HamGyver

Over the weekend, I participated (as planned) in the CQ WW WPX RTTY contest. The planned station improvements took much longer and were less effective than expected. While antenna improvements showed decent results, efforts within the shack proved less than satisfactory. As for the contest, my results were poor. In all, it ended up being a weekend full of lessons.

• Antenna Improvements Took Too Long!

I planned to get my derblert a little higher and add a ground screen before the event. However, between my own laziness and some unplanned obligations,  those efforts were not even partially completed until about four hours into the competition. Had I used known good methods, this time may have been reduced. Pro tip: a really long stick is no good way to thread a line into a tree.

• Software Settings Need Work.

I’m told that contesting on Windows is preferable to Linux due to its superior logging and RTTY software. My little Atom netbook, which serves as my station computer, currently runs Archlinux. It doesn’t run WINE with windows apps very well, so I opted to try native linux software. Having failed to compile linpsk (the software I planned to try out) in time, I decided to work with my kludgey fldigi setup. Without rig control, fldigi would not populate the log field denoting operating frequency. After enabling fldigi’s xmlrpc control server, I was able to populate the log field by sending a call to the server with curl. It was clunky, and capturing incoming exchange data needs work, but it worked okay.

• A 3kHz Waterfall Leads to Tunnel Vision.

I suspect I spent too much time on a tiny sliver of the band during my sessions. I’d spend some time spinning the dial, find a signal,  send fldigi that kludgey call, and try working the heard station. After either working the station or giving up, I’d pick an open spot nearby and call CQ. I’m sure I missed a lot of stations outside my narrow 3kHz viewport. I’ll have to get an upconverter cobbled together for HF reception on my RTL-SDR.

• RBN’s Telnet Servers: TMI.

Since spotting assistance was permitted for this competition, and since I had such a narrow spectral display (and a netbook that can’t do anything else while using a modern browser), I gave the telnet feed from reversebeacon.net a try. I quickly discovered that I needed some kind of filter, since there was a flood of useless (for my purposes at the time) information on the incoming stream. I’ll have to explore parsing and filtering solutions before next time.
With only about 35 contacts, I don’t expect to be the “Best Hawaii Station” for this year’s WPX RTTY contest. Having only operated for about a quarter of the allowed time, I don’t even expect to be the “Best Hawaii Rookie.” Despite the poor score, the experience has provided a wealth of learning in terms of contesting and data mode operation.

CQ World-Wide WPX RTTY is a contest sponsored by CQ Magazine. It is directed by W0YK, a ham I spotted frequently while chasing a recent DXpedition.

• Start Time: 2017-02-11 00:00 UTC
• Duration: 48 hours
• Bands: 80-10m, excluding WARC
• Exchange: RST + Serial
• Scoring: QSO points x QSO count

Station Improvement Required
    As I plan to participate was a Single-Operator, Low-Power Rookie station, I expect to be outdone with my meager dipole. With some minor changes, I hope to lessen a bit of the losses perceived in the current system by raising the antenna and installing a ground screen beneath it. If time and the chosen area permit it, I would like to add a reflector wire in the hope that some horizontal gain may be achieved.
My station computer is not contest-ready. I plan to try linpsk against fldigi and see which will work for my station.
As a single operator station, my participation is limited to 30 of the contest’s 48 hours. This should permit me to sleep whenever conditions become unfavorable! While it may be possible to make NVIS contacts when DX propagation is poor, I don’t expect to hear many new Hawaii stations after the first 12 hours.
If I understand the rules correctly (and maybe I don’t), my station will operate from Oceania as its continent. As such, I plan to maintain the bit of east-west directivity provided by the dipole’s orientation. This should provide me with a better chance to reach stations in Asia and the Americas – which should be worth more than Oceanic stations.
This will be my third attempt at contest play of the year, and so far, my results have been horrible. Here’s hoping for a score better than 1!

With my solder dwindling, I’m considering ways to avoid using it in a number of applications. While mechanical connections may work in most of my upcoming projects, they will undoubtedly require more materials than previously envisioned.