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My contest year started with ARRL RTTY Roundup. This was the second RTTY contest with my buddy Patrik, OH6GDX.

ARRL RTTY Roundup

Call: OH1F
Operator(s): OH1NOA OH6GDX
Station: OH1AF

Class: M/S HP
QTH:
Operating Time (hrs): 24

Summary:
Band QSOs
————
80: 145
40: 263
20: 231
15: 219
10: 8
————
Total: 866 State/Prov = 44 Countries = 79 Total Score = 106,518

Club: Contest Club Finland

Comments:

“Two operator, one set up” -operation. Had fun!

Propagation was not so good than it has been during this contest season. Low bands were ok, but we couldn’t get much going on during the nighttime. High bands closed to USA/VE very early, so missed some states/provinces.

Christmas storm broke our 20m stacked array, so this time we used only a single yagi for 20m. It is in same tower than 15m yagis but pointing to different direction, so band changes with very slow turning tower were not so quick 🙂

For the first time I was operating “assisted” in a major contest. One of the first serious CQWW RTTY contests too … I think I once worked this one from OH1ZAA’s station (some 20 years ago).

CQ Worldwide DX Contest, RTTY

Call: OH1F
Operator(s): OH1NOA
Station: OH1AF

Class: SOAB(A) HP
QTH:
Operating Time (hrs): 36

Summary:
Band QSOs Pts State/Prov DX Zones
——————————————
80: 112 226 1 40 9
40: 220 500 17 63 21
20: 420 996 35 69 30
15: 502 1323 40 74 28
10: 221 588 31 67 26
——————————————
Total: 1475 3633 124 313 114 Total Score = 2,001,783

Club: Contest Club Finland

Comments:

FT1000D + WinTest + MMTTY + Microham Keyer II + Alpha 91b + antennae

The best condx for 10 years! The highlight was to work KH6MB during the daytime
on Saturday at 10 meters and then at 22z on 15. Propagation was not as good at
Sunday although it was still ok. It was also challenging to work European
multipliers on high bands.

As I was SO1R this was just relaxed “just for fun” operation. Chasing DX spots
and chatting on WWYC IRC. I had some techincal issues like BSoD of my mini
laptop 4 times during the contest. Also WT had its own tricks and someway I
feel that I am not totally understanding all the features of MMTTY yet (= I
should have more qsos).

CU all in SAC SSB contest 8-9 October, 2011 from OH1F M/M.

73 Timo OH1NOA, OJ0M

10 meters and slightly 20 meters were dissapointments but I think we did ok. I was mainly operating 40 meters. We will return for SSB part in multi-multi with 3 guest ops: OH1RX, OH6XX and OG9X.

Scandinavian Activity Contest, CW

Call: OH1F
Operator(s): OH1NOA, OH1TM, OH1HS, OH1LWZ, OH1RX, OH5DX
Station: OH1AF

Class: M/M HP
QTH:
Operating Time (hrs): 24

Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
——————-
80: 454 41
40: 863 59
20: 961 67
15: 683 66
10: 161 41
——————-
Total: 3122 274 Total Score = 1,967,046

Club: Contest Club Finland

Comments:

Our first SAC CW multi-multi since 1995! As usual, lots of problems to solve
before kick-off time, but managed to get 4 stations on the air at the start.
When OH5DX arrived 45 minutes after the start, he had to climb to tower to
release 10m antenna. With our antenna set up we have to make compromises in
multi-multi, eg. we didn’t beam to USA on 20m until late Saturday evening. Lost
obviously lots of qsos and maybe some mults there.

Night was quite quiet propagationwise, thanks for aurora. 15 meters was anyway
in good shape, USA came in till 23z and we have a good JA opening on Sunday.

Plenty of rare, unheard OHs on the air! CU on SSB leg.

73, Timo OH1NOA

I worked last weekend CQ WPX Contest in the single operator all bands class at OH1F. During the SSB leg I lost to top Finnish stations almost 1000 qsos, now I was doing better against OG8X, OG0Z and OG2B. Unfortunately propagation was the worst for years – we had several big flares from the sun during the weekends – I didn’t even manage to break my own record of this contest. I worked only a bit over 200 North American stations in the contest!

CQWW WPX Contest, CW

Call: OH1F
Operator(s): OH1NOA
Station: OH1AF

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Devil’s Rock, Pori
Operating Time (hrs): 36

Summary:
Band QSOs
————
160: 16
80: 126
40: 644
20: 1196
15: 315
10: 247
————
Total: 2544 Prefixes = 830 Total Score = 3,794,760

Club: Contest Club Finland

Comments:

“Der Angst under aurora oval 2011 edition”

No good DX runs, but some weird openings. Coronal holes and flares made life difficult in Northern Europe. 80% EU, 9 % NA, 9% AS.
73 Timo OH1NOA

This weekend I will participate to CQ WPX SSB Contest at our club, OH1F. I will operate in a single operator all bands high power class. Just relaxing, having fun without any pressure “to win”. WPX web site is super nowadays: you can search for all your past operations easily:

http://www.cqwpx.com/searchbycall.htm?cl=oh1noa&order=contestdate&submit=Go

So I can set eg. a goal to make my personal best in this contest easily as I see that my best all time has been:
OH3MMM 2000 5,297,812 2,593 qsos 884 px
I was operating from the station of Seppo, OH1VR and band conditions favoured high bands.

