#cqww SSB 2018 PA6AA contest review

Event: CQWW SSB 2018
Section:  Multi Operator Two Radio High Power
Logger: N1MM+ newest version
Station 1: Elecraft K3s 400W
Station 2: Icom IC-7300 400W
Antenna 160m: Inverted-L
Antenna 80m: Inverted-L + dipole
Antenna 40m: 4 square + dipole
Antenna 20m: VDA + FB23
Antenna 15m: VDA + 4 element yagi
Antenna 10m: VDA + Moxon

It has been a great weekend from a great location. Not only doing the contest but also being part of a great team with all members making the best from what we got. Enjoying the almost endless space for antennas and the great outdoors next to the small house. Unfortunately PA4O was not feeling too well and did not take part in the contest with our team but at least he was able to give some support being there helping with the antennas and equipment as far as he could. We were also supported by PA0VAJ Jan who constructed the 40m 4 square antenna array for us. So the contest team consisted of PB7Z, PD1RP, PD3OES and me PE4BAS. I didn't stay for the night so most of my operating was at daytime.

Initially we would use two Elecraft K3 transceivers but due to problems connecting with the computer and playing WAV files for the voicekeyer we swapped one K3 for a Icom IC-7300. So it was my first experience with this radio and it worked very well, it was a real pleasure to listen to. Being a Icom fan of course I am a bit prejudiced ;-) Both stations made use of a 400W amplifier. The start of the contest was a bit rough, we had some technical problems especially with the network between the computers and the voice keyers. And a unexpected storm (7 bft) fridaynight.

We had a lot of antennas this year. It was also a test what would work for us and what not. Starting with a excellent working 40m 4 square doing a real good job on DX. At least I worked YJ0CA from Vanuatu without any problems saturday morning. KL7RA from Alaska was also worked on this antenna array. We build a 40m dipole on Sunday but didn't use it much actually.



On low band 160m we had a inverted-L 18m high which blew over fridaynight already at the start of the contest due to high winds but was not damaged and re-placed saturday. On 80m a inverted-L and a dipole. On 15m a VDA and a 4 element yagi at about 10m high a real DX canon, to name one of the DX stations we worked VK9XG from Christmas Isl. On 10m a moxon on about 7m high and at first a 10m VDA which wasn't used much. 20m was a bit problematic, we used a FB23 (dipole-director configuration) on about 6m high and a VDA. Personally my experience was that the VDA was better on both RX as TX and I was even spotted by KL7RA from Alaska (one of my highlights hi) with this antenna. However we lost too much points on 20m compared to the competing stations and we really should look at another (better) antenna for that band. The FB23 was placed on the 10m moxon mast sunday afternoon to see if that would improve things. It did improve a small bit but still the VDA won overall with about 0,5-1 s-unit difference.

We didn't build all the antennas on one day of course. PB7Z did rent the house for the week and started to setup the 4 square together with PA0VAJ already at the start of the week. Because none of us ever worked with a antenna array like that Bernard had the honour to test it out. Of course some good DX was worked mostly on FT8 and CW proving the antenna was a excellent performer.

Locator was not JO32IU but JO33DJ

The results...
We were satisfied but made less QSOs compared to last year. The amount of multipliers was higher though and so was our score. The only band we were not satisfied with was 20m. We are already busy making plans to get better next year although since we are kind of portable we are a little limited in making big plans since antennas should be light and strong and not too big. We are right at the northern coast and winds can get very high here.

CQ contest from PA6AA

Grey marker shows exact QTH

#cqww ssb 2018 again with PA6AA

Last year we did the contest with a nice group of amateurradio friends. It was fun and we obtained 3rd place in the Netherlands with almost 3000 valid QSOs. Of course we did it for fun but experienced a little competition with other stations as well. We decided to do it again and of course we will try to do better as last year. Autumn of course is well known of large wind and storm and we experienced the strength of nature last year. This time the forecast is a lot better and we don't expect any difficulties with bad weather.


We discussed antennas and setup already just after the contest and made plans the whole year
through. We did improve our antennas and hope everything is working like expected. Only time will tell. At least the scaffold will be up again supporting a 15m beam and my old mast will be supporting a 10m beam. I can't tell much about the rest of the setup as that will be a surprise for the competing stations in the MOTT section.

Well, I hope to work some of you readers. At least if you are participating or not try to work PA6AA in the contest.

