It seems I have achieved 5BDXCC. For the regular people (are there any that read this anyway?): that means I have contacted at least 100 different countries on 5 different amateur frequency bands, AND HAVE THE PROOF TO SHOW FOR IT ! ! !

I spent the last two days almost entirely processing QSL cards (more on that later) and I noticed that I confirmed quite a few band slots for DXCC. I’ve been using LotW for over 3 years now and I have a lot of new ones there that my old DX4WIN doesn’t count. I never bothered to import the LotW report and merge the score for paper QSL and LotW. Until now. DX4WIN told me I was missing some countries to get to 100 on 80m. I new I had a bunch there on LotW for which I don’t have a paper log. So finally I RTFM and there you go. Five band (CW only) DXCC ☺☻☺☻☺

I do not consider myself a DX’er but I like to work a new one when possible. So the score here has been worked together over the years but not very fanatically.

I am was a big fan of the CW Freak software. I haven’t played ‘the game’ in a long time so I downloaded it to run it on my Vista laptop. I kept getting an error and the program doesn’t run. It hasn’t been updated for over three years so I figured Vista support would be minimal. I sent an email to the author but the address on the site is no longer valid.

In order to be constructive for a change I sent a note to the CQ Contest reflector. I needed to rewrite my message (link) before it would get posted. The list’s moderator wanted me to ask for direct replies to avoid yet another strong pro-con discussion, this time about Vista. He’s right. The replies would most likely again slip into an endless discussion about people who prefer MS-DOS 6.02 over XP, Linux fans mocking Mac users etc. Agreed: Vista is not quite a big success and my first encounter with Windows 7 last week was very hopeful. But my laptop runs Vista and I’ll use it until it’s time to move to Windows 7.

I installed, tried and uninstalled DXKeeper again. Its Spartan GUI was quite a shock compared to nGenLog’s modern feel but once again I found myself lost in all the possible windows, tabs and options. A killer application for sure, and it’ll probably suit my needs but I just can’t be bothered to start learning it.

I discovered that I could read from (tested) and probably write to (not tested) nGenLog’s database using my .Net toolbox. That opens perspectives. I started analyzing my own .Net application’s code again that I hadn’t looked at for over 2 months. Did I really write all that? Maybe time to pick up where I left…

What criteria can I come up with?

• No fancy things like cluster and CAT, all my operating ‘on the air’ is done with N1MMLogger, either in contests or in DX mode.
• Interact ‘full duplex’ with LotW and eQSL. This means send a batch of selected QSO to the online service and get the results back to see what contacts are confirmed.
• Interact with GlobalQSL.
• Easy procedure to process incoming ‘buro’ cards. Not too many keystrokes to confirm a contact and flag it to send a QSL. Either by printing a label the old way or upload a batch of flagged QSO to GlobalQSL.
• Easy access to enter extra information like state for WAS and US County.
• Possibility to print QSL labels.
• Statistics for tracking awards and see scores for DXCC, WAS, WAZ, US Counties etc.
• Follow standards like ADIF for import / export.
• Don’t hide valuable information in a proprietary format but use open standards, preferably available like ASCII (ADIF) and XML.
• Authors who are responsive to user input and are willing to listen and take advice if justified.
• Authors who won’t quit and leave the users in the cold when the project gets too big and does not produce a fortune.
• Authors who let their software evolve with current technology without too many compatibility and upgrade problems for the user.
• It does not need to be free, but it should not cost an arm and a leg either. Normal updates and bug fixes need to be free.

What’s up with all this right now? Most of this is done by DX4WIN v6.04. But not everything.

• Since I don’t use it to operate and log real time, things like CAT and WinKey don’t matter. This version should do LotW but I never bothered to try it. I do not have any idea right now what my total DXCC or WAS score is with paper QSL and LotW combined. It doesn’t do eQSL.
• No GlobalQSL, it does not even export QSL managers to ADIF. V7 does that but I refuse to pay another fee. I can manage with my own software gadget to add QSL info to the ADIF before uploading to GlobalQSL.
• The F2 key confirms a QSO and either flags for QSL or not (pick option in settings). That’s pretty cool.
• Printing labels works once the formatting is done. Be sure to save your parameters (I took an image of the screen) once the label formatting is done. Not many EU standard formats for the sheets and labels.
• Statistics: it works for me but I don’t know whether to grade it “it’s just working” or “good stuff”. No comparison with other software because I never tried anything else.
• Not 100% compliant with ADIF standards (V6.04 at least) and both the log and the info are stored in their own format. Why on earth does it need to come to V7 to include the QSL manager in ADIF export? And why should that cost me 25$?
• Authors on a mission to Mars??? And too many updates that have to be paid that were almost only bug fixes. I quit following the reflector or the website a few years ago so I don’t have a clue what’s up with DX4WIN.

