Another Weekend. Another Contest.

With a rather inept attempt last weekend during the ARRL International DX (CW) Contest, this weekend brings enlightened hope and excitement on the start of the North American QSO Party – RTTY. I have put the failures of last weekend behind me and get ready for what I hope will be my best showing (QSOs logged) since I have started participating in contests.

I have given up the IC-718 for the FT-1000MP, which should be noticeable advantage on my end, especially when it comes to receiving signals. For the first time I will have the opportunity to use filters. Recall I spoke of that a few weeks back in What I Learned: Part 1 . Of course it would be wonderful to have a better antenna setup or more room to run longer radials. But in the hobby of ham radio you make use of what you do have instead of what you wished you had.

After three days of connecting cables and configuring the FT-1000MP and the RIGblaster Pro I believe I am ready for a good showing. By “good” I don’t mean I will be winning any contests, but rather logging more contacts than in previous contests. RTTY seems to be my best contest mode when it comes to operating. One problem I still have, which I only realized this morning (wondering why I didn’t correct it last night) is a power output issue.

The funny thing is I made a QSO with WA1NVV a few days ago and was driving the rig with approximately 75 watts and no movement on the ALC meter. This morning I was not able to put out more than 25 watts without an increase on the ALC meter. I only had a few minutes to try and resolve the issue, which I was not able to do. I will do my best to give it another shot before I start active participation when I get home from work.

In the meantime, I might try to make a few contacts remotely from work using Real VNC to connect to the computer running Win-Test. I do believe I have all the “gremlins” worked out of Win-Test and all the pieces that make up my display are ready to be put to the test, literally! Hopefully my son and I will be able to “play radio” for 3-4 hours today. Like some of the other contests, this is a short 12-hour run to the finish. The contest begins at 18z (10PST) and ends at 06z (22PST).