JS8Call QSO party review

Yes, I did participate. However like always, time was a issue. I tried to keep my computer and radio on the whole weekend to accommodate a relay for those that need it. Unfortenately my computer is about 10 years old and although I upgaded it to W10 I have issues using WSJT-X, JTDX and JS8Call together with HRD and other software. It seems it is too much for my computer and I get more and more lock ups of my CPU. This means I was not on the whole weekend... Anyway, back to the party....

Over the weekend I made numerous calls but got less anwers. I've been trying 80, 40, 20 and 17m. 20m was difficult because of a RTTY contest, 17m and 80m no replies. 40m was the band to be on this weekend. I logged only 5 stations over the weekend, they actually replied and had a short chat with exchanging names and QTH. Here is my log:

Sorry countries missing 

Especially 40m was open to north America. Though I received a lot of beacons, chats and CQs it was hard to get my signal to the other side. One of the problems was doubling of signals. It is like many haven't got a really good receive and actually if you're in a city with lots of interference I don't blame those stations. But it means in a few cases I couldn't decode. Another problem were undirected calls, was the station talking to me? You need to direct you transmission....but if you're used to just pushing buttons like in PSK or WSJT-X or any other software you just hit the macro buttons and they send it....well to no one. In one case I received the message and it was directed but didn't show in the center screen, I think it is a known bug. A thing I have to get used at is that you have to be patient. Sometimes a message will take 1,5 minute to get through and if you press the transmit button too fast you miss half of it (doubling again), I have to admit it happened to me a few times.

Message sunday morning as received at OH8STN
(Photo credit OH8STN)

The pop up message screen worked fine. I accomplished to send 2 messages to OH8STN wishing Julian a good day and a good morning. Actually I like to send messages that way it is much more obvious the message is for you and no one else and it gets the attention.

Over the weekend I made some screenshots from PSK reporter maps showing what I received and were I was received. PSKreporter has limits so you have to look once and a while to get a real good impression.

QSO with K1CF Wayne

Map from sunday morning. Till now not many JA stations seen...

Enough activity from the USA/Canada but not many that heard me.

Click images to enlarge

Radio is magical

Appeared today.....a magical sign??

Sorry, no post about the JS8Call party yet....more on that later. No, it's about the magic of radio. Remember my "QSO of 2018"? Well I did it again. I saw PG0DX Henry spotting ZL4OL on 60m and just catched his last over to ZL4OL on 5362 FT8 this morning. And although I saw a faint signal in the waterfall it was not decodable yet. Then I saw PA2S Henk making a QSO. Why couldn't I decode the signal? Suddenly it occured to me that the LED TL tube in the shack could make some noise although hardly noticable, I switched it off and ZL4OL could be decoded. There was indeed a difference and so another thing learned especially when a station is far into the noise I better switch off the light. Some minutes later the QSO was made again. This time the signal was better as last February. It proves the inverted-V is working well. Although I did it before it still is a miracle that you can make a long path (+22000km) contact to the other side of the world with only 15W. As far as I know Mike was using 10W. Radio is truly magical....

JS8Call QSO party this weekend

The JS8Call site announced the first JS8Call QSO party this weekend. Not a contest but a free party. No logs to send in. No prizes. Information exchange is all free.

We have done this in the past with FSQ and APRS messenger. But JS8Call is complete different software with elements from FT8, FSQ and APRS messenger. Is see a change, at least here in Europe, from using the software for chat mode to just another propagation research tool. It would be nice to see more people behind the keyboard this upcoming weekend. I think that one of the problems with JS8Call is that there are a lot of options (and features) that are not completely clear to the average public. I name two: how to send a message that will create a popup on the other side? How to correctly use a relay? To me it is completely unknown how a message is received at the other side. I've been testing with two digimode setups PE4BAS and PE4BAS/P a few weeks ago so I could test some commands to see what happens but still every new beta software things change...

I'm curious how this party will evolve since there are no real rules except that you need to "chat" and exchange info. I think the next party should have as rule a minimal information exchange to get into the log as far as the participating station is logging. So, I decide for myself to log a complete QSO only if I have at least:

- a signal report (SIG)
- a name (OP)
- QTH and/or GRID

additionally I would like to have info about RIG, PWR, ANT and WX. Abbreviations that can be found on the internet and that are normal to use at amateurradio contacts.

