[3830] KsQP N0F(KR0L) Single Op LP

[webform at b41h.net]

                    Kansas QSO Party

Call: N0F
Operator(s): KR0L
Station: N0F

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

Summary:
 Band  CW Qs  Ph Qs  Dig Qs
----------------------------
   80:   0       1       0
   40:   0      41       7
   20:   0     180     126
   15:   0       0       4
   10:   0       1       0
    6:   0       0       0
    2:   0       2       0
----------------------------
Total:   0     225     137  Mults = 53  Total Score = 45,474

Club: 

Comments:

(total score is less than arithmetic above because I logged some QSOs that did
not give a complete exchange)

Those of you that are interested in Linux source code, scroll down ;-)

I had a good time working KSQP as N0F once again this year.  My second year
working pretty much the full contest.  Phone activity, to me at least, seemed
to be down from last year.  I made fewer phone QSOs, but turned in a higher
score due to more digital QSOs, and even several DX QSOs on 15m with South
America - they had no idea about KSQP beforehand, but we worked each other
anyhow.

When I have a 1x1 call, I have considered it my job to be available to
contesters as much as possible.  i therefore spent a lot of time calling CQ and
relatively little hunting others.  I did work a number of 1x1 stations, but
didn't bother tallying whether I had enough to spell KANSAS or SUNFLOWER, so I
honestly don't know.  It is typically difficult to do that from my QTH in the
middle of the state, however.

The spotting board was a really nifty thing.  I was glad to see people leaving
comments there as it went along.  I was also pleased to see someone hurting for
an F, whom I knew was within 2m simplex range, so I sat a radio on 146.52 and
posted it there.  He was the only taker, but 20 and 40 weren't doing it for him
to reach me, I believe.

I am still learning how to do PSK31 with this contest.  It is an odd
experience.  I have worked RTTY contests before, and the exchange there is
typically brief and to the point like contest exchanges are.  For whatever
reason, switch to PSK31 and you get the name of their rig, when they were
licensed, the weather, and the like, before they get to their QTH.  I did try
calling CQ with RTTY briefly, but got no takers (I did work one other Kansas
station I saw using RTTY, but from what I saw, there were few takers there
either.)  I worked a fair bit of PSK63, and the improved speed of that mode
makes these things take far less time.

I looked over my 3830 submission for this contest from last year, and commented
on much the same.  Last year, I had commented that my typical brief contest
digital CQ wasn't working, so I decided that if people wanted to chat, I'd
chat, and adopted a more verbose CQ on digital.  This year, I tweaked that more
verbose CQ slightly, and typically only used it after nobody showed up with the
more brief one.  However, I'd say that judging by how people responded to my
CQ, less than 20% of my digital QSOs were seasoned constesters (at least on
digital).  So I did go ahead and chat briefly with them, making my response
more verbose (I can type way faster than PSK31 can transmit, so it is easy to
hit my "exchange" macro button and pepper the exchange with personal bits on
the fly).

I had a very strange phenomenon crop up this year though.  I commented on it
briefly last year, but it happened much more often this year.  I'd call CQ, see
someone's call, and respond with a greeting, report, etc.  Then there'd be
silence.  I'd wait maybe 30 seconds, nothing.  So I'd resend the exchange, with
a "do you copy?"  THEN I'd get a quick response.  I tried tweaking my exchange
to look less like a contest exchange and more like a PSK31 QSO, which seemed to
help marginally.  I'm convinced I didn't have an equipment issue on this end.  I
continued to get instant responses from people that seemed to be contesters
throughout.  I didn't ask anyone about it, though one person apologized for
being slow.  It wasn't a big problem, but it was quite unclear several times if
there was still a person on the other end of the waterfall.

I slightly forgot how I logged digital QSOs in fldigi last year; this year, I
put the entire received exchage in the exchange box (rather than the RST in its
own box).  This made my import job into N1MM a touch trickier.  My shell script
for converting from the fldigi ADIF to N1MM ADIF, therefore, was this:

sed -e 's/<XCHG1:6>599 /<APP_N1MM_EXCHANGE1:2>/g' \
    -e 's/<XCHG1:7>599 /<APP_N1MM_EXCHANGE1:3>/g' \
    | unix2dos

still easily enough done.

This was my first KSQP operating with the RigExpert TI-5 instead of a SignaLink
USB.  I really like the TI-5, and in particular the fact that you can key PTT by
asserting RTS on the USB-emulated RS-232 port (the SignaLink offers only VOX to
key PTT, which leads to all sorts of contortions when using it for voice
keying.)

I few days before the contest, I whipped up some quick programs to do voice
keying with this, and posted my source code here:

https://changelog.complete.org/archives/7632-voice-keying-with-bash-sox-and-aplay

This continued to work pretty well for me.  Next year, I think I will bind a
keyboard key to my shell script so I can toggle the voice keying on and off
more easily; right now, I keep a Linux shell window open next to my Windows VM
running N1MM, and simply start CQ from there and hit Ctrl-C, then quickly
change windows, when I hear someone.  That works well enough, since I then type
the person's call while I repeat it back, and shift windows while I'm listening,
but it does require some quick movements.

I had tried N1MM's fldigi integration for Field Day, and was completely
disappointed.  It seemed to want to pretty much "take over" the fldigi
interface and replaced it with an interface far, far worse.  So I have
continued to abandon the idea of directly logging digital contests with N1MM,
only importing data into it for scoring.

A random soapbox moment follows: I am disappointed that ham radio culture,
which is so insistent on being open, open when it comes to hardware, tolerates
and encourages closed-source software.  I am particularly disappointed with
this when it comes to contest loggers, which of necessity are somewhat complex
beasts.  I would love to be able to port N1MM, or at least its scoring engines,
to Linux, but the source is completely closed and it's not possible.  As I have
always done with my software, my source code is always available for anyone to
tweak freely.  Our radios are, so I wish the things that control them were,
too.  end of soapbox

A couple of funny moments:

* Heard someone tuning over a person calling CQ.  When the tuning finished,
someone else called out, "59 on your tuneup"

* I heard the Windows startup or shutdown sound played more than once at
14.070.  Strictly illegal, but I'm assuming this was due to malconfigured sound
routing and purely accidental.  Windows does not get to touch the audio part of
my TI-5, so I guarantee you it wasn't me ;-)


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