Observance of established band plans is strongly encouraged.
BANDS: Only the 3.5, 7, 14, 21, and 28 MHz bands may be used.
Multi-operator stations may operate the full 48 hours. Single Operator stations may operate 30 of the 48 hours – off times must be a minimum of 60 minutes during which no QSO is logged. OBJECTIVE: For amateurs world wide to contact as many amateurs and prefixes as possible during the period of operation. In 2009 I travelled to Chicago to present at the ARRL and TAPR Digital Communications Conference, somehow Andy Ronan, N9TGR (a dub, and no relation that we know of and also EI6KG), got wind I was going to be there and suggested that I call out for dinner with him and his family one of the evenings while I was there.Starts: 0000 UTC Saturday Ends: 2359 UTC Sunday I saw the other stations report appear on the screen and at the end of it was “UP THE DUBS”. I responded with my normal report and was trying to figure out how I knew the callsign. Sunday afternoon, in the melee, I was running and a callsign appeared on my screen that seemed familiar, N9TGR. Screenshot of OK2CQR’s Desktop showing cqrlog.Īfter the contest I was chatting to G0HWW on IRC about my issue and he pointed me at an old blog post of his (thanks Darren), initial testing seems promising but rigctld seems to exit with errors now and again. I have gotten so used to its bandmap that really missed it. Last year after listening to the LHS guys interview Petr, OK2CQR, I was convinced to give CQRLOG a go. You can pounce with a click of the mouse.
It lets you see at a glance what activity is on the selected band and, if you see a station you really really really want to get into your log. This display is user-configurable in many ways including the length of time to display, the frequencies to include, etc. You can see one in the middle of the picture below. A band map is a display of recent DX spots by frequency. That said, I really really missed having a bandmap. After a break to watch Scotland get robbed of a win against Wales, I ran for a bit, then hit 250 Q’s, returned to S&P again then 300, finally deciding that I had enough done at 329. I did not feel well Sunday morning, so I gave myself the modest goal of 200 QSOs. I took a break from the contest for the Ireland-France game and resumed afterwards, finishing up with about 130 contacts (QSOs) in the log by Saturday evening.
What do do about the Rugby? Well, my Intel Nuc has a Mini DP connector so I borrowed the screen from my Mac Mini, opened up RTE Live on it and voila! The K3 was having no such issues (thankfully). It appeared to suffer badly with strong signals capturing the automatic gain control (AGC) and completely blocking out out the weaker stations.
Last time I operated a RTTY contest from home like this I was using a Kenwood TS-2000X, I was very very disappointed with the radio at the time, so much so that I sold it pretty quickly afterwards. I have a 15m Inverted V Dipole up which is my best antenna, so I operated in Search and Pounce (S&P) for a bit and was working away nicely with no real issues other than the operator hitting the wrong keys on the keyboard. The CQ WPX RTTY contest was on, so I sat down in the shack, installed Fldigi, and configured it to work with my K3. So there I was early Saturday afternoon wondering what to do with myself before the England-Italy match kicked off.