First FreeDV contact

 After reading the blog from VK3TPM Peter and watching his videos about FreeDV I decided to give it a try for the sake of experimenting. I took some tinkering to get it all working, especially the CAT control. Till I finally realised that CAT control is only working as soon as you hit "start" in the software. Anyway, FreeDV is a nice digital addition. Kind of DAB radio for HAMs. It is funny to hear someone speak on HF without any noise. Screaming in the mike, like we use to do on SSB, is not helping. Just speak like you do when someone is sitting beside you in a quiet environment. Watch part of my first contact with FreeDV on 40m with DK8EQ Uli. 

NTC QSO party - finally some success

 

   Last month I wrote about this party and the struggling to make QSOs. Or at least to decode some of the calls and exchanges. Most keying went way too fast for beginners like me. I have the idea a few of those stations did read my post because I had the idea this time I was actually able to decode more of the code.

I have a work around now. If I hear a call I now look for it on qrz.com to get an idea of the station and the name. Then I try to figure out if the name I hear is the same name I read on qrz.com. And of course I try to figure out the NTC number. So far that worked, only not for PI4NTC which is the club call. But after a few overs I figured out the name was THEO. The numbers went quite easy, the only number I had to search for afterwards was the one from PA7F. Luckily there is a list of members on the NTC website. And yes, if you use a contest program like N1MM this could automatically be filled in. But that is what I want to avoid. I really want to do all or most of the decoding with my own brain in this contest.

   The result. 6 contacts on 40m and 2 contacts on 80m. I did only S&P. Of course I know that you can make much QSOs with running. But it was my goal to make just a few more as previous editions. Find the scoring results here: https://pi4ntc.nl/ntcqp/ntcqp-2025-09/ I did not even finished as last ;-).

Thanks to all the ops that made CQs on a reasonable speed for beginners. I did appreciate it. And sorry for any mistakes I made. Overall I think I did pretty good this time and of course this is very encouraging to do better the next time.

#60m St.Pierre & Miquelon worked

Just before going to the job I though I check out 60m for this new on band one. I managed to get a free space in the split pile-up and it took 3 times calling before I got a reply. 3rd new one on 60m in a short period. The fun is that DXing is still possible on this band even when sunspots will go low in the next years.