4 more DXCC confirmed

Flags of the Balearic Islands -top left
Guatemala -top right, El Salavor- left
and Gurnsey right .
All these DXCC's were contacted during the recent CQ WW SSB contest and I'm also waiting for Mariana Islands,Guam,Ceuta & Melilla, Serbia and Marquesas Island -I had QSO's with TX7G in both the contest and evening before. I'm up to 110 confirmed DXCC's and I would guess more than 120 contacted. Logbook of the world is a great resource for confirmations ! I'm sure I would still be way back ,maybe half confirmed using  only using the "old" methods.
  Band conditions are still fair but alot of flares also. I see Tromelin Island is now on the air so i have another new one to chase. Also Madagascar too. Fun chasing DX!!
73---Tim

CQ WW SSB contest 2014

The conditions this year were amazing. I actually made QSO's at 29.3 MHZ and there were stations from 28.3 all the way to 29.3 on the 10m band. I only spent a short amount of time on 15 and 20m because 10m was so much fun but I'm getting ahead of Myself. I seemed jinxed for the CQ contests this year- first the September RTTY contest,one of My favorites and I have equipment issues after the first night. Then this contest-- I ended having contracted a terrible  head and chest cold Thursday night. My throat was on fire and it was actually painful to talk all weekend! So ,yes tough to talk and trying to participate in a voice contest!
  I did participate in shifts when able to speak  and when not needing to lie down :( The 10m band was too active to miss so I did manage numerous on and off times the whole weekend although I apologize to the far end for My gravely voice and I'm thankful they could decipher My information.
  This is the first contest when I've actually felt like a big gun contest station even with My meager antenna's. I used mostly My 10m Yagi which is at about 20 feet  because My ground mounted vertical was just not as loud! I pointed the Yagi towards Europe and the signals rolled in. Later towards South America and even eventually towards Japan. What a neat feeling to break thru pile ups although I also gave up on some rare ones too.
 Some new DXCC's were the Mariana Islands,Guam,Ceut-Melilla,Serbia,Gurnsey,El Salvador and the Marquesas Islands. Several I hope are LOTW users so I can have more confirmed DXCC's. My Final score was only around 50,000 points but still better than I hoped considering how sick I was the whole weekend. I hope these conditions are continue thru December for the 10m contest.
73---Tim
PS-- in the AM portion of the 10m band (which is just  suggested ,not enforced!) I answered a CQ from a station and some Ham broke in and called US "A**Hole" contesters!All of Us contesters tend to forget the other Hams who don't enjoy contest weekends. Mmmmm :((
             

Google Chrome,TQSL and other stuff

 After this last weekends contest I wanted to "sign" My log for uploading to the ARRL's LogBook of the World but I soon realized My certificate was no longer valid.I remember the last contest having trouble after downloading the latest version of TQSL. I somehow had messed up the whole process and had never fixed it. So I needed to access LOTW except for some reason after going to the ARRL homepage and clicking the LOTW page, IE gave Me an error of " Internet explorer cannot display the Webpage"
  So how was I to load a new certificate? I did try from My other PC and was able to get access to LOTW so I downloaded the Certificate from My account and saved to the PC which was not working. This for some strange reason still did not solve My problem with a bad certificate and of course did not solve the Web page access issue.So I decided to go right to the source and emailed the ARRL LOTW .
  I  received  two replies the next day and both turned out to be very helpful. The first one from a  LOTW Specialist made mention of a recent upgrade to the LOTW security and maybe My version of WEB browser was not up to date. Well it so happens it probably isn't-- IE 8 running on an XP machine. Also this email mentioned several other browsers- one of them being Google Chrome. So what the heck! I downloaded Chrome and-voila!! It worked and Chrome appears to load fairly fast and is easy to use.I was also able to import My bookmarks very easily-nice! So on this PC I now have two browser options.
  The second email was also from the LOTW staff ( volunteers?) sending Me My TQSL certificate which loaded like a charm :) So now I was able to sign My log and with the newer versions of TQSL ,upload it to LOTW server automatically. All in all a good experience .
  I will have a write up of the recent CQ WW SSB contest in My next post.
  73---Tim

Route 66 Wallpaper

This is the nice certificate I recieved from the Route 66 event in September.I only was operating for a short time on the last dayof the event but managed to make 8 contacts-one was even mobile. I will try to remember to spend more time next Year trying for a sweep.
  I've decided to start cleaning My shack will the eventual goal of a total redo. About the time i decided to start this, My spare PC failed so the decision to trash was made even easier.I really need a full upgrade on My PC's- been running XP on two and the failed PC had Win2000.Yikes!! Its at recycling now so the big clean out begins!! :)
 Wish Me luck-- I plan to try to operate several contests till Christmas vacation before I totally tear down but will be slowly cleaning towards that eventual goal.
73---Tim

DXCC's confirmed 104,105 & 106

Austrailia Flag and South Africa plus Corsica
recent RTTY contest gave Me Austrailia confirmed and last Years 10m contest in December gave Me South Africa and Corsica. Corsica is a French Island and i was surprised to have a contact with them. I now have 106 DXCC's confirmed and 113 worked.Proof again of the ease of confirmation thru LOTW!
73---Tim

Murphy visits RTTY contest!

