Author Archives: Ondra OK1CLD

IARU HF World Championship 2011

By Ondra OK1CLD | Published: July 12, 2011

Always read the rules CAREFULLY before the contest. That’s the thing I’ll certainly remember after last weekend’s IARU HF Championship. As usually, I decided to be QRV on one band, 20 meters SSB and spend there most of the time – and just two hours before the end found out that there is no single band category in this contest! That’s why I have no chance for a good placement…

But neveretheless, I still enjoyed it. I managed to make 205 QSOs,  143 of them on 20 meters band and the rest on 10 and 15 meters. My total time on the air was 10 hours and 50 minutes, during which 19 ITU zones and 26 HQ stations were contacted. Surprisingly, I also made QSOs to two DXCC entities that were new to me – JX (Jan Mayen) and ZA (Albania).

Here’s the list of all contacted ITU zones:

ITU zone 14 MHz 21 MHz 28 MHz All bands ITU zone 14 MHz All bands
29 27 25 10 62 7 2 2
28 29 7 0 36 8 2 2
37 14 2 0 16 17 1 1
27 15 0 0 15 19 1 1
30 11 1 0 12 20 1 1
39 2 3 2 7 21 1 1
18 2 0 0 2 45 1 1
31 2 0 0 2 5 1 1
32 2 0 0 2 9 1 1
36 0 2 0 2 – – –

Read More (list of DXCC entities) »

Posted in Contesting, Ham Radio | Tagged , , | Comments closed

Cycling trip Choceň – Znojmo

By Ondra OK1CLD | Published: July 11, 2011

I like cycling a lot and usually at least once or twice a week I go for a 30 – 50 km long trip around the town where I live. However, for this Tuesday I had planned something a little different – I had decided to try if I can ride more than 150 kilometers long track, from my hometown Choceň to Znojmo, that is located in South Moravia near Austrian border.

Start Finish Distance Max. elevation Min. elevation Total ascent
Choceň Znojmo 169.3 km 724 m 238 m 2390 m

I set out from Choceň at 6:20 in the morning.  It was quite early, but I had a very long journey in front of me and wanted to have enough time for it.

Elevation diagram (Choceň -> Znojmo)

Elevation diagram (Choceň -> Znojmo)

First town I visited during my trip was Litomyšl, town famous for its Renaissance chateau (UNESCO World Heritage Site) and as the birthplace of composer Bedřich Smetana. I arrived there after an hour and after first 20 kilometers of my journey.

Read More (photos, visited towns and rest of the story) »

Posted in Cycling | Tagged , | Comments closed

Tweet button and Google “+1” button added

By Ondra OK1CLD | Published: July 1, 2011

Tweet and Google “+1” buttons were added under every post on this blog. Once again I appreciated the Thematic Framework and the whole concept of child-themes. Thanks to it, putting the buttons on the bottom of each post meant just creating two simple functions in functions.php file of the child-theme.

I decided to publish the code here, because even though it’s quite easy, it still took me some time to figure it out. I hope it will help someone at least a little.


function mytheme_share($content)
{
$tweetbutton = '<a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-url="' . get_permalink() .'" data-text="OK1CLD.info: ' . get_the_title() .'" data-count="horizontal" data-via="ok1cld">Tweet</a><script type="text/javascript" src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>';
$plusone = '<g:plusone href="' . get_permalink() .'"></g:plusone>';
$content .= "<p>" . $tweetbutton . $plusone . "</p>";
return $content;
}
add_filter('the_content', 'mytheme_share', 0);

function mytheme_plusone_js()
{ ?>
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js"></script>
<?php }
add_action('thematic_after', 'mytheme_plusone_js');

For more information how to add Tweet button to your webpage see http://twitter.com/about/resources/tweetbutton and if you wanna know how to add “+1” look at http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/.

Posted in General | Tagged , , | Comments closed

King of Spain Contest 2011 – SSB part

By Ondra OK1CLD | Published: June 26, 2011

This weekend I participated in the SSB part of His Majesty King of Spain Contest. I like this contest quite a lot, unfortunately in last few years I had no time for it…

Contest starts at 12:00 UTC, but I was on a short cycling trip and started three hours later. There weren’t a lot of stations on the band and so by the evening I made only about 50 QSOs. I still enjoyed it quite a lot, especially because 20 meters band was open for quite a long time – it was very surprising (for me) when at 18:50, UTC I managed to make a QSO with 9M2CNC from West Malaysia.

On Sunday I made 30 more QSOs and by the end of the contest there were 80 QSOs with 20 DXCC counties (counting also EA and EA8) and 18 Spanish provinces (see table below) in my log. My total claimed score was 5 976 points.

