Monthly Archives: March 2010

CQ WPX Contest SSB 2010

Hello to all reading my blog (I doubt someone does read it, but just in case:-))!

Last weekend I participated in SSB part of CQ WPX Contest. My equipment was Yaesu FT-857D transceiver, 3-el. tribander for 20/15/10 metres and inverted vees for 80/40 metres. For logging I used N1MM logger installed on my HP Compaq 6715b laptop, that was connected to TRX by G4ZLP DigiMaster Pro interface.

The setup was working fine, except for one little problem – when I had my laptop connected to TRX and N1MM was communicating with it (monitoring its frequency etc.), I heard a strange annoying sound in my headphones, that didn’t react at all to volume knob. I tried to ignore it at first, but after some time I decided to disconnect laptop and TRX and to use the logger “offline” (to manually change bands, …). I still don’t know what caused the sound, will have to figure it till the next contest.

I started contesting on 80 meters band, the first QSO was logged 43 seconds after start of contest. During first hour I managed to make 36 QSO, mostly with European stations (the only exception was EB8AH from Canary Islands, AF). I went to bed at 01:50 UTC with 52 QSOs in my log. At the moment I thought it was not a bad start, but now I do regret not switching to 40 meters band for a while. Read More »

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