in September-2021 ([CLICK HERE] to read that).

Cw has been with us for over 100 years.  Stereo-Cw brings us a 21st century solution to a 20th century problem.  Have YOU ever played around with Stereo-Cw?  If NoT, you're missing out.

WQ6X Wanders thru the EA RTTY contest and 3 State QSO Parties

The 1st weekend in April brings us the EA RTTY contest and several state QSO parties in between the previous weekend's WPX Ssb contest and next weekend's JIDX Cw contest.  Throughout the weekend, listening was plagued by leftover atmospheric noise, even tho the major solar event occurred on Thursday.

It is a good thing that the EA RTTY GiG allows us to work anyone (not just EA stations). 
I never heard a single EA station; the bandmap spots were all from the East coast, which
does California operators no good.

The state QSO parties were even MORE of a disappointment.  Because of the HUGE turnout in California's QSO party every year, I guess I hold a HIGH standard for other state/province QSO
parties throughout the year.  The more successful QSO party GiGs send out e-mail notification
of upcoming events to those adding an e-mail address to the previous year's log submissions.

While radiosport opportunities seemed limited, I took the opportunity to test-run a new bare-minimum audio mixing unit which is installed on the audio output of the filter arrangement in use.  Because the unit requires external DC power, being 5-volts, it came with a USB power plug to obtain that voltage.

When it was all over, at LEAST I had a reasonable score to submit ti the contest committee.
To quote that old song: "It's NICE to KNOW that YOU were THERE".

DiD YOU play around in the above radiosport events?

Is WQ6X in YOUR LoG?

WQ6X Works the WEIRDEST Weird Prefix Contest - EVER

wOw!  Who woulda thunk it that the 2023 Weird Prefix Contest would end up being as WEIRD
as it turned out to be.  As I began writing this intro, we were NoT quite 1/2 of the way through the event itself.  A side benefit of the WPX weekend was the addition of a Douk Audio 4-channel passive audio mixer, which wisely obtains its power from the computer's USB sub system. 

This box enables mixing sound from the K3/0 and the Yaesu FT-2000 or the classic ICOM 7000. 
On the other end of the audio line, a 4-pole switch box enables switching between any of 3 speaker combinations or a pair of OWNZONE wireless headphones.

Being an Ssb contest, this GiG many times brought Billy-Bob and his brother Barney out of the propagation woodwork.  Then again, the most annoying IDIOT was the Dingle-Dork, who went into
a lengthy diatribe about how his buddies frequently meet on 3777.77 (my EXACT run frequency), implying that somehow Billy-Bob and Barney somehow actually somehow "OWN" the frequency
and therefore, we use it with their [implied] permission?  HuH?  wOw!

Just prior to the contest weekend, a MAJOR solar storm BLIND-sided planet Earth, bringing us
a K-Index of 7.  Altho typical of higher SFI #'s, while the storms may be severe, the recovery time
to be much improved (to the degree the SFI is high).  From the above PiCs, it would seem that the storms settled out in less than 8-hours.

A plausible explanation has finally been tendered explaining the RTTY activity I often hear in the
40-meter phone spectrum (mainly during Ssb radiosport events).  Early Sunday morning (12:35z),
on 7134.75, I copied an MCW station ID'ing itself as "RDL", sending strings of 5-digit number groups.  Then, after a pause, a more-or-less 1.5-minutes of fast-RTTY is sent; followed by "RDL" back in MCW
mode once again.  This repeated itself at seemingly random intervals.

([CLICK HERE] to learn more about RDL.)
WTF is the Russian military doing conducting traffic-passing operations midday (in Russia) in the middle of a worldwide amateur phone band.  It should be noted that the spectrum 6.945 - 6.955
is completely unused - the world over.  Why NoT use THAT?  Am I missing something Here?

Propagation was WEIRD all weekend.  Then again, that is HARDLY weird, considering we were playing in the Weird Prefix Ssb contest.  In retrospect, there were only a handful of callsigns that would REALLY Qualify as WEIRD; even WQ6 is NoT really THAT Weird.  