Another shortcoming is that from all Windows versions it seems JS8Call is only working on W10. I don't know if it is working on older Windows versions? But if so....it could be a good time to try Linux Mint for starters. You can easily find free software on the internet that modify your computer to a multiboot system and install Linux as second OS. Since I have W10 I have no need to but I have a laptop that has 3 (!) operating systems and they work without any problem. JS8Call will work on several Linux distributions without any problem as far as I know!

Update 19-Okt-2018:
It seems JS8Call is working well on other Windows versions as well. Hopefully there are even more HAM operators that will try this software after reading this.
A quick guide on how to operate JS8Call has just been updated and can be found on the JS8Call official website: http://js8call.com/guides/

Video by OH8STN Julian

Impatience

PB7Z Bernard told me so after I expressed my failed installation of the HF5B to him. He already has this antenna  for years in his tower which is the same one as I have. And he worked a impressive list of DXCC with the HF5B. He told me I'm too impatient and I told him I have limited time for my hobby. It took me a whole afternoon to install and tune the antenna and finally found it not working at all. I was really disappointed and asked Bernard if he could take the antenna to see if he could get it better. But in the end.....it was all my own fault.

So we are two days later. I was planning to do a quick swap. The HF5B out of the tower and my 10m HB9CV in there. But then I decided I should first check the cable to the tower. I got the coax cables from the shack to the tower. One is the LMR400 for VHF/UHF use. The other is the old H2007 which I used for the vertical before. I never checked the H2007 cable before and always thought I had connected it. So I plugged in a dummyload on the other side of the MT-isolator that is in the cabinet below the tower. And in the shack I did my analyser read out......no good SWR! What the....

I also had a extra piece of LMR400 to the garage in case I wanted to connect a third cable. That cable was connected to the MT-isolator when I installed all the coax cables. I always thought it was connected to the H2007 in the garage....so, I did check it out.....you see the result in the left picture. It wasn't connected to anything!

And the end of the H2007 cable was just behind the MT-isolator.....without
a connector soldered to it. See the picture on the right. This is really stupid! How could this be? How did I overlook this? Too impatient! I soldered a PL connector on the H2007 and checked the SWR in the shack. Now is was almost 1:1. Luckely I didn't remove the HF5B yet. So, I checked it again. And I found the SWR was reasonable below 1:2 on all 5 bands. Good enough to use the beam. Then I had some other things to do.

Well, the results late in the afternoon....I tried it with Bernard on 10m and it did well. I already tried it on 20m receive with almost equal results compared to the inverted-V only less noise. On 15m it did well, much better as my inverted-V. I discovered some propagation on 12m. And heard PY2UAF calling on SSB, a few calls and I was in his log. After that I tried 10m and 12m FT8. On 12m I did work 3B9FR from Rodriguez Isl.. So, despite the SWR is not as good as 1:1 the antenna is at least working. I can do with the antennatuner to get a good match for the radio.

Conclusion: The HF5B is a very sensitive antenna. Tuning can be a pain. In my case a SWR "dip" was hardly visible. But moving the dip was no problem. However to see what the real SWR is the antenna needs to be at height. And the most important thing of all, don't be too impatient!

Unsuccessful HF5B installation

Up side down...

It is not always a success story on my blog and today was very frustrating! I had high hopes from this butternut HF5B butterfly antenna. PB7Z Bernard does well with it and is confident the HF5B is a good antenna. However when I measured SWR at sunday I was not really happy with it. Unfortunately it went dark and I had no time to fiddle with the antenna anymore. So I took the thursday afternoon off from work to fiddle again and tune the antenna to finally place it in my tower.

Small insects also on the antenna

The weather was good, though a little too good as there were a lot of insects flying around which kept flying in my eyes when working on the antenna. I already noticed I mounted the antenna up-side-down so first thing was to turn it around. After that I tried to tune the antenna at the 20m band first as advertised in the manual. Well, the trouble was already there....there was no real SWR dip. Best SWR was 1:3 at 13,8 MHz. Moving the 20m hairpin moved it to 14.2 MHz but still 1:3 is much too high. The strange thing was that whatever I tried nothing had a real effect. Moving the antenna up higher, no effect.