I should now see if nGenLog handles this. And how. I think the program is still young and there are some things missing, but the author(s) seem(s) to follow the support forum closely. I’m not in a hurry…

My club’s president ON7GR, a happy user of DXLab, is probably right that I can only use the DXKeeper module which is freeware. Maybe I should give it another go? Not that the nGenLog license fee is too much, but I’m a big fan of free software.

ON7GR also sent me an interesting link to LA0FA’s website. I didn’t know this was possible but LA0FA seems to have included the VB source code in the ZIP file. I think I’m about to learn something new here!!!

While the DXLab Launcher is downloading and installing DXKeeper, I’ll be preparing the BBQ for this afternoon. First things first   ;o)

Just look at what PropFire is telling me. Why even bother to get into the shack? Such lame conditions. So time to take another close look to nGenLog, the new logging software.

I’ve been using DX4WIN since I started on HF late 2000. Before I used a simple word processing file that I filled in while making VHF contacts. My colleague at the time, ON4BAI, advised me to look for a good logging program and start out the right way. I followed his advice and bought a DX4WIN license. The software did everything I needed back then. It was even ‘state of the art’ and I think the authors did a good job at keeping up with bug fixes and adding new features. As a novice ham, my needs were rather limited.

Over the years my needs grew and technology evolved (LotW, eQSL, GlobalQSL,new USB driven hardware, interaction with the Web etc). But it seemed DX4WIN stood still. And if there was a so called update, which in fact was often just a mere bug fixing release, you need to pay a fee again. So I decided not to spend anymore money on the software and just keep using the old 6.04 release. Along the way I also discovered that this version does not export all information to ADIF. The biggest flaw is that QSL manager info is NOT stored in the log but in a separate file. Hence the QSL manager is not added to ADIF upon export. Two years ago I wrote a small Visual Basic application that fixed this. Oh yeah, DX4WIN uses its own way of writing a file, so you just can’t access the information. I export the QSL manager database to a CSV and export the log to ADIF. Then I parse the ADIF and look for the call in the QSO. If the callsign also occurs in the QSL managers file, it reads the manager’s call and adds the call and the ADIF tag to the QSO in the ADIF file.

I am by no means a real programmer but I like to learn new things about programming and it’s fun to write small applications for myself that can be useful. Maybe all those apps already exists but it’s like home brewing an antenna versus buying one off the shelf. The self made antenna will give more satisfaction. The same holds true for those little programs I write myself. On the other hand, home brewing a complex multiband yagi is a challenge but in the end I would just buy one. Maybe I should stick to writing small apps and leave the real deal to the experts?

There are some good free loggers out there. I tried DXLab. Its users are really happy with it, and it looked like a really great program. But I encountered a steep learning curve and a complex program. Which is only normal as all those hundreds of features need to be stuffed somewhere. I did not want to spend a lot of time figuring out yet another program. Especially since  am not interested in many of those features. More on that later. Ham Radio Deluxe is another free program with a lot of possibilities. But too much of those renders the program too complex for my needs.

Then I encountered nGenLog by clicking an online ad on some ham radio website. The website looked promising and so did the program’s announced features. This month’s QST has a review so I decided to download the demo and feed it with my 100k QSO. nGenLog uses the Microsoft .Net technology, of which I am a big fan (ask my students HI). Now how do I decide whether to spend money and buy a license, or just leave it be? Maybe I should list the criteria by which to evaluate if the program will fulfill my logging needs? What does nGenLog need to do for me?

Got bored with the blue after almost 2 years... Hope you like it. Activity on 30m was so huge this morning (04.00 utc) that I found the time to fiddle with the looks of these pages.

Rounding up the holidays, finishing the construction projects, cleaning up the mess and get the low band antennas up again. That’s what ON5ZO does the coming weeks.