The CQ WW RTTY contest was last weekend and I planned a very part time participation. THe weather was expected to be exceptional and We had Relatives visiting so I planned on several hours Friday night at the start and possibly some weekend mornings.The rest of the time I knew would be busy but I thought it was enough to achieve a goal of 20-50k points.
I was a little concerned when Friday night rolled around and I hadn't even checked My RTTY setup since the last contest I participated in many months before.After arriving home from work,eating supper,taking care of some chores I finally made it down to the shack about 20 minutes before the start at 0000 UTC.Luckily all seemed well and I could recieve and transmit into a dummy load just fine. I set up the contest in N1MM ,My contest logging program, and resisted the urge to download the latest revision.
Out of the chute I snagged a VK from Australia on 10 meters- He later gave Me a confirmation in LOTW ( wow-thought I already had a confirmation with Australia!!)in the next hours I also logged several Hawaii stations plus Uraguay,US Virgin islands,Brazil and Grenada. Not too bad but I was not adding stations to the log at any good rate.Heard alot including J5/OL8R from Guinea-Bissau and PZ5RA from Suriname who was heard here very srtong but they just CQed and didn't hear Me.
It had been a long week so against My better judgement I shut down for the night and planned to rise early to try and fit in some extra time before Relative actitity would begin.I hadn't achieved My QSO goal for Friday night but assumed I could make up for it Saturday!
Up early Saturday, breakfast,coffee and after taking care some small chores ,headed down to the shack and turned on radios and PC. Lots of signals on 40m so that would be My starting point but--wait?? Whats this? Why is N1MM constantly keying the radio? This has happened before and the culprit was My homemade soundcard interface. I proceeded to take the interface apart and started a visual inspection. Not seeing any obvious issues, turned My attention to cabling,com port,etc. Time was ticking by with no resolution so I tried restarting PC and power cycling the radio because at this point was getting desparate!
When I first assembled a interface for My soundcard I decided to include a backup of sorts. I ran associated cable thru an RS232 switchbox so i could use two separate radios although not at the same time. I tried switching and setting up the N1MM and spare radio for a RTTY contest. Still keying the radio so problem is not radio related but PC,program or interface. Next I tried the old Digipan program for PSK31 to see if i could narrow the problem down. Yes--No constant key so probably not a com port issue or interface.
That would leave either N1MM or the RTTY engine MTTY. First I decided to try downloading latest Revision of N1MM but that was no help and I was out of time---Bummer. That also would mean My contesting was done for the day.
Sumday morning I again tried to figure out the problem but had very limited time.I was hearing many signals on 10m so was near frantic to find a solution. I printed out the contest results so far and set them aside and bit the bullet and reiniated N1MM. It didn't wipe out the entire config so I ended up totally reinstalling the program. I finished this just before I had to quit but it appeared to fix the issue.wouldn't really know until i had more time to configure the program.
I did eventually prove the new downloaded N1MM worked flawlessy!! So what happened? I think My PC which is an older Dell running Windows XP and haveing second party Com board installed (plus My homemade interface?) maybe caused the program either on power down or start up to corrupt the program. Some bit latched and wouldn't clear?? Don't know !! I do know I missed one of My favorite contests and had to submit a paltry sized log.
My concluding thoughts are basically something good did happen. I've decided to redo My shack and make it easier to get at radios and PC and associated equipment.Oh and its also time to upgrade My PC!!
73----Tim

N1mm,TQSL and other topics

I operated the recent CQ WW RTTY contest and both before and after realized I was revisions back on several programs.My logging program -N1MM was many months behind so I did install release V14.9.0 which did seem to run OK although I eventually had some issues which I'll write about in the next post about the contest.
I also uploaded to LOTW and of course in doing so was informed of a new TQSL update. After the log upload I installed the new version 2.0.3 but soon realized it was not recognizing My exsisting Callsign certificate needed to sign logs. After much failed tries I asked for a renewal but this one would not install either!! Eventually I tried the "repair" portion of the TQSL download and tried a reinstall and-violla!! A worker! Not sure what caused the corrupt download but I'm glad its fixed.
Also realized My subscription to QRZ's XML subscription service was almost expired so I paid $29.95 for another Year. This service is needed for HRD logging program to "fill in" the callsign info. It does work good and its not a bad price for access to this information.
**** special note***
It appears that the Yaesu FT-950 which has been discontinued still actually has minimal software support.I noticed on the Yaesu website a new CPU main version upgrade--ver. 1.18 as of 3/27/2014. Looks to be a minor update but still :)Nice to know they still care about My trusty FT-950!!
73---Tim