I'm also a new ham and thoroughly enjoy contesting. On a whim I participated in the RTTY Rookie Roundup contest last year after being licensed for just a few weeks and on digital just a few days and was surprised to get first place in our call area (though I'm slow to admit there were only 3 log entries). I've been hooked since.

I try to make a goal for each contest. For the North America contests, it's generally to work as many states as I can - and I've been very close to working all 50 a few times.

In other contests, I try to work at least one new country, or maybe just work as many stations as possible (though I know my station isn't highly competitive). You'll definitely want to work the 7th Area QSO Party and Rookie Roundup contests (for the next 3 years at least) where you are the one in demand.

I'd recommend getting up-to-speed with N1MM Logger. It makes contesting MUCH easier. Here's a great primer - http://n1mm.hamdocs.com/tiki-index.php?page=Video+-+Operating+N1MM+Logger+on+Field+Day

Hope to catch you on the air in the upcoming contests!

I like to think of propagation like roasting a marshmallow over a fire. Sometimes the fire is a perfect bed of coals (solar maximum), sometimes it's barely smoldering (solar minimum), and sometimes it's a raging inferno (solar flares/CMEs).

You want heat (solar activity) to slowly (but not too slowly) brown the marshmallow (good propagation). And rotating the marshmallow to cook it evenly is best (just as good propagation and MUF changes as the world rotates). But if you get too much flame (solar flare/CME), it can make a mess and burn the thing (HF black out). But you can just take off the burned crust and start roasting the thing again and in a bit of time it starts looking golden brown again.

Simple and silly perhaps, but it works in my mind. Of course it is much more complicated than that and there are some very cool types of propagation that occur before, during, and after solar flares. A much more detailed, yet easily understood explanation of it all can be found at http://www.qrparci.org/mambo/pdf/FDIM81.pdf

There was a new episode of "Austin and Allie" on the Disney Channel (don't mock me, I have small children!) just a couple days ago. There was a silly sequence where Allie is singing into a wireless microphone and the frequency for the mic gets changed accidentally. It clearly shows her frantically turning the dial of an Icom 756 Pro with a Samlex power supply on top.

Photo: http://i.imgur.com/sw3bA.jpg

Rick-

Thank you for confirming additional updates. I've been looking forward to v.6, but was very disappointed in the recent v.5 update, enough so that I've withheld paying for the upgrade until there's a clear indication that it won't have the same types of critical and pervasive bugs this latest build has. I'm glad you're committed to resolving v.5 bugs before moving on to v.6. Doing so will help ensure I and many others remain and become paying customers.

WARC bands are 12m, 17m, and 30m - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WARC_bands

FD is "Field Day".

You are free to call anywhere you want, but the non-WARC bands will be pretty busy.

There are various ways for linking repeaters. Here in the Mountain West there are a several different networks of repeaters. The big ones I monitor are the Intermountain Intertie (http://utahvhfs.org/snowlink.html) and Cactus Intertie (http://www.cactus-intertie.org/) which is the largest linked repeater system in the world, covering most of the Southwestern US and the Washington DC area. Some are private and some are not always linked (but typically can be interlinked on demand).

Your local club will have information on linked repeaters in your area.

Any standard radio that can connect to a repeater is capable of connecting to linked repeaters. Nothing special is needed. The VX-8DR is WAY more than capable of doing this. There's no such thing as an IRLP-enabled radio. IRLP repeaters function pretty much like any other repeater, except that they use the internet to communicate between repeaters rather than over-the-air signals. If you want to reach out to other parts of the world, IRLP is a fun way to get started. Again, your local club will have info on IRLP access points, permissions, etc.

APRS is something else entirely and doesn't really fit into this discussion. It's generally for local sharing of position and other data.

To be a bit blunt, if there's not much traffic on the local repeaters, you could always try talking on them a bit more. :-)

I heard the Armenia station booming in here right on 14.225. With a general license, it's torture to hear a station (and an unworked country at that) on your portion of the band that you can't (see below) call without spilling outside your privileges.