Well, the manual tells that you should tune only the director about 2m above the ground horizontally. The ground will act as a reflector So, I mounted only the director on a pole. But still SWR was and stayed 1:3 at the best "dip". Not good. Could it be the coax cable? Another coax cable was connected, still 1:3. Could it be the wires from the boom to the ends of the tubes, I measured all wires separatly but all were ok. Could it be a loose connection, there are so many! I checked all connections for 20m and  cleaned everything with sandpaper, still no change! Could it be the "hairpin"? Removed it cleaned it, mounted it again. No change! I tried a choke balun in the cable, any change? Nothing at all, still best dip 1:3. Then I decided to mount everything again but now with the distances given in the manual. That should at least give me a kind of factory setting. Any change? No still 1:3 again but now again on 13,5 MHz. Moving the hairpin again moved the SWR dip to 14,2 MHz. I suspected one of the capacitors then (what else could I do) and removed the 20m one to inspect, but nothing was wrong! Still best SWR 1:3. Really, I have seen a lot of antennas and most of them were made by myself. I know how a gammamatch works and what a hairpin does. But this time I'm out of ideas. Very frustrating!

At the end of the day I decided not to dismantle the antenna but place it in the tower. I tuned the other bands as far as I could. 17m was 1:1,8, 15m was 1:1 near 21MHz, 24MHz was 1:2,5 and at 28,5 was about 1:1,5.  Hoped for a better SWRwhen mounted in the tower high up in the air. However when I tested it this evening it was even worse. Actually I could hardly see any SWR dip on any band. And receive was far worse compared to my inverted-V. This HF5B till now is absolutely no success. So if any antenna expert does have any idea what to check? How to get this antenna working? Please make a comment! I would really like to know what I'm doing wrong?

10 years PE4BAS weblog

I can't believe I started this blog 10 years ago today. At October 11 2008 I posted a picture from my temporary shack after we just moved into this house. The second floor is only partly been rebuilt and there is so much to do. We need at least another 10 years to do it all. I'm lucky that the radioshack is ready and there is a place in the house to fit all my radio gear and other hobby things. At the moment that I posted the article I just had a new mobile phone that featured blogger as a app. So actually it was just for fun and to test the app. But I had much more to tell and to share about the hobby and slowly this blog became part of my radio hobby. Through my blog I did meet other people around the Netherlands and worldwide. Not only from my neighbourhood and not only from on-air contacts. I still think it is a great addition to my hobby. Some of you know that I almost stopped with the hobby because I was very limited in time. But when I wrote this on my blog I got help from you readers to manage my time and to find a way to still enjoy the hobby. The antenna tower was a big issue but after 10 years it finally did rise and I'm so happy it is there now. In the past 10 years I also read blogs from other radio enthousiasts, some blogs are already gone, others are still there. Sometimes I find a new blog and read new personal stories about the hobby. I like to share my experiences as there are not many people around that are hamradio operators, it's a small world. I never much shared statistics here but I'm proud to have between 7000-10000 readers per month. That's a huge audience.

As you can see the article most read is about FT8 digimode written just after it was thrown into the world. I never thought about the huge impact it would have on HAMradio at that time just over a year ago. The article about the repair of a Diamond CP-6 multiband antenne is second best. Actually it is a youtube video not even made by me! The large peak you see in the chart are not visitors but a attack probabely by russian hackers. Once and a while they seem to be trying something though I don't know why and what. Many times I've thought about to stop with this blog after 10 years. But I still enjoy writing and have enough ideas. So I'll continue for a while I guess...

JS8Call quicky

Click to enlarge!

I'm a little late with a JS8Call review. But this evening I finally had time to download and install the program. First of all I copied FT8Call.ini from the "local" directory and renamed it to JS8Call.ini and (re)placed it in the new JS8Call directory. That way I didn't have to configure the program again. However propagation seems not to be very well. Or at the moment I called there were not many users? I seem to have a almost solid HF path on 20m with F1ABL, he's always giving me a report. Then I made a round 20-30-40-80-160m. Not many around not even on 40m. I noticed the reports and conversations are all stored per band, very nice. The ALLCALL? is replaced by the BEACON. That way you can always check who did give a report and heard you. You can see the calls that hear you with a star before their call in the heard list. At least I got a report from PJ7DH Derek from Sint Maarten on 20m, a nice distance. Although signal was low, but that doesn't matter with JS8Call. Since frequencies are quit very low signals are still decoded. Excellent for QRP, mobile and portable digital use.

Another feature for portable use is the sync time manually. I tried to figure out how it worked but
since I didn't see any signal I couldn't do any sync, at least not on a signal.But I'm shure it will work in a emergency situation. You need to activate the window "show time drift controls" to see this feature.

