Missed it !

I can't believe I missed the CQ WW contest but I did. From what I've been reading and hearing the conditions were phenomanal. Maybe best conditions for a world wide contest in years. Several months ago it looked like this weekend would be entirely open but as the weeks went by I noticed the calendar starting to fill up. I still hoped for some small blocks of time thru the weekend but unless I didn't want any sleep..... well just didn't fit in.
I did have alot of quality family time and enjoyed watching some High School sports and We even made it to the local halloween spooktacular pictured above. A very neat Pumpkin display fully lighted after dark. Picture was of course right before darkness. All in all a fun weekend but sure missed some golden QSO opportunities.....maybe next time!!
73---Tim

#103 Iceland

I contacted TF2R from Iceland on both 15m and 20m RTTY during the recent CQ WW RTTY contest.He uploaded his log to LOTW and confirmed Our QSO's. I've had other contacts with stations in Iceland but they didn't send their logs to LOTW. I always have a diffucult time because Iceland stations usually cause huge pile ups. This time the pile up wasn't too bad and 15m was easy but 20m took some time. I kept throwing out My call but TF2R always came back to someone else. Finally after abandoning the pile up and returning on the way back down I was successful. This last RTTY contest was very productive and fun. Looking forward to the end of the month and the CQ WW SSB contest!
73---Tim

DXCC Certificate Arrived!

This took awhile to achieve but I finally made it ! I have 103 confirmed and about 110 contacted so more and more Hams are using LOTW which certainly makes confirming contacts painless. I will still enjoy adding more DXCC's and maybe need to set more goals such as 5 band WAS,etc. ....or maybe not :)
73---Tim

Discontinued!!

Its always a sad day when a beloved radio is officially discontinued! I remember My horror when My -at the time- dream radio the Kenwood Ts-850 was discontinued. That happened before I had even purchased one. I eventually bought a used one years later and loved it but eventually sold it and bought My present radio a Yaesu Ft-950.
Just so happens in watching My blog i noticed recently more activity on my "Updating Software on the Ft-950 "page so out of curiosity I did a web search to see if My radio was at the latest and greatest. One of the many sites in the search was "Universal Radio" so out of curiosity , checking on the price of a new Ft-950, I clicked on the link and there on the left was the hated words--"discontinued" and replace by the New FT DX 1200!! WHAT!! That can't be! Too soon. I've only owned this radio for about three years.
Sad too say it does appear to be discontinued although repairs will go on until parts availibility become a problem. A truly nice radio I firmly believe still had some "life". Obviously Yaesu has there reasons.My radio still works good except for a bad CAT port so no changout planned for awhile!Probably also means no more software updates!
73 for now!
Tim

#102,N1MM update & TQSL

I noticed ES9C from Estonia confirmed in LOTW for #102 for Me. This contact was from the recent CQ WW RTTY contest and even though I've already applied for My DXCC its still nice to add the new contacts.
I just updated N1MM to version 13.9.1 and setup for the upcoming CQ WW SSB contest and seems to work just fine. When I did My recent TQSL certificate for My log to upload to LOTW, I noticed one very nice feature-- after log was converted it uploaded automatically to LOTW.Neat! Heres a link to the announcement and explanation of new features- http://www.arrl.org/news/arrl-announces-new-version-of-lotw-software
73--Tim