At least I've always assumed that transmitting at 14.225 in USB would be pushing it. It didn't seem to stop dozens of general license holders from calling him, but I'd always thought you need to be just a bit above the the bottom band edge and 2-3 kHz below the top band edge on USB (and the opposite in LSB). Am I correct?

I really need to get my Extra so I don't have to worry so much about such things.

Thank you for asking this. I am wondering the same question. My roof is about 20' up. I already have a reinforced vertical mast on the roof at at 20' that should easily carry a fairly heavy beam, etc. Turn radius of maybe 20 feet before infringing on neighbors properly.

Don't intend to hijack the thread, but I'd be interested in any responses to the OP.

If you haven't made any contacts yet, something must be wrong. Or you aren't answering CQs. I have a very modest system running 10-15 watts into a vertical and can make contact after contact on JT65.

A few thoughts:

- For timing, you should hear the other signals on band start about when you do and end about when you do. If not, you have a timing issue. A second or two off will work fine.

- Don't try to answer the super weak signals. If you get a -15DB or less call (especially from a DX), it is quite possible he won't hear you back or will answer someone else's stronger reply.

- Make sure your rig shows no ALC (not even a little bit). And make sure you're not running any compression, transmit filters, etc. If possible, use your rigs Monitor function to listen to your outgoing signal.

- Call CQ a bit and then check the PSK Reporter or other spotting networks to see if and who is hearing you.

Good luck!

I agree. I've never actually done more than a few minute visit to field day. I'm a new ham and this will be my first year. I'm looking forward to it.

For something that's not a "contest", they sure put a lot emphasis on scores and "bonus points" and such.

From the rules:
"The GOTA station may be operated by any person licensed since the previous year’s Field Day, regardless of license class. It may also be operated by a generally inactive licensee. Non-licensed persons may participate under the direct supervision of an appropriate control operator."


Also incorrect. From the rules:
"A maximum of 500 QSOs made by this station may be claimed for credit by its primary Field Day operation. In addition, bonus points may be earned by this station."


You CAN make BIG scores with the GOTA. In many ways, the GOTA station can be the most valuable you have. You get the normal credit for the QSOs, up to 500 contacts (or 1000 points on digital/CW). Plus you can get up to 500 bonus points by having 5 separate operators make 100 contacts each. Plus if you have a coach, the bonus points are double. In other words, you can score 1500 points (or 2000 if digital or CW) on your GOTA station. In short, any GOTA contact can be worth up to 3X any contact from any other station.

A big +1!!! RSID is not necessary for PSK31 or standard RTTY. On PSK, the video ID takes substantially more bandwidth than the PSK signal so your video ID may also interfere with someone else's adjacent signal.

Yep, the line in your waterfall is almost certainly local. Trying turning things off or flipping electrical breakers in your home until you track it down. Or it could be internal to the rig or power supply. Such things can be hard to track down. That frequency is a rather unfortunate place to have a 'birdie' if you want to work PSK much.

The visual characters in the waterfall are generally called "video ID".

I downloaded http://www.cloudlog.co.uk/ and customized it extensively to make my own online log and mapping system - http://smithplanet.com/logbook/ I also fixed the KML function to load all of my QSOs in Google Maps. I'll probably split it into regions soon.

Cloudlog uses the HRD Logbook MySQL database. I keep the HRD database running on my web server, so updates are in real time.

I also custom built my own QRZ.com look-up system in PHP. It uses the central logbook database and the QRZ API to get station data. I just type in the username and it shows all of their station details, QRZ photo, a Google map of their location, any previous QSOs, and whether I've worked that country, zone, US county, US grid square, etc.

I finally got around to setting up N1MM for the Rookie Roundup contest. I was VERY intimidated by the 750 page (yes, SEVEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY!!!) page manual. N1MM is about the most unintuitive software I have EVER seen, but I persisted, got it talking to my rig, and once I got the RR contest properly loaded, I found it quite easy and even fun to use. The spotting feature is quite nice. The only sad part is that I could only be on the air for 45 minutes of the contest.