I really like the configurability of this software. And it is still being developed. Of course it is not a DX program or mode and it is not for log filling. I've been playing with it while portable and it worked very well. You can make contact even under difficult circumstances and instantly see who is hearing you. There might not always be a operator at the other side but then there are possebilities enough to play with. And while playing with JS8Call switched over to 40m again.....then this happened:

 VK7BO Alan from Tasmania (Australia) did give me a report! Yes, that's from the other side of our globe.

Yellow 20m, Blue 40m, Pink 80m JS8 spots. Did I mention bad propagation before?? Something about JS8Call not a mode for DX? Well....

More info on the official JS8Call site: http://js8call.com

Animals

The day started early this morning on 60m trying for 3D2AG from Fiji again. Yes I did receive him again (-14dB) and no he didn't see me at all. Who thinks that DX is easy....even with FT8 it can be a struggle. However, I had the impression my signal is a bit stronger now I have the ladderline hanging free in the air. I noticed a couple of reports from NP2Q (US Virgin Isl.) this morning just after the greyline and signals were reasonable. Just when I wanted to go QRT a fellow blogger was calling. My first QSO with MW1CFN John from Wales (tnx John). In the mean time I was in whatsapp contact with PG0DX who worked a K7 (Alaska) this morning, unfortunately I could not see the K7.

But now, the titel of this post....no it's not the Pink Floyd album I'm talking about. It's about real animals. Not that I have any problems with them. But the afternoon was planned to test my butterfly beam since again the weather was excellent today. Then just when I wanted to assemble the antenna my wife called me she saw a stone-marten in our garage, and since those little animals are notorious for eating car cables we wanted the animal out of there. So it was a one and a half hour clear out of the garage to find the little creature and drive it out. After that I finally assembled the beam and just when I connected the MFJ259 to analyze it I saw something from a corner of my eye. Was it the marten again? No it was a big frog....

Finally have the HF5B butterfly beam up in my test mast. I already did read on the internet that it is a pain to tune the thing. And indeed, no good SWR and on 24Mhz even no dip at all. Unfortunately I had not much time to tune it at all since it was already starting to get dark. Time is always a issue...the sun is always disappearing too early...

Today

Today was spend most of the time for the radiohobby. The weather was great and this could be the last couple of days with good weather of the year. The day started on the radio looking at the 60m FT8 frequency, trying to work DX but that didn't went so well. However, I was able to receive 3D2AG from Fiji for the first time, but couldn't reach him. Could it be the antenna?  More on that later...

Spot the anti-interference loudspeaker...;-)

Then I went to a radio fleamarket this morning, it was not that big but nearby and always nice to meet some other radioamateurs from both CB/11m and HAMradio. Some of them known for years, some are new. A few calls from operators I spoke PA3BNT Marten, PE1DUG Free, PC7B Bram, PD2TW Tjip, PA3VAJ Jan, PA1SDB Peter and PG0DX Henry. I've probabely seen some more, sorry if forgotten to mention the call. It could be my opinion but it seems there were less real radioamateur stands this time. It was mixed up with second hand and new computer things. The only thing I bought radiowise was a book about dutch radio equipment in WW2.

Well, did I mention the weather was great? I had to mow the grass! And while doing that I thought about the antennas (of course). The 6m had to go out of the mast to make place for a HF multiband antenna, although the day was too short for mounting it. But at least I wanted to do something with the inverted-V, the ladderline was still down on the roof and every time it rains I get a complete different impedance so the tuner settings are not right anymore. Besides that I get the idea my signal could be better, and it was better in the past when I had the ladderline free hanging. So again, I made some time for the hobby and lowered the tower the dismantle the 6m beam, I probabely will mount it again next year.






Then I made 2 new suspensions for the inverted-V to hang on. I could also mount the ends both 1m higher in the trees above groundlevel. And I got a free hanging ladderline again. Had to cut 1 meter from the ladderline I hope this will not have much effect on the system. Cutting a coax cable and make it as short as possible is always good. Cutting a open line can sometimes give a strange effect on the whole antenna. At least that is what I experienced in the past. Anyway, we will see if DX can still be worked....

My little helper...

#60m DXing

Last evening and early this morning. Best DX worked was not NP2Q (7180km) but AA0MZ (7300km) from Kansas.

Many HAMradio operators are whining about the bad propagation lately. However, it might be they choose the wrong band for DXing. I find that propagation is excellent on 60m especially the morning greyline. Last couple of days I worked some new ones on FT8, actually I really lost count of DXCC on this band probabely it is around 70 DXCC worked right now. PG0DX Henry wrote me he had worked 3D2AG this morning after 2 weeks of trying. A excellent job!

