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[3830] RTTY Roundup W4PK SO Unlimited HP

To: 3830@contesting.com, w4pk@arrl.net
Subject: [3830] RTTY Roundup W4PK SO Unlimited HP
From: webform@b4h.net
Reply-to: w4pk@arrl.net
Date: Mon, 06 Jan 2014 23:07:23 +0000
List-post: <3830@contesting.com">mailto:3830@contesting.com>
                    ARRL RTTY Roundup

Call: W4PK
Operator(s): W4PK
Station: W4PK

Class: SO Unlimited HP
QTH: VA
Operating Time (hrs): 16
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
   80:  208
   40:  271
   20:  290
   15:  277
   10:  127
------------
Total: 1173  State/Prov = 57  Countries = 62  Total Score = 139,587

Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club

Comments:

I use SO2R with a home-brew interface control and the latest versions of N1MM,
MMTTY and 2-Tone.  My radios are IC7800 and K3/P3 (with the P3SVGA option),
both updated with the latest software. 

Murphy struck multiple times during this contest. 

1.  Spent 4 hours Saturday afternoon trouble-shooting when I clicked on the
opposite window why it would occasionally terminate the transmission on that
radio before the message was completed.  I had for years been using the classic
LPT port A/B selection for rig control.  To make a long story short, I solved
this problem by abandoning (forever) the LPT control and using the RTS pins on
the two serial ports I use for FSK to key the radios.  

2.  Several times while in the transmit mode my K3 would quit working (ERR DSE)
and I would have to turn it off and back on to get it to work again.  I think it
was due to the K3 not being able to keep up with the N1MM poling rate.  This was
solved by just turning the P3 off, but I did miss the spectrum display as well
as the decoded text.  I do hope that there will be a fix for this situation in
the future.

3.  I use a SteppIR 3-element beam, and for some reason it developed a 2:1 VSWR
on 15M.  All other bands were fine.  I tried a couple of times to go through the
recalibration procedure, but to no avail.  This is not solved yet.

4.  I use a PW-1 with the IC7800, and the ALC control was not properly
controlling the power output under high VSWR conditions.  Fortunately, I have a
spare PW-1 (but without 6M output) which I swapped out. 

5.  Inexplicably a couple of times I had N1MM close everything except for the
MMTTY and 2-tone windows.  This happened while I was in the middle of running
stations on both radios.  Two other times I had this happen was when I was in
the CONFIG menu to make a change.  I was monitoring my CPU usage, and it was
always under 10%.   This was using XP-Pro on a Dell Optiplex 755 dual-core
machine.  I have had this happen occasionally on previous contests and I
consider it to be only a minor inconvenience.  Otherwise N1MM performed
flawlessly and I do love that program!  

It was a fun contest!  I do apologize to all who I had left hanging when I had
the previously mentioned equipment failures.  I was also overwhelmed with all
the spots and ended up hardly using any of them.  I had the spot timeout set to
5 minutes but maybe it should have done something shorter.    

 Conditions were excellent Sunday morning to Europe on 10M and I probably spent
too much time there.  During the evening hours they were also excellent on 80M
with many Europeans in the log.  

73, Sam W4PK


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