In the mean time I’ve downloaded and installed a demo of nGenLog. I haven’t done much with it but it looks OK. Will it satisfy my logging needs? More on that later.

Yesterday I had a spare PC running the Windows 7 RC installer. That went pretty smooth and on first impression I like it better than Vista. With a medium-spec AMD ‘monocore’ CPU and only 1 gig of RAM, it works reasonably fast. Heck, for this setup it runs very good. I managed to install N1MMLogger and the microHAM USB Device Router but I haven’t tested these ‘live’. Something for Fall when the days are too short to sit on the terrace… Anyway the ancient VB6 N1MM code runs on the futuristic Windows 7. I wonder how long this will still be the case.

I made some changes for the UBA Low Band contest too in the N1MM-code. There were some errors last year (remember?). I made a test build for the contest sponsor / log checker but haven’t heard from him. I think it’s working OK now. I don’t really like doing this. The code is written by REAL programmers and it’s a very complex project. On the other hand, I have learned a lot by analyzing the code. Knowledge that I have applied to my own software projects. Those have also been put ‘on hold’ for the summer.

There was a request to add the Belgian Mill Award contest (BMA) to the N1MMLogger code. I hate turning people down but I will have to this time. I think this is one silly contest with way too many parameters and categories and almost no participants. And I simply don’t have the time.

Yes I hate paper QSL. I made that clear in my previous post. More precise: I hate tons of QSL cards coming in that need to be processed, confirmed and answered. It’s not even the cost, it’s the time for such a boring job. Anyway, sometimes a card can be nice. Like getting a QSL card for a new state on a rather difficult band…

On December 24, 2003 I worked K6NA who is in California, on 80m. I don’t work into W6 on 3.5MHz on a regular base. I’ve got the proof here: MP3. That was a pretty good QSO for a Christmas present. I used a barefoot (100W) TS-850 and a 80-20-15-10 parallel (fan) dipole antenna, with the feedpoint only 10m high and the ends only 3m above the ground. Yes, the early days @ ON5ZO. It was a clear case of grey line propagation at my sunrise and I was so glad to work him. California on 80m with my small setup! I sent my QSL card with the appropriate bribe green stamps but no card was ever seen. I wrote him an email with the MP3 attached and his reply was that he was behind in direct QSL but that he could not remember having seen my card. K6NA is esteemed pretty low since then.

Today there was a direct card in the mail. The address said ‘CA’. Yet another 20m QSO with California. Yet another fellow contester in need for ON. I open the envelope and look at the card. It says “3.5 MHz”. Huh??? Yes, an 80m CW QSO with California finally confirmed with a good old paper QSL card. It was a QSO made in WAE CW only 8 days ago. I never suspected a W6 QTH behind a K0 call… But there you go. Our hobby is full of surprises. Thanks to the OM for the QSO and the QSL.

I love LotW for WAS/DXCC and I also upload to eQSL to minimize the paper QSL. I hate having to process all those paper QSL cards. Last week I went through a dozen direct cards and email QSL requests, today I handled a box of paper cards. The box stood here untouched since January. And there is another box waiting for me… I remember when I started on HF. I QSL’ed every QSO and was eager to get a stack of cards. When I became more active it was fun to see the growing pile of ON5ZO QSL cards when they were being sorted at the weekly club night. But the more contacts you log, the more cards that come in. Apart from the budget, it takes a lot of time to process the cards and answer them. Time that can not be spent doing something more worthwhile. Some say it’s a part of the hobby, but this part has become a boring burden for me. That’s why I keep postponing the job. Nevertheless, although it takes (quite a long) time before I get to it, I finally reply all those who send a card. Luckily there is GlobalQSL now which saves on printing and sticking labels.

The box was full of the usual suspects: DL, W, JA – nothing spectacular. Except for one card: BD3BSV for a 80m QSO. I don’t have many cards from China, but this certainly is a new 80m DXCC confirmation!

Other than that, I sent my WAE log in, uploaded to LotW and eQSL and sorted my stock of coaxial plugs and connectors. I’ve run out of chassis PL, so I need to make up a shopping list for Belgium’s biggest ham fest end of September. I booked my seat to go with ON3DSJ and ON4BHQ. Waiting for a confirmation…

It has been quite a while since I did a serious full time effort to put down a good score. I wasn’t planning on doing so either this year. Face it: WAE has everything to be a stupid contest:

• Yet another contest? Again?
• Summer propagation: lots of QRN on the bands.
• Summer season: why not go to the beach?
• Only DX to be worked. With these conditions?
• Low rates and not too many DX active, only the usual suspects.
• QTC? What QTC?