Call: OH1F
Operator(s): OH1NOA
Station: OH1AF

Class: Single Op HP
QTH: Devil’s Rock, Pori
Operating Time (hrs): 20

Summary:
Band QSOs Pts
—————–
80: 155 155
40: 266 266
20: 401 401
15: 88 88
10: 0 0
—————–
Total: 910 910 Mults = 95 Total Score = 485,490

Club: Contest Club Finland

Comments:

Poor propagation although there was some short DX-openings. Especially low bands were tough. Continents as multipliers is a really stupid rule in the contest where you work 2 South Americans (LU, PY), 2 Africans (CT3, EA8) and 3 Oceanian stations (2xYB, 9M6).

Now 2703 RTTY QSOs this year.

Last weekend I worked my first long RTTY contest for years. In the 1980s I was quite active on RTTY by using decoder builded from the legendary Sinclair ZX81 🙂

In ARRL RTTY Roundup I broke an old OH record, but only by 1k points, so after log check – no chance. At least I am #1 in Finland for single op high power. At the beginning I had some problems with MMTTY – actually I just don’t know it well enough yet.

ARRL RTTY Roundup

FT1000D + Win-Test + MMTTY + MicroHam Microkeyer II + Alpha 91b + antennae

This weekend there is an UK RTTY Contest. It seems to be pretty popular – winners worked some 900 qsos last year. I will probably go and give it a shot. Unfortunately I need to use N1MM, one new software again.

CQ WPX Contest is now making submitted logs public and available for download. The first contest to be posted is WPX SSB 2010.

You browse SSB 2010 logs from this address:
http://www.cqwpx.com/publiclogs/2010ph/

You can read more about the reasons for public logs from WPX Blog:
http://www.cqwpx.com/blog/

In a recent WPX Survey significant majority (over 85%) said that they want to see public logs.

I administrate a webpage call RATE IS KING – The Best QSO rates in the contests . It is basicly a list of best qso rates achieved in the ham radio contests. Usually contesters are sending their updates frequently after the contests.

But what means “Qrate” on this page? QRATE is a simple DOS utility for determining the best hour, ten minutes, and minute from a contest log. So it means any best 60 minutes, not clock hours like it is in the statistics pages of contesting softwares. This simple software is quite old already, coded by VE3SUN in the early 2000s. You can download it from here. My problem was that this is made for DOS and I can’t run it with Windows 7. I did the following:

• I downloaded Qrate, unzipped and saved it to the hard disk (ie. J:\qrate)
• Then I downloaded DOS emulator called DOSBox from here and installed it.
• Then I made a Cabrillo file from my contest log (ie. CR6T.log) and saved it to same file than Qrate.
• I run DOSBox and typed a command MOUNT c j:\qrate
• Then like in an old DOS, typed c:, and checked that DOSBox really emulated my qrate-file as a C-drive.
• With “Rate” you get a short help text
• I made a qrate file with command RATE CR6T.LOG RATE.TXT 25, where 25 if offset for Cabrillo file (the first number of time is the 25th figure in a line)

And I found out that my best “Qrate hour” for CR6T was 187 (versus clock hour 185).

CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW

Call: CR6T
Operator(s): OH1NOA
Station: CT1DVV

Class: SOSB/20 HP
QTH: Silveirinho
Operating Time (hrs): 40

Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
——————————
160:
80:
40:
20: 3423 37 128
15:
10:
——————————
Total: 3423 37 128 Total Score = 1,091,805

Club: Contest Club Finland

Comments:

My best single band score so far, but I am not satisfied tom my result. I wonder
what I could work when station works 100%. This year had radio problems before
the contest and switched to “plan B”. During the contest I got severe RF
problems. I couldn’t beam to certain directions at all (ie. Central Europe).
KLM had SWR problems and I couldn’t use it much. RF also made problems with
laptop & keyboard. I lost some 30-45 minutes prime time both days. I estimate
that 3600 qsos would have been easy without these Murphy visits.

Propagation was quite good. Of course nighttime condx were poor especially
during the second night, which gave an opportunity to have some sleep (total
sleeping time about 2,5 hours). Pileups were longer to USA than previous years.
At 16z on Saturday I had a 180q hour. Then condx lasted to about 2200z. Asia was
tough: I had a longpath opening to JA on Sat and shortpath on Sun, but missed
lots of normal AS/OC-multipliers which usually call me (9M2, 9M6, DU, VR2 etc).
I tried to beat 9V1YC’s pileup without success.

Multiplier is quite normal for unassisted, need to have a second radio on same
band (RXing same time than transmitting with 1st one) to get more. Plus missed
those Asian/OC mults and several easy nearby ones. I called without success at
least VE2XAA/2 (missed zones 2, 23 and 34), TI5N, 9V1YC, OA4SS, 8Q7DV etc.

This was my 9th CQWWCW contest from Portugal and my 10th contest from
CT8T/CR6T. Thanks again to my super host, Santos Family (CT1DVV, CT1ESV, CT1YQM
and family)!

Outside of contest I had some pileups with callsign CT7/OJ0M.

73, Timo OH1NOA, OJ0M