Namechange: FT8Call is now JS8Call

"JS8Call stands on the shoulder of giants...the takeoff angle is better up there."

You might be asking...why is this named JS8Call? Why was it renamed from FT8Call? Why not something else, like BACON or HF Messenger? Good question! It is named this way as an homage to its heritage:

● JS8Call was previously named FT8Call.
● JS8Call uses a custom FT8 modulation (Franke-Taylor design, 8-FSK modulation) called JS8 (Jordan Sherer designed 8-FSK modulation). This is the base RF transport.
● JS8Call has a directed “calling” protocol laid over top the base RF transport to support free-form and directed message passing. Hence JS8 + Directed Calling = JS8Call.

(copied from KN4CRD's official JS8Call 0.7 pre release announcement)

FT8call overnight & FT8call 0.7 news

Left my computer running overnight because I have some videocard issues that lock W10. It seems it didn't lock last night and it spotted all the stations received. When I did a allcall? early this morning I saw only KP3FT did receive me, reading his info I was surprised that the stations runs only 5W. So I send a pop up message, hopefully he did receive it. I was also surprised VU2RPS was calling earlier in the night. Overall, despite some negative comments from people that don't know what it is all about,  I see a increased interest in FT8call. It is nice to see global (QRP) communication is possible although the software is not intended for DX. It is all about the coverage of you portable station. Jordan KN4CRD does a great job creating this software. In a few days there will be a new version with exciting features. This is what Jordan wrote:

And here's what I've been working on in 0.7 (and it's right around the corner):

* I've built a compression algorithm for standard QSO text which means that we'll see some increases in throughput. Up until now, FT8Call has been limited to about 10WPM. With the new compression mechanism, we'll see 10WPM as the minimum, 20WPM peak on some sentences, with most averaging at about 15WPM. Very exciting!
* I've built a manual time synchronization mechanism so you will be able to sync your time manually without having to use an internet time server. (You'll just click the sync button at the start or end of an observed transmit cycle). Here's a sneak peek what that will look like: https://widefido.wistia.com/medias/73c390bacd
* I've also build a new BEACON behavior called BEACON ACK. It will replace ALLCALL? to automatically report to you who hears your BEACONs. And, those stations will be displayed with an indicator in the heard list so you know who can hear you.
* And a bunch more!

Version 0.7 and should be wrapped up here in the next few days. I appreciate your patience :) Let me know if there's anything I can do to help in the meantime.

Cheers y'all!

Best,
Jordan / KN4CRD

The manual sync option is the best invention of them all. I already wrote that in a worst case scenario there is no internet or GPS for time sync. The manual sync will overcome that. It doesn't matter if the opposite station is not in sync as well as long as both of your stations are synchronized.

And the biggest surprise of it all....will the mode still be known as FT8call? I know Jordan is searching or already has a new name for it. I wonder if it will be implemented in version 0.7?

Just a few days.....I can't wait...

Icom IC-706 features you didn't know about

It is already years ago I read about these unknown features officially not documented. Actually it is not of any use but these (start up) features are there and it's just nice to try them. Instructions are in the video...

#cqww RTTY 2018

Event: CQWW RTTY 2018

Section:  Single Operator Low Power  All Band RTTY
Logger: N1MM+ newest version
Station: Icom IC-706 MK2G 50W
Antenna: Multiband Inverted-V 2x20m ladderline fed, apex 12m agl

RTTY is not my favorite mode but technically a challenge. Why? Try to contest with RTTY and you will encounter all kind of difficulties. Last couple of years I contested with N1MM and MMVARI but I seriously wanted to try MMTTY as well now. Best I could do was setting it up with BPF on and at my radio CW filter on. That way I had a good receiving ability. My receive was very good but unfortunately many times I could call stations that didn't receive me at all. Sometimes that was because there were too many calling but other times I guess they had too much noise around their frequency. Best listeners as always are the well known contest stations. I only participated Saturday morning and Sunday morning/late evening. So unfortunate as most interesting DX stations can only be worked at daytime. But I had other things to do and so there was not much time left for the hobby. Results are reasonable, I worked K6DTT/1 as the only one from USA on 80m, on 40 it was a bit better and worked a couple from USA/Canada. 20m is as always best DX band, sundayevening there was almost exclusive propagation to the USA. Best and most interesting DX I think was V31VP. No new DXCC for me this year....

Note the location from K6DTT/1 is not displayed correct