However I like WAE CW a lot.

• Yet another contest? Hooray!
• Still plenty of DX to be worked. I worked PY and LU on 80m, as well as W/VE and numerous others on 40.
• I hate the beach.
• Copying CW QTC makes up for the lower rates and is a fun thing to do.

I set myself a modest target: 300 QSO, 500 QTC and try to be Country Winner for Belgium. I needed to regain the fun in contesting, especially after what happened in EUHFC the week before. Still finding myself without an antenna for 80m and 160m, and still no control cable for the 2el 40m switched array, I wasn’t sure what to do.

I woke up on Saturday and looked at the online DX cluster. I didn’t have the feeling I was missing too much. The XYL and I left for a day trip and we returned by 15.00 UTC which is 17.00 local. I had made up my mind. Crank up the tower, put up only one vertical dipole for 40m, make the 80m wire from the week before a little longer. No 160 in this contest so I didn’t need to worry about Top Band. At 16.11 UTC I was in the shack and ready to roll. I missed out more than 12 hours already so no need to plan any breaks, just rock ‘n roll away.

Less than 9 minutes later I was already copying QTC. Luckily NY4A was willing to hand ‘m out this early in the contest. I stayed on 20 and much to my surprise a lot of DX stations were already giving QTC. The years before you got a standard ‘LTR’ or ‘QRU’ before Sunday. I tried 15m but it wasn’t a big hit.

I can be brief about the rest of the contest. I slept a few hours at night. Later on I tried 80m which was very disappointing. It wasn’t the antenna this time. It was a noisy summer 80m band with lots of static and QRN and not too many stations QRV on 3.5 MHz. At night it was 40m that provided the contacts and during the day it was 20m. I tried 15m off and on and on 10m it was even worse than last year. It was good to work a VU2 there, and being called by P43JB was the cherry on top. I managed to work K1LZ on 10m with the beam slightly off bearing (260° i.s.o. about 300°). N3RD was very weak but we managed. NN3W called too but the QSB drowned the weak signal completely. JH3PRR was V.E.R.Y. loud on 40m. I think I heard him on 80m and a VK3 there too (after seeing both spotted), but nothing workable so I didn’t waste any time there.

I dug it out to the end on 20m, the band that was open to the very end. Some stations kept coming back to get rid of their QTC. Bring it on boys! I appreciated N4YDU’s effort to get some more QSO’s and then return to give me a series of 10 QTC. I guess Nate wanted to make up his “SRI – QRU” some moments before. Not shooting the messenger here but he sent me a QTC with OP4K who handed out QSO #678. I hope Joe didn’t work too many QTC, otherwise my Country Winner target is not met…

I had a great time and I’m totally relaxed after an enjoyable contest. I topped my targets. Fingers crossed for OP4K…

Throughout the contest, or at least the part I was active, I was thinking of The Simpson’s Comic Book Guy’s quote: “Worst episode ever”. This one was indeed my own worst episode ever!

A little history

I really should stop benchmarking my contesting to 2007. That was my best year. Everything worked out, many many QSO, high rates, good scores. And WX seemed to like contests. In EUHFC 2007 I made over 1200 QSO, starting with an 120 hr on 10m. Go figure. Then I sucked 15m dry etc etc – the callers kept calling and the rate meter got stuck at 100/hr.

Then came 2008. WX throughout the whole year was crap for my field day setup. Even so in EUHFC, read it here and here. I had a slow start then and I was thinking that it was bad for everyone. Later on 3830 I read that some guys easily got over 1100 QSO. I must have done something wrong?

Doing wrong isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Not drawing conclusions on the other hand, is. I did not check last year’s scores to see what I did wrong. The reason for that is simply a blatant lack of time. I’ve been working on a construction project outside for over 7 weeks now, and I simply didn’t have the time to play radio or prepare. Even worse: all my low band antennas were completely removed and put in a box because the garden became a construction site. I wasn’t around the shack since WPX CW. After missing IARU, RRTC and IOTA, I wanted to get on the air. I was am tired and not 100% motivated.