Nevertheless it was like the song says "It's Nice, to Know, that You were THERE...." 
And yes, WQ6X WAS there - all 5-watts QRP, all the time.  

While I was hoping for a larger QSO total, more important was proving that QRP truly CAN be
"the SHOT heard 'round the Whirrrl'd".  Despite the FIXED position of ALL antennas, in the direction they were focused at, WQ6X cut a LOUD path thru the dense RF fog.

DiD YOU work the WPX Weird Prefix Ssb Contest?

Is WQ6X in YOUR LoG?

WQ6X Runs yet another QRP RTTY Contest GiG

To alleviate BoreDumb, in recent months I have been finding every excuse to run contest GiGs
as a QRP entry.  Running RTTY GiGs as QRP is actually easier than Cw or Ssb as I don't have
to consciously make sense out of what is being said - the MMTTY decoder does that for me. 
Essentially, when running a frequency, I can turn the RX audio OFF and simply run things by
visually observing the RTTY tuning indicators.

During the 3rd week of March, the British bring us the BARTG RTTY contest for 48 hours,
beginning promptly at 02:00z (instead of the usual 00:00z for most European-based contests). 
This works out better for me as I usually don't get out of my Alameda office in time to make the
usual 00:00z contest starting time, typical to contests such as the WPX-Ssb GiG the following
weekend.

With the recently added MFJ-993b IntelliTuner, the Yaesu FT-2000 can easily match the 10m 3-el Long John yagi, the 8JK-phased Cobra dipoles and even a Comet CH-250 vertical.  As in recent months, 10-meters was THE band in the BARTG contest.  While running 5-watts from the Concord QTH is indeed quite a challenge, the RBN stats verified the far-reaching nature of the WQ6X/QRP signal, even tho there were no manned stations in any of those areas.

My biggest frustration was with the stations who call-in OFF frequency (often obliterating stations who DiD
call On-frequency). 

Being off-frequency, I would ask them for a callsign repeat in order to properly tune them in; sometimes a 2nd-repeat was necessary. 

 
By the time I finally had the correct receive frequency for their signal, they would give up and go somewhere else.  HuH?  Wazzat all about?

When it was all over, comparing the 3830 Score standing with stats from the online scoreboard,
I am quite a bit confused as to what place WQ6X will end up, after all the logs have been tabulated.
While the turnout seemed less than I remember from last year, this year's 64k-point QRP submission surpassed last year's 60k-point LP score - proof once again that QRP power can often hold its own against Low Power stations.

DiD YOU engage in the 2023 BARTG RTTY contest?

Is WQ6X in YOUR LoG?

Stereo-Ssb Revisited (Yet Again)

You may remember (from previous blogs on this topic) that at the heart of the Stereo-Ssb
process is a pair of tunable filters - ONE for EACH Ear.  For WQ6X, the preferred filter pair
is a pair of Autek QF-1A filters - ONE for EACH Ear. 
This is what has been written about Stereo-SSB thus far:

• [X] - How Stereo-Cw becomes Stereo-Ssb
• [X] - Stereo Ssb: It's STILL Easier than you Think
• [X] - Stereo-SSB: Turns out There's More To It

Running 15-meters during the recent Weird Prefix (WPX) contest, the filter-pair provided the

ability to Peak-tune each ear independently.  This facilitates more-easily discerning different
English "accents" more readily.

While Stereo-Cw is about spacing signals of different pitch-frequencies around the Listening Experience, Stereo-Ssb is about improving speech intelligibility of a specific voice being copied. 
Similar to Stereo-Cw, the secret to Stereo-SSB is frequency separation.  With the FREQUENCY settings on both filters set more-or-less around MID-range, the speech will appear to originate
more-or-less from the middle of the listening experience.

By "moving" the voice to be copied to the "center" of the Listening Experience, properly done,
splatter is often experienced in the "outer reaches" of the Listening Experience.  Additionally,
adjusting the individual QF-1A selectivity knobs allows compensation for the frequency-response differences in each ear.

Have YOUI ever tried Stereo-Ssb?"

What Discoveries have YOU made?

