Category Archives: Ham Radio

CQ WW DX Contest SSB 2011

By Ondra OK1CLD | Published: November 4, 2011

Hello, today I’d like to write here something about my participation in last weekend’s SSB part of CQ WW DX contest. I enjoyed the contest a lot and even managed to make much more QSOs than in any contest before!

I decided to take part in SOAB LP category, since I had an equipment for all bands except for 160 meters. Here’s the list of what I used:

On Friday evening, I prepared a plan for the whole contest. For every hour I set a certain QSO count I’d like to make during that time. Planned total was 850 QSOs and as it later turned down, it was very realistic.

CQ WW DX SSB 2011 - QSO map

CQ WW DX SSB 2011 - QSO map

Read More (score summary and rest of the story) »

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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) »

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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

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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…

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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).

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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!

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My radio activity in 2010

By Ondra OK1CLD | Published: December 31, 2010

Just like a year ago, I’d like to write here a short summary of my ham radio activity in the ending year.

Since 1st Janurary 2010, I’ve made exactly 1579 QSOs – that means that I fulfilled my New Years Eve resolution from to make at least 1000 QSOs. Once again, I was most active on phone, having made 945 contacts using the mode. However, for the first time I’ve got more RTTY QSOs than CW QSOs in my log.

At the end of May I could mark another NYE resolution as fulfilled when I got a (basic) DXCC award (Mixed mode), for confirmed contacts with 100 different DXCC countries. At the moment I’ve got 111 DXCC entities confirmed via LOTW and 151 DXCC entities contacted (in log).

Last year I also decided to try to make QSOs to as many different U.S. counties as possible – now I have 156 counties in my log, which is more than at the end of 2009 (95 counties), but still I’ve got a lot of work to do to get just basic USA-CA award…

Well, that’s for the recapitulation of 2010… Now what are my New Year’s Eve resolutions (I mean the ones related to ham radio)? In 2011 I’d like to make MORE THAN 2000 QSOs and be more active on CW mode… I also promise to (finally) send all the paper QSLs I’ve got waiting in my “sending queue” (I know I have a little delay and I’m sorry for that…) and to update this blog more often in 2011.

Hope to hear you on band next year. 73! Ondra OK1CLD

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IARU HF Championship 2010

By Ondra OK1CLD | Published: July 13, 2010

During the weekend I participated IARU HF Championship… I liked it a lot, but can’t write about it right now, ’cause in two days I’m leaving for holidays and have no time… Hopefully I’ll write about it after I return… Looks like I’ve got some work to do on this blog, since I also promised to post here about my last Tuesday geocaching trip…

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CQ WPX Contest SSB 2010

By Ondra OK1CLD | Published: March 28, 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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ARRL RTTY Roundup 2010

By Ondra OK1CLD | Published: January 4, 2010

During the weekend I was contesting in ARRL RTTY Roundup. Since I have just a wide SSB filter (the stock one) in my FT-897D and I can always hear only the very strong stations, I didn’t plan to make some very good result – I just wanted to make more than 100 QSOs.

I started at 1800Z on 7 MHz and during the first hour I made only 7 connections. After that it became a little better and until 2230Z I had 51 QSOs in my log – I know it’s not very good, but since my goal was 100 QSOs I was quite happy – especially because I had in my log also two U.S. stations (from PA and IL) and French special station TM6WRC (celebrating Sebastian Loeb’s and Daniel Elena’s 6th consecutive victory in World Rallye Championship) Read More »

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