The day before

Mission statement: Put all ‘civilian’ jobs on hold and make sure the antennas work. I soldered a ‘remote tuning device’ for the MFJ automatic tuner that is now outside in a cabinet. It’s just a relay actuated from the shack, that shorts the terminals of the tune button in the tuner. So the tuner sees the closing relay as someone pushing the button. Modified the shack’s end of this interface. Put plugs on cables. All with instant success. I’m not new to soldering small circuits. But it all takes time.

I put the 2 elevated radials of the 40m vertical back in the trees. They were removed after tweaking the trees early in April. Go figure!

How to be QRV on 160/80 for a domestic EU contest? I have a 80m dipole in stock but I remember that the MFJ doesn’t tune it on 160m. Being desperate and in a hurry I fed the dipole with homebrew ladder line and a THE infamous current choke. No go on either band. Replaced ladder line with coax: OK on 80m, no go on 160m.

I cannot put up two dipoles on the tower, they interact. I need to go ‘cross polarized’. If I use my 160m dipole, I need to go vertical on 80m. But all the elevated radials for 160/80 are gone and still need to be replaced… It’s late in the evening already and I need to go and pick up my brother in law at the airport. So I just put up 2 elevated radials and hung up a wire from the tower. This got tuned on 80m but not on 160m. As expected: radials and wire too short. The MFJ-998 is a lazy SOB, it only tunes what’s easy.

The nice thing is that the WX cooperates. No snow, no wind, no rain. Warm, dry, sunny. It’s 21.30 local, I need to QRT / QSY and still haven’t got anything in the air for 40 and 160. Got home and in bed at 01.00 am.

The day of the contest

You could say that I have the Saturday morning to finish the antennas. But my neighbor asked me to give him a hand. It seems that everybody is into DIY construction these days. He has helped me out a couple of times so I didn’t want to let him down. So I got up at 07.00 and put up the 160m dipole and 40m vertical (radials already done on Friday). I was QRV @ neighbor at 08.30 and we made it a quickie. I was back home at 11.15. Plenty of time, and QRV with the OB11-3 @ 16m high, a vertical for 40m, something ‘verticallish’ for 80m and a coil loaded 160m dipole. I comforted myself that this is OK to make 1000 QSO in the UBA CW contest in 12h so it’ll be good for a EU-only contest.

The Contest itself

At 1200utc, 10m was dead. So I started on 15m. Twenty minutes later I was running 14017. Nuff said? How I hate this scenario. It’s been like that for what seems forever. Forget about 10, try 15, end up on 20… Last year it was the same story but then I reckoned it was bad for everyone. Later on that seemed not true.

After one hour and a half, the trend became clear. I took a break – motivation = zero. Put myself together and tried 10m which yielded 4 QSO and 15m for about 15 QSO then on the 20m again. After a ‘reasonable’ hour on 20 (86 QSO?), I tried 10m again with some more success. Then back to 15m for another round. Signals were VERY weak, except the Balkan guys. Then the obligatory round on 20m which was quite ok.

I took a second break, I had already given up being competitive and 45 minutes later I returned to 15m which was a little better than before. Then a dozen contacts on 10m and again to 15m. I skipped 20m because I had plenty of contacts there.

By 1900 utc it was time to hit 40m. I hoped for the rate to explode. It didn’t. After 46 QSO in 40 minutes, and a short S&P on 20m I tried my luck on 80m. That band was very noisy. No rate there either and poor signals. Maybe the antenna wasn’t what I needed for this contest? I worked 47 stations in 35 minutes. Around 20.20 utc I hit rock bottom. I was tired, didn’t have fun, it was hot in the shack and the forecast was “chances of thunderstorms over central Belgium”. I quit the contest and disconnected all antennas. I had a tremendous feeling of defeat because of the bad numbers on 10m and 15m, which I could not make up with these rates on the low bands.

The Day After

Anxiously reading 3830. I look at the scores in CW Only HP. How do they do that? Better stations? Better location? Better operators? Or better tactical insights in the EUHFC game? I did very well in my magic year 2007. Why can’t I do it again in ‘08 and ‘09? What has changed?

I need to see if I can get hold of some logs to see on what band those super scorers were and to compare that with my ‘strategy’. Still early for new year’s resolutions but here’s my primary goal for this winter and 2010: don’t start big projects, relax, prepare for contests, operate them. Full time.

BTW: There were no thunderstorms last night.