Ham Gathering

  About this time every Year I am invited to have Lunch with active and retired guys from the company I work for-- most are licensed Ham operators, so lots of great Ham related topics. We usually manage about 10 guys and this year was no different. My elmer happened to sit next to Me and Our conversation turned to 60 meters, a band I've only listened to but never operated on. When My 6 meter Yagi was operational I used to hear very well on 60 meters. Different type of allocation- 5 channels , 50 watts max ,USB, channelized Tx and RX. Reminds Me of Citizen Band channels. I guess gray line propagation has been active lately. My friend mentioned QSO's around the USA and even England. If I had a tunable antenna I would check it out! He recently made a wire antenna cut for 60m and I guess it works very well. I have too many antennas now but never say never!!
  Almost the end of the Year. I had planned to hoist My Cushcraft ATB-34 tri-band beam but never found the time. This coming year I hope to fix My 6m beam and also get the ATB-34 in the air. Still plan to only have it on a shorty tower but at least it would enjoy the light of day!!Be safe tomorrow and have a Happy New Year!!
 73---Tim

LOTW issue again and 4 New DXCC!!

  Remember when I said My LOTW issue was cleared up? Well it actually only appeared to be . I needed to check the LOTW page at the proper place to verify it. Go to "Your account" , then "your Activity" and look across and see your latest certificate upload details and click on "results" in parentheses. This gives a detailed explanation of Your latest TQSL upload and if any part has an issue- this will give the details! Mine did have issues and it gave Me the indication this particular certificate was in conflict with an older one.
 The ARRL LOTW website has good FAQS and troubleshooting procedures and I followed these and requested a new certificate. Still no worky,so I tried again, still issues!! Finally I directly contacted the LOTW and received a prompt reply with instructions on receiving a valid certificate.Problem was these instructions seemed to be the same procedure I had already performed several times! I decided to delete everything concerning the TQSL program. Deleted all files,programs,email files,trashcan and every hidden file I could find. I restarted computer and accessed the ARRL website and downloaded the TQSL program again- version 1.13 and then thru this program requested a new secure certificate. It only took a day to receive a email back with My new certificate and-Viola!! Using the procedure from both the email and website, I now have a working,valid TQSL certificate. Uploaded all My contests and contacts from My logbook after certifying them with the TQSL program and within an hour the LOTW program validated them!!
  With these new QSL/QSO contacts added to My LOTW log , I am getting closer to WAS on more bands and have added 4 more DXCC confirmations-Canary Islands,Denmark,Japan and Jersey. Several of these are surpriseing additions that I thought would have  years ago! Just glad to finally have them confirmed! Over 2800 QSO's  in LOTW with 64 DXCC confirmed and 90 DXCC unconfirmed.
   I emailed ARRL and thanked them for their prompt response. It appears My TQSL program on My PC had issues and reloading took care of the problem. LOTW is a great resource I hope more Hams start using!
 Merry Christmas and Happy holidays-- God bless Us All!!
 73---Tim

RAC Winter contest 2011

    This contest is run every December by the "Radio Amateurs of Canada" and I've managed to participate the last two years. Its a fun contest and the objective for stations outside of Canada are to make contact with 13 provinces and territories,14 RAC official stations and as many Canadian stations as possible. I also can contact USA and Dx stations for 2 points.This contest runs from 0000 UTC to 2359 UTC on December 17th on 160 thru 2m cw and phone but excluding the WARC bands!
All multipliers and RAC special stations can be contacted once for each mode on each band. RAC count 20 points while all canadian count 10 points.
   I started out at 0000 UTC and did a S & P operation between 20,40 and 75 m till a little before 0300 UTC. It seemed a tough go with the bands being noisy ,but I still  ended with more multipliers than expected with 20! QSO count was low at about 40. Not great but I hoped to have Saturday so I called it a night. Next morning I was on at 1334 UTC and the first contact was PEI- Prince Edward Island on 20m ! Nice start and the rest of the day  was spent with some nice multiplier additions on all bands except 160m-- and of course no activity for Me above 10m!
  I don't know if the proximity to Canada makes a difference but it seemed like I was able to Waltz into many pile-ups and bust them first call!! Who's the N0??? Well that be ME-LOL . Makes it lots of fun being the percieved big gun although 100w into a ground mounted vertical is not typically considered that!. I also seemed to have a good luck charm following Me because even though I wasn't running assisted I stumbled on good multipliers across the bands consistently. I snagged Northern territories on 5 bands and actually heard a NT tuning up and became a first contact! Neat!! I ended up only missing NU ( Nunavut) and missed that one because I was impatient Friday night and didn't try to bust thru a pile -up figuring I'd have a chance later! Not to be!! never heard another one! Out of the 14 RAC Official stations I contacted 7 different ones on the bands 12 times!!
  This contest would have been a good one to snag a run frequency but I had many QRT times so S & P was the way to go!  Here's the results- Fun contest I really recommend, Lots of season Greetings and Happy Holidays sent with exchange!!
  QSO-100   Points- 1008  Mults- 31 for a total of 31,248
73---Tim

    
 

LOTW success and 1 more!!