WQ6X Fakes-It 6-Times for a 7-Contest Weekend

wOw!  For a little-contest littered weekend, the 2nd weekend in March certainly seemed to
offer a JUMBO-Plethora of contest activities, weaving in and around each other as the weekend progressed.  By 10-pm it was mostly over, except for the reprises of IDQP & OKQP as well as the start of WIQP on Sunday morning.  By early afternoon, WIQP was the only event happening, altho
the participation seemed NIL until the final hour when 20-meters opened a brief propagation window to Wisconsin ending the contest at 02:00z.

In the midst of all this was the highly anticipated (and equally disappointing) SA-10 - South
American 10-meter contest.  While 10-meters was certainly open, the BiG disappointment was
the lack of participation by South American stations in their own contest - Wassup with THAT?
Even WORSE was the apparent "no-show" @W7AYT of the Tesla HF Memorial contest.  
This happened last year as well.  I remember when the Tesla contest always brought activity
into the WQ6X log.  Again, wassup with that?

In fact, this weekend also showcased the YB DX RTYTY contest; a GiG that has always left me somewhat frustrated.  Amazingly enough this year WQ6X managed to put 51 QSOs into the contest log.  There is no QRP entry in the YB DX contest, offering up the opportunity to run 100-watts full-duty RTTY, which the FT-2000 (and its FT-1000mp predecessor) does quite nicely.

Because I was running completely from the Concord location, I couldn't expect much from the
Stew Perry Top Band Challenge (SP-160) contest.  The THREE QSOs made were a testament
to the efficacy of the MFJ-993B's ability to match the 8JK-Cobras (at best an 80-meter antenna). 
Northern California and Southern Oregon are proof the antenna more-or-less radiates on Top Band.

Throughout the entire weekend, I didn't feel like I really connected with each radiosport event. 
From the beginning the NA RTTY Sprint seemed like a laborious exercise.  Ironically, the only
contest GiG I felt comfortable with was the YB DX RTTY contest.  I guess ya' never know how
it's gonna work out.

DiD you work any of the 8 radiosport contests on the March 11th weekend?

Is WQ6X in YOUR Log?

What Do We Say about NAQP RTTY?

While radiosport activities are a major focus nearly every weekend, sometimes it gets relegated to 2nd priority.  After taking 2nd place in the Toastmasters Alameda area speech contest Friday evening, my attention was free to finalize a 2-part presentation on radiosport contesting for Saturday's monthly meeting of the Amateur Radio Club of Alameda (ARCA).  Afterwards, client commitments kept me in Alameda longer than originally anticipated.

22:47z found me in the operators chair of the WQ6X portable setup @W7AYT's QTH in Concord.  While 10 & 15 meter band conditions have been AWEsome all week, on Saturday, by 23:00z
10-meters was already over @W7AYT; no stations were heard and no RBN beacons decoded
my "CQ NAQP" calls.  15-meters was good for about 20 minutes of reliable communication.  Technically, there were no Space-WX storms that weekend, altho signals seemed to flutter
in and out over a 7-second period, turning decodable signals into gibberish MUSH.

The main objective for the 6-hours contest run was to confirm the efficacy of running QRP RTTY. 
When running frequencies, I would send "CQ NAQP WQ6X WQ6X/QRP".  Because my signal was weaker than most, calling stations would call in considerably OFF frequency, requiring me to use the clarifier to properly tune them in to effect proper RTTY decoding.  After responding to my "UR CL Again?" twice, they just disappear?  HuH?  

Just a minute ago, you walked all over other calling stations to QSO with WQ6X, and now you
are GONE?  Wassup with that?  Meanwhile many of the other calling stations also disappeared;
in retrospect, I shoulda worked them FIRST.  Instead, nearly 40-seconds of valuable time is wasted,
and NO QSOs are logged, requiring yet another "CQ NAQP..." call all over again.  The new watch phrase for 2023 radiosport contests is "PAY ATTENTION !".

Despite running less than 6 hours, when it was all over, according to the 3830 Scores, it would 
seem that WQ6X running QRP achieved a 1st place in the Single-OP Assisted QRP category.

DiD YOU work the NAQP RTTY Contest?

Is WQ6X/QRP in YOUR LoG?