NAQP-SSB contest

 The contest club I'm a member has added this contest as part of the season and so I decided to participate. I've never played in this contest before but updated logging program and several Microsoft updates and I figured I was ready. 

 I started soon after the official start and after My first contact realized My computer and radio were not exchanging information properly. I have documented my setup, and I used that as a reference to stare and compare. It took some time but finally I discovered several parameters with the USB/Com ports which seemed to be setup different. The parameters in question concerned RTS/DSR and how they were being utilized. After changing these and also changing stop bits from 1 to 2 it now seemed to be working, and it only took me an hour to find the issue! -oh well!

 This contest exchange is different than most because a participants first name or similar is used instead of signal strength. This actually I found makes for a very congenial exchange---first name basis exchange! I had several DX stations give me a S9 exchange instead of a name, but the logging program accepted it. I also noticed some states gave only two letter states instead of a three letter like some of the ARRL contest exchanges. 

  This contest is 12 hours from noon till midnight CST although I only participated till suppertime which lately has been my cutoff time. The upper bands were open so I spent more time up there but even 20 and 40m were decent. I didn't have a big score but did okay-85 Contacts. I did read later the lower bands into the evening performed quite well!

73--Tim

 

Arrl RTTY RU 2026

 This contest runs from Saturday at 12:00 CST to Sunday 5:59 CST. I like RTTY contests and the bands in the far north were in fairly good shape all weekend. My antennas cover 40m through 10m very well and also 160m and 80m although lots of tuning because of narrow bandwidth especially on 80m.

  I operated on and off Saturday till around supper time and very little after dark. There wasn't much DX but stateside stations were abundant especially on 10m which I started the contest operating on before eventually switching to 15m,20m and around sunset 40m before calling it a day. I quit Saturday with 100 QSO's in the log.

  I was up before sunrise Sunday and started operating on 40m and added around 20 Q's before breakfast. I continued during the morning and early afternoon slowly switching bands as they opened during daylight hours and eventually ended participation with 187 Q's for a point total of 10,742 before log checking. 

 This was a fun contest with lots of stations to chase and I feel my station did okay considering I was using a ground mounted vertical for all bands except 10m.

 73--Tim