LOTW accepted my latest contest log at 8:48 CST last night! A few hours after I uploaded it so all is well and ready for the RAC winter contest this weekend! It just so happens about the same time My contact with T32C East Kiribati expedition was also confirmed in  My log for My 62nd  DXCC. Ham Radio delux shows Me at 90 DXCC contacts so still need some confirmations to show up with LOTW! Maybe soon!
  73---Tim

Logging misadventures and a small QRZ complaint!!

  It's very difficult to complain about any free Logging or look-up software but after this contest Ham radio Delux did not fill in the QTH particulars. Not even the country!! I thought I had another issue like last time with some software discrepency. After several hours of looking and checking and finally browsing I finally found the answer!! The QRZ.com website now with the cooperation of some of the Logging programs will now only deliver that information if paying for the XML QRZ subscription service- $29.95 a year. Price is very reasonable but I of course enjoyed the "free" service. I understand the need to charge-- lots of time and effort is involved keeping database info up to date. The choice then is no QTH info or pay to play!!! I do wish the next time QRZ.com would inform us unsuspecting free-loaders about the change----OK ,just kidding!!!
  I also had a LOTW issue which was accidentally caused by Me! I did the TQSL certificate correctly but I uploaded the wrong certificate and LOTW did not like that!! I did upload the correct after being chastised on the LOTW site by the "server" and it even sent Me a new certificate! tonight i decided it was not going to accept My previous download so I installed the new certificate and uploaded my log again.We'll see how that goes!!
  Last was a problem with a different UTC time with a station. Looking in My log really confused Me because the amended time sent corresponds with a VERY similiar call.Hmmm - time will tell on this one also. I'm either wrong or the far end! Trouble is this is a DXCC I need. bummer!!
73 for now---Tim

2011 ARRL 10m Contest

  The first night of this contest seemed like a fun VHF contest with very specific "pipelines" from My location. At first Texas then eventually Colorado and several other western states were the only QSO's I had besides several locals. I tried running several times but only had sporadic success. Seems like a ground mounted vertical and 100w don't command much attention! I still managed more QSO's the first night than the entire contest last year before calling it quits for the night.
  Saturday morning I was back on about 1400 UTC and the band was already wild! First 20 QSO's were all DX before snagging at Stateside PA station. I soon realized the fringe of the action was the place to be for a "wet noodle" station like Me and spent some time around 29mhz. This is farther up the band then I've ever been contesting on 10m before. Up there it actually was more casual even with some big gun stations running.
  Several interesting observations during this contest. The first is My call phonetics of "November-Zero-Uniform-Juliett-Juliett" cause some contesters to fumble with the"uniform" portion. This is of course the "english as a second language group". I am constantly amazed at the multiple languages of most every other country except My own. WOW- what an accomplishment! Having said that I also find  the number"two" seems tough for Me to pick out of a accented English call .For My part I usually end up changing to " November-Zero-United-Japan-Japan which seems to be better understood!!
  Second observation is -and this is not limited to this contest- the number of stations I'm receiving at S9+ or better that CQ in My face. Sure if I was running high power would help but I can't help but think the far end is either dealing with terrible QRM or comprosied antennas.You know-high power to a wet noodle!!Yes I know-one wet noodle to another-LOL!!
  Third observation, and I should remember from other contests but, the last few hours can be so productive!I almost shut down early but luckily jumped back in towards the end for several juicy multipliers!! Oh ,and I managed to upset one contester from California when I only partially listened to an exchange and assumed the frequency belonged to a multiplier I needed--oops! Sorry, that was Not intentional. I always try to be courteous and respectful of frequencies!!
  As always didn't spend enough time operating but it was fun while operating . Christmas shopping and some chores took some time away but mostly just S & P and trying to break pile-ups kept My score small!   142-QSO's, 59 Multipliers for a score of 16,756. If it was CW contacts that would have been double the score!!
  73---Tim