ARRL 10m Contest summary and Florida trip

 We enjoyed a family vacation to Florida staying at a VRBO home on a canal around the FT. Meyers area. This trip was planned before Hurricane Ian and luckily the area We stayed was not as damaged as the beachfront areas. This was our first time spending Christmas away from  Northern snow doing a "palm tree" Christmas and we enjoyed the warm weather.I think a future trip is already being planned by My family!

 I participated in the ARRL 10m Contest in December entering as low power SSB only. Band conditions were okay and I managed to participate long enough to have 106 QSOs in the log. Not a spectacular showing but it was fun .

 73- lets hope 2023 is a good year for all.

Tim

CQ WW SSB contest 2022

The propagation during this contest were excellent with 10 and 15 meters having good openings during most of the weekend. I concentrated most of My time on 10m and some 15m and only checked the lower bands occasionally adding a few QSOs on 20 and 40m. I decided to forgo the nighttime noise on 80m and only operated during the day. 

 Murphy struck My 10m Yagi with the rotor only having limited movement from about 75 to 265 degrees. Not a show stopper but a slight irritation! I used My butternut ground mounted vertical on the other bands and it was working well although 20m is always difficult against the big guns!

 This was My usual casual contest and I had set a goal like most contests of at least 100 contacts. I managed 145 QSOs,28 zones on all bands and 55 total countries between bands for a score of 32,785. I even added an all time new one -V55Y operating from Nambia so thats exciting. If He uses LOTW I will have a total of 129 DXCCs. 

 Fun contest with 10m open around the world. This band levels the playing field between big antennas and high power and makes My little station seem bigger.

73---Tim

Digital Interface to My FT-950- part 4

 This has been a long journey but now My set up seems to be working well. I've discussed the many hurdles getting to this point so onward with the settings discussion. I have a Yaesu FT-950  , Yaesu SCU-17 digital interface and a Dell Windows 11 laptop. The SCU-17 interfaces to the radio with a serial DB-9 cable,6 pin DIN plug and to the PC with a USB interface. It needs drivers installed for the virtual comm ports on the Laptop and the recommended are from Silicon Labs- dual CP210x USB to UART bridge driver which can be found on their website.

 After drivers are installed the ports need to be configured and for My application I have set them both, the enhanced port and standard port to 38400 baud,8,none and 2 stop bits.It is also a good idea to turn power management off for these ports and that is found under device manager and comm port settings menus on the laptop. I also have the FT-950 setup to mirror the laptop comm ports -38400 and CAT TOT-1000. The rest of the CAT menu and RTTY choices are left at default. I also have flow control set to none on laptop comm ports but I'm not totally sure this is correct--but it works for now.

The SCU-17 internal jumper I have set to PTT-DTR and FSK-RTS. This is not the default setting but  will work as long as EXTFSK64 mirrors this setting.I changed jumper setting with old Windows 10 PC trying to see if that change would help it to key radio and left it that way.

 The next program is MMTTY ver 1.68a. There might be a newer version but this one works OK.I found the most important parameter using FSK is making sure under the AFC/ATC/PLL menu that shift is set to FSK and of course PTT is using EXTFSK64. The soundcard also needs to reference  both TX and RX the USB audio codec.

N1MM is the logging/contesting program I use and it interfaces with MMTTY as its Digital engine. Using CAT from the radio requires the enhanced com mport and PTT/FSK the standard. These settings need to match and for My setup Com 3 is CW/other- 38400,n,8,2 with DTR and RTS on. My com 4 which is the standard port is set to Digital with DTR-PTT and RTS -CW.

 With all these programs there are many variations for ease of use and depending on hardware many settings. I read the manuals for each one and adjusted these accordingly. The above settings seem to be the ones needed using a Yaesu FT-950 ,SCU-17 and a Windows 11 laptop. Hope this helps. I might need to edit this description some so check back later....

