North American QSO Party, RTTY - February
Call: W4PK
Operator(s): W4PK
Station: W4PK
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: VA
Operating Time (hrs): 9:50
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
80: 131 37
40: 122 41
20: 131 27
15: 56 17
10: 0 0
-------------------
Total: 440 122 Total Score = 53,680
Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club
Team: PVRC A
Comments:
Interesting conditions, on 15 and 20 worked a lot of CA stations with a
smattering of other western states (also HI and KL) but nothing closer. I
tried calling CQ on 10M several times during the day but no response at all.
Toward sundown I went to 40 and 80, and 40 was fine for the first couple of
hours but it also closed later on. 80M was wall-to-wall from 3550 to 3599.9 kHz
for the rest of the evening!
I was using the latest version of N1MM+ with a Windows-7 32-bit dual-core 2.66
GHz machine and several times during the contest I experienced a situation
where all the DI windows as well as the two logging entry windows would
"white-out" and a pop-up window appeared that said "Windows has
encountered an "unexpected problem and needs to close....". Neither
the MMTTY nor the 2-Tone windows were affected. This would only occur during
the times when I was right-clicking between the two DI windows to alternately
work stations on two bands. There were a couple of times where I left someone
waiting for my report, and I do apologize! Each time I lost several minutes
before I could get N1MM+ running again.
Also when S&Ping and after clicking in the name/state occasionally it would
not advance to F2/Log after right-clicking in the DI window. Instead, it would
remain on F4 and send my call (again). I had to right-click again to send F2
and then Log it. This is not nearly as serious a problem as the
"white-out" problem I am having, and I strongly suspect that I was
too quick in right-clicking after entering the name/state information. So
another apology is in order for those of you who experienced this!
Several of the PVRC members were using "BIG FRANK" as their name in
honor of one our members and N1MM+ did not like this at all! I had to manually
type in "BIGFRANK" since the program does not like spaces. I assume
that Writelog does allow one to do this.
Early in the contest I enabled Windows Task Manager, and in the Processes
column I saw vprot.exe was taking about 50% of the CPU. Since this was a part
of the AVG Security package I use I suspended it as well all the other
processes that were not needed for running N1MM+. This did not fix the
problem, but a least the processes I had left running were each requiring less
than 0.02% CPU.
I have experienced this problem with earlier software versions but not nearly
to the extent as I did this time. The next thing I need to do is to restore the
computer to its original W7 state, as I am convinced that something is still not
right with my operating software installation.
Enough rambling, in spite of my computer problems I did have fun!
73, Sam W4PK
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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