Well now that the June contest is past and the dust has settled, it is
time for another 222 Activity Night. The festivities start at about
2300UT on the East Coast and continue up to about 0100 UT and much later
in the midwest until past 0200 UT. I had good intentions of being
active in the June contest, but ran into computer issues with the
logging program and automated CW keying. I had everything working fine
on Friday afternoon. The Winkey worked well and the CW messages all
worked as advertised. So I shut down the computer and restarted it
several times and each time, all worked great. On saturday morning I did
the same thing with similar results. I was installing photo voltaic
wiring in PVC conduit in the morning and got my solar system all
buttoned up. I had some lunch and got to the VHF contest at 3 PM local
and started out on six meters. Everyone was on digital screen mode and
pushing buttons. There was almost no SSB orCW activity that I could
hear. I worked five stations and then noted that the automated CW
messages would not play. I spent two hours dealing with that to no
avail. I re booted everything. I checked COM ports. I checked COM baud
rates. I was running 500 watts on solar power and when I saw how
pitiful the activity was on CW and SSB, I decided that running the big
amp and consuming diesel fuel was a waste of time. I was quite dis
heartened.
It didn't help that I went home and tried to implement a new 16 relay
USB board for remote operation. I could not get the software to
recognize the board. I worked on that most of Saturday evening. The
problems just kept stacking up. In disgust, I turned everything off, got
in my truck and drove to my camp and went fly fishing for native brook
trout. The trout were lurking in the stream. Water temp was 54 and they
were getting pretty active. I even saw the loon pair nesting on their
new nest. It seems there will be a new loon chick around early July. All
in all, I took a mental health weekend that did not include computers.
I will be on this evening for 222 night starting at just before 2300
UT. i hope to work a goodly number of stations and plan to run SSB and
CW (without a Winkey). There is no Moon available at any decent hour,
but I can be easily convinced to try a Q65 sked over the horizon. It
promises to rain all day, so I do not expect great band condx. We have
another low pressure system swirling around New England, but I hope it
is not as bad as last week. Signals were definitely down last week for
the most part. I start out at 222.100 CW or SSB and move off as people
show up. If you are getting on this evening, please make a point to try
something that seems impossible. Go outside of your comfort zone. This
is the way you can detect those hidden paths that are not always
possible. There could be some nice contacts made from the mid Atlantic
states westward. I am hoping the Toronto contingent shows up. That path
has been silent here in past weeks. Remember to check ON4KST Region 2
144/432 MHz to try for some skeds. CU there!
Dave K1WHS
For those who are afraid of CW, I would offer that CW can be as good as
FT8 if you get any kind of practice. There are two types of CW
practice. One is copying CW in QRM with many callers, Type two is simply
using slow speed CW but trying to pull it out of the noise. If you want
to experiment with CW, I can go very slow. If you call very slow, I will
try to match your speed and keep it simple. In all of my experiments
with FT8 on VHF, I have yet to work anything that I cannot work on CW at
the same time. You also do not have to keep track of baud rates, COM
ports, and audio CODECs with CW. You can use 222 nights to practice
trying a CW contact for the first time. That is what 222 night is for.
There is no rush, Just get on and play around. Use ON4KST to line things
up and have fun.
_______________________________________________
VHFcontesting mailing list
VHFcontesting@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/vhfcontesting
|