73--Tim

  

Digital Interface to My Ft -950 part 3

 The previous parts 1 & 2 I discussed My old interface and the reasons for purchasing a new digital interface. Lots has happened since then! My Windows 10 laptop had some memory issues I didn't know about until a semi-major update I tried to install caused a blue screen of death. I thought- okay I'll just use the rescue external hard drive to recover.....oops, I saved pictures and files to it but the actual rescue portion still was for my older Windows 7 machine. Hmmm. , what to do. I did also realize I had a memory problem so I ordered a new memory card which I installed and it did correct the memory errors but the OS was still not happy.

  This whole issue was happening during a very busy time of the year for me---summer in Minnesota. I decided to check pricing on a new laptop with the idea of somehow recovering this old one in the future. It had given me many years of service-first as a win 7 ,then win 10 PC so maybe it was time for an upgrade. Looking online I found many options and I actually found the best deal directly from Dell so I ordered a Windows 11 laptop for a very reasonable price. 

  After it was delivered I went thru the set up process and learning from my mistake made a recovery USB drive very soon after set up. I also made backups of some older Mac books on separate USB drives. Back up ,back up, back up was my new mantra!! Windows 11 I found to be a easier operating system than either 7 or 10. I was able to load ham log information and various files I had saved from  several USB  drives.

  I also worked on getting My digital interface working with Windows 11 and this did take some extra time trying different parameters in software for N1mm,LOG4OM and MMTTY. Luckily I did write down many parameters from My windows 10 set up and was able to use these with windows 11. I realized very soon the old PC had interfacing issues because now I was able to have N1MM and LOG4OM both work with My CAT interface using many of the same parameters. 

  Both CAT for logging and control seemed to be working although N1MM still showed an occasional CAT issue but I think some more parameter manipulation will clear this up. I next wanted to try RTTY using MMTTY which is the first step before interfacing MMTTY with N1MM as the digital "engine" decoding and transmitting RTTY. Add on programs like MMTTY,LOG4OM and N1MM sometimes need external programs to interface to the radio properly. LOG4OM I use Omnirig and MMTTY needs ExtFSK64 for keying the transmitter.

  All of the programs and radio parameters need to be set the same and thats where My problem was for RTTY FSK . I accidentily had RTS and DTR inverted between MMTTY and ExtFSK64 so upon transmit the radio PTT was toggling. Once I corrected this issue I finally was transmitting FSK RTTY but it wasn't until a operator out East informed me about the frequency drift and RTTY not printing at his end that I discovered the final problem. MMTTY was set to fixed and not FSK under the AFC menu. After I changed this menu option I had no problems making RTTY contacts during the contest.

  I will give the parameters for using thr FT-950,SCU-17 interface and associated programs in part 4---- the final saga!!!

73 for now---Tim

 

  

CQ WW RTTY 2020

 I have not participated in a RTTY contest for several years although last year I tried but had issues with My home made digital interface and radio. I didn't know at the time but My windows 10 PC also had issues but thats a topic for another time.

 The new digital interface a ,Yaesu SCU-17 and new PC a Windows 11 laptop both needed to have many options for MMTTY and N1MM set up properly. I thought this had been accomplished before the contest but not being familiar with FSK ---I have always used AFSK for RTTY before this-- and having a new digital interface was a challenge. Only after the contest started Friday night did I realize all was not well. 

 My set up was decoding signals very well but Transmit was only occasionaly working.I was busy for alot of the time on Saturday and only operated on and off.I had more time on Sunday when a very helpful contestant took the time to inform Me what He was seeing from me--or not seeing. Once I changed a few parameters My station was now working very good. 

  I tried to concentrate Sunday on 10m and 15m and even had good luck on 20m later. Lots of DX on My HF6V vertical and even several surprising ones--ATNO of North Macedonia and many European stations. I even heard Ukraine but pile up was too big. Final QSO count was 135 with a score of 33,528. Not too bad for the trouble earlier with My station set up. Works good now!!

 I will post another time about the set up parameters but for now.......

73---Tim