[3830] KsQP KD0MJT Single Op LP

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                    Kansas QSO Party

Call: KD0MJT
Operator(s): KD0MJT
Station: KD0MJT

Class: Single Op LP
QTH: 
Operating Time (hrs): 

Summary:
 Band  CW Qs  Ph Qs  Dig Qs
----------------------------
   80:                    
   40:          47        
   20:          53      49
   15:                    
   10:                    
    6:                    
    2:                    
----------------------------
Total:   0     200     147  Mults =   Total Score = 14,574

Club: 

Comments:

I worked NAQP for about 3 hours last weekend as a practice of sorts for this
one.  I am still new to ham radio in general.

I probably worked this one about 2/3 of the time on Saturday and 2 hours on
Sunday.  My primary bands were 20m and 40m.  Both were acting goofy for much of
the time.  Things were nice Saturday evening, but alas I was only able to work
one hour of that.

I think I enjoyed NAQP a bit more actually, perhaps due to the band conditions;
it seemed things were more active with NAQP and with KSQP I'd sometimes go
awhile between calls.

I worked fldigi for the PSK31 part of it all.  This was my first attempt to
work digital for a contest.  The results were somewhat mixed.  On the one hand,
I sometimes was able to make digital QSOs when phone ones just weren't really
happening.  (I don't know Morse.)  On the other hand, it seemed very few people
operating digital knew what would be helpful to a contester.  I of course
announced KSQP in my CQ, but still sometimes got back paragraphs of text from
people's macros describing their rig, age, websites, etc.  I also found that my
concise reporting of the contest info seemed to confuse some, so by the end I
had worked up macros for fldigi like so:

F1-F3: the "concise" macros

F1: CQ CQ KSQP de KD0MJT KD0MJT K
F2: <CALL> CALL> 599 599 MRN MRN K
F3: TNX de KD0MJT QRZ?

F4-F6: the slightly expanded macros

F4: CQ CQ ANYONE for Kansas QSO Party de KD0MJT KD0MJT pse K
F5: <CALL> <CALL> de KD0MJT ur 599 599 in MRN MRN KS pse KN
F6: TNX <CALL> de KD0MJT and 7e.  KSQP QRZ?

And then F8 for an extended CQ, 2 lines:

F8: CQ CQ CQ ANYONE for Kansas QSO PartynCQ CQ contest de KD0MJT KD0MJT pse K

I thought that the word "contest" might help some people know how to respond. 
I think it did, a little.  There were, of course, some people that knew about
KSQP, others that sent a simple "what do u need?"  

I'm not familiar very much with how people operate digital software.  I use
fldigi's PSK browser, which decodes all PSK text coming into the computer
simultaneously and, by default, highlights CQs.

I used my SignaLink USB to play CQ announcements on SSB, which was handy as it
would sometimes be many minutes between an answer.  I recorded my CQ call, but
in testing discovered that the SignaLink kept dropping the TX line to the radio
due to apparently dips in volume from my voice.  I added a 20kHz tone to the
44.1kHz audio file atop my voice whenever I wanted the transmitter keyed, which
did the trick perfectly and didn't interfere with the transmitted sound at all. 
A simple shell script (Linux) would call aplay to play it, which I could
interrupt with Ctrl-C the instant someone called.  Really saved my voice.

I used JL to log.  I am not terribly happy with the state of contest logging
software on Linux and may have to write me own.  JL didn't have support for
KSQP, so I wrote it and sent my patches to Mike.  I believe I got it right, but
am not sure.  JL claims my score is 14196, and above I calculated it at 14574. 
I suspect JL is more accurate, but I didn't want to spend all evening combing
through logs by hand.  So please don't be annoyed if that calculated score
above turns out to be wrong.

fldigi has a built-in logger, which I used for the digital contacts.  It was
too good not to use.  Just click on a call and it gets loaded into the log and
used for macros.  Very nice.  So I didn't really know my score until the end,
when I exported it into cabrillo, adjusted spacing a bit, and combined it with
JL's log file.

fldigi supports logging to other local programs, which I may have to do if/when
I write my own logger.


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