Spanish province QSO count Spanish province QSO count
Alicante 11 Leon 2
Valencia 5 Asturias 1
Almeria 3 Avila 1
Cantabria 3 Castellon 1
Madrid 3 Ciudad Real 1
A Coruña 2 Girona 1
Barcelona 2 Malaga 1
Cadiz 2 Navarra 1
Las Palmas 2 Vizcaya 1

Posted in Contesting, Ham Radio | Tagged , , , | Comments closed

Trip to Villingen-Schwenningen

By Ondra OK1CLD | Published: May 6, 2011

This week I participated in a bussiness trip to Germany, more specifically to Villingen-Schwenningen, very nice historical town located in Schwarzwald/Black Forest. We had just one quite a short opportunity to look around the town center, but I liked it very much and so I’d like to share here a few photos I took there:

Münster Unserer Lieben Frau in Villingen

Münster Unserer Lieben Frau in Villingen

Fountain near Münster Unserer Lieben Frau

Fountain near Münster Unserer Lieben Frau

Historical center of Villingen

Historical center of Villingen

River Brigach

River Brigach

Posted in Travelling | Tagged | Comments closed

CQ WPX Contest 2011 – SSB part

By Ondra OK1CLD | Published: April 26, 2011

Once again, I’m quite a bit late with posting to the blog, since the SSB part of CQ WPX Contest 2011 was held a month ago. Anyway, I still have to mention here at least a few things about my participation in the contest, since I enjoyed it a lot:

  • My category was SO 15M LP, total net operating time only 10,5 hours
  • During the time I managed to make 172 QSOs, resulting in claimed score of 68 252
  • 45 DXCC countries were contacted, 4 of them were new to me (4J,BV,HR,KL7)
  • CONDX were great during the whole context, the best part for me was Sunday evening, when I made a lot of QSOs to western U.S. states (including some W6 stations). Two states (well, three… counting Alaska) were new to me – Utah (confirmed via LOTW) and California (not confirmed yet)

I’d like to thank a lot to all stations for QSOs, especially to those who already confirmed me the QSO via LOTW… See you in the next contest, I hope I’ll have more time and will be QRV a little longer…

Posted in Contesting, Ham Radio | Tagged , , , | Comments closed

ARRL DX Contest(s) 2011

By Ondra OK1CLD | Published: March 6, 2011

This year I participated in both CW and SSB part of ARRL DX Contest. I didn’t try
to win in any category, I just wanted to enjoy these contests – in fact the only goal I set was to try to make contact with at least some of nine U.S. states I still need for WAS award (AK, CA, HI, ID, LA, ND, NV, UT and WY).

ARRL CW was three weeks ago and for me it was a big disappointment. As I said here before, I have a little problem with a Morse code and so I managed to make only 53 QSOs (almost all of them on 14 MHz band – only one on 21 MHz band) from 24 states/provinces. Futhermore, I didn’t contact any of the nine states that were mentioned before…

Last weekend I had a much better time in ARRL SSB. I started on 20 meters band and during Saturday afternoon I managed to make 37 QSOs with 18 states/provinces. I know, it’s not very much, but some of them were very interesting for me, e.g. U.S. states of Oregon and Washington and Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia.

In the evening I switched to 15 meters and very quickly made a few QSOs there. However, the band closed soon after that, so I had to stop and wait for the next day…

On Sunday I began at 12:00 UTC and spent the whole time on 15 meters band. It was going very well and I managed to make 83 more QSOs… Nevertheless, I wasn’t completely happy, since once again I didn’t contact any of nine states I listed before. I already made up with the fact that I’d fail this goal and started to close my station, when at 17:35 UTC I noticed some station from Louisiana spotted on the DX cluster… Even though my train to Prague (where I study) was leaving in less than hour and I wasn’t even packed, I decided I have to make QSO with it… After tuning my radio I could clearly hear W5RU working quite a big pileup… It took me some time to call him, but at the end he heard me and before quarter to six I had Louisiana in my log! (Many thanks to W5RU for both the QSO and confirming the contact via LOTW.)

During the whole contest I managed to make 132 QSOs into 32 states and 7 provinces. It’s been probably my best result so far and I’ve been very happy with it, especially since (as I said before) I contacted one new state (LA).

Posted in Contesting, Ham Radio | Tagged , , , , | Comments closed

Black Swan

By Ondra OK1CLD | Published: February 12, 2011

It’s been quite a few years since I left high school, so I was looking forward very much to yesterday’s small get-together with some of my ex-classmates. We met at about half past seven near Velký Špalíček commercial center in Brno, because we wanted to see a movie Black Swan.

Black Swan (poster)

Black Swan (poster)

I’m sure you’ve already heard about the film – it’s the drama about a ballet dancer, starring Natalie Portman (Star Wars, Closer, V for Vendetta, …), Vincent Cassel (I’ve seen no movie with him before) and Mila Kunis (I liked her character Jackie from That ’70s Show). In most countries the film was released into cinemas at the end of last year, but here in the Czech Republic it premiered just two days ago… Read More »

Posted in Movies | Tagged | Comments closed

Results of CQ WPX SSB 2010

By Ondra OK1CLD | Published: February 6, 2011

I just noticed that the results of SSB part of last year’s WPX contest have been published on the contest website.

You may’ve read about me participating in the contest in one of my previous posts. I learnt today that my final score is 269,280 points (405 QSOs and 288 multipliers).

It is the 4th highest one out of all 19 Czech contestants in SO AB LP, which is my best placement so far in this category!

Posted in Contesting, Ham Radio | Tagged , , , , | Comments closed

Partial solar eclipse 2011

By Ondra OK1CLD | Published: January 4, 2011

At 9:21:39 UTC, I tried to take photo of today’s partial solar eclipse. The result is not very good, but since I had no tripod or stand and just a camera with simple filter, I think it could’ve been much worse – so I decided to post it here anyway.

Partial solar eclipse 2011

Partial solar eclipse 2011

I was very lucky to even take this shot, since the sky was completely overcast here in Eastern Bohemia the whole morning and the eclipse could be seen only for a moment almost at the end.

The photo in full resolution can be seen here.

Posted in General | Tagged , | Comments closed