Yes, the BERU is a great contest Andrew, I hope recent HF condx continue for you operating as the VK1WIA HQ station. The last time I took part in the contest seriously was from your country in 2008 - it was a one off when we were there visiting family in Sydney, before there was a SOTA Association in VK I believe. I contacted the guys at the Manly Warringhah Radio Society in the Terry Hills VK2MB and used therir their club station, situated in an emergency fire and rescue centre in the Terrey Hills. I ran the station for the full 24 hours of the contest as they were short of CW Contest operators at that time. Preparing the antennas in the wood behind the centre in the dark was no fun… it was an overgrown area and full of spiders webs and spiders… We spent too long in the pub across the road socialising before the start time! VK2JNA Dom was particulary helpful and provided transport when I met him off the train, and he helped me set up the station and introduced me to his fellow members, a friendly bunch of hams for sure! It was a great experience and the guys went to a lot of trouble to accomodate me.
Shame I can’t do much in this weekends BERU, but I have an hour or so to spare tomorrow morning before my weekend committments away from the home QTH. I’ll do an hour S&P and keep an ear out for VK1WIA on 20m and up before and during the early part of the contest. It’ll give me a first try out using the N1MM+ software. Should have a good chance to work VK on 10m if conditions stay as as they have been the last few days.
Nice pics and it looks like the club gave you a station without antennas. I haven’t met Barry myself unless I’ve seen and even talked with him at a ham fest without registering his call. I will make several contacts with him in the contest.
I don’t think I can self spot as a contest station but will do so under my own call for SOTA purposes.
If I hear you I will give you a contact with both calls. I don’t want to mix vk1wia with SOTA as if isn’t my callsign and I can’t control the log once submitted. I’d have to lodge a log under that call as well as my own. However I guess anyone working vk1wia can claim the summit chase. I’ll be on battery with solar charging.
Hope the rest of your weekend goes well.
By the way, I just nudged my chaser uniques over 1000 and it struck me how hard you worked to make 1000 completes. Respect!
Andrew,
I will be around in the Commonwealth doing some S&P so I will try to hunt down VK1WIA, hope it goes well. Its a good contest for G’s to have a play in, QRS and some good DX to be had.
I liked Phil’s pics of VK2MB with Barry VK2BJ. A search of my log shows :-
The interesting thing the above snip shows is how your CW benefits from on air practice and playing in contests. That was 18 months after I passed my 12wpm test, looking at the rate I was doing 100+ per hour. Paper log and Samson ETM5 Iambic keyer, I think.
Thanks for the info Gavin! 1988 was pre computer log days for me, so I will add that QSO to my current whole log and G station log. I only started full computer logging in 1991 when I bought a 386. For QSOs prior to that I just recorded the new DXCC band slots into my computer log going back to 1982 when I got the licence, so in previous contests such as the 1988 IARU many contacts were not transferred from paper logs into the new computer in 1991. I will therefore now add the entry for our 1988 QSO!
There you are Gavin - you are now into my logbook for our first 1988 QSO. Alongside the filtered contacts I entered in 1991 for my July 1982 DX activity. There is some quality DX in the logbook that month, including Jim Smith VK9NS (SK) operating as T31JS. The red highlights are the confirmed QSOs. SSB was used to make many of the contacts. Where I was living in 1988 in Lancashire, was an exceptional rural QTH near the top of a hill with an unobstructed take off from 230 degrees clockwise round to 140 degrees. I knew it was a brilliant QTH when I came close to beating the well known CW contester Al Slater G3FXB in one RSGB CW contest, but I didn’t quite do it!
I’m sure you’d have got through on the first attempt Phil had the pile up not been so intense. I certainly didn’t realise you were using the HB-1B. Great signal.
I sold my HB-1A a while ago as I had too many rigs solely for portable use. Paul G4MD would say you can never have too many rigs. I remember working Steve GW7AAV many years ago and he told me he had 27 rigs… oo-er!
I should have been more precise. My plan was to take time out from the contest and operate under my own callsign, with the usual spots etc.
In fact what happened was that Ignacio EA2BD sent me a text message asking if I was on summit and offering a contact with EG2GURU, which I could not miss. So I moved to 14062 and worked him with very good signals. Then I had a good run of about 20 contacts, which included EG3GURU and EG4IF, both very significant callsigns on this weekend.
I eventually went back to the contest but it was not as exciting as those contacts into Spain.
Great to hear that you worked Ignacio Andrew with the EG2GURU QSO logged down under!
Myself, I had some issues with the N1MM+ software that I hadn’t used before. My problem was WINKEY stopping working (embarasingly) or sending the wrong serial number from the F2 key and not incrementing as it should have done, but I have now made some alterations to the ports configuration and the DC supply to the microHAM keyer and altered the virtual com port setup that provides WINKEY functionality. So half of the 90 minutes I had to spare for the contest was spent fiddling and rebooting my PC rather than looking for BERU stations. I did work one VK HQ station though, it took around ten calls to make myself heard using legal limit - this was VK5WIA on 15m - he was quite weak. Also worked GI5WS and GW5WS HQ stations, several VE’s, VK6s on 10m (easy QSOs) Cyprus, Malta and Ghana also in my submitted log, 12 hour open section, unassisted. Only 15 QSOs in total, but it was good exercise is using N1MM+
One of the difficulties that I have been encountering as I have increased speed is anticipation of words. I was able to copy phrases from the top 1500 words at 27wpm in the ditto cw app, but was struggling with the ARRL code practice sessions. This was because after hearing 5 letters of a word, I mentally guessed the full word, and then my mind froze if the next letter did not match expectations. The ARRL sessions contained some less used words which threw me off
To tackle this i created a file of words that are long and, in many cases, unusual. The link is below. You can load this into ditto cw to provide good practice. The unusual words are hopefully helpful in training away the anticipation habit.
Of those who can copy above 25wpm, it would be interesting to see how many of the unusual words are copied (ie. at speeds above 25wpm, is reading morse based on reading whole words meaning that familiarity with the word is more critical?)
Matthew, you are not alone. We are pattern-seeking animals and our ancestors survived despite the occasional false positive.
I think this is particularly a problem with head copying as one builds the word letter by letter in one’s mind’s eye. I don’t find this a problem with ‘hard copying’ - i.e. writing to paper - as that process is usually totally subconscious.
I consciously look back at what I’ve written whilst my subconscious is working on the current character. It appears my subconscious mind isn’t trying to form words, just decode characters and write them.
Yes, in my opinion, random all-letter or all-number groups are the easiest Morse to decode: 1) one knows to expect only a subset of the character set in nice 5-character chunks, and 2) the randomness stops the conscious mind looking for patterns - so one focuses entirely on writing it down.
It’s been successful for the military and spies for a very long time (e.g. shortwave numbers stations).
I saw the joke Tom, once I realised I had dropped a clanger with the contest finish time! Thank you for the QSO in last night’s 80m CW Contest (017/014 at 20:17). I think it is right to say you were the only “recognisable SOTA operator” who I worked in the 90 minute session. I was using the callsign G4BP representing Scarborough ARS. After a slightly late start at 20:04 I ran on 3517 KHz for the whole session, I made 123 contacts being rather out of practice in domestic contests. I hope to do a few more of these short contests this year. The highest number I received at 21:29 just before the finish was 154 from GM4Z.
If those CW learners have a home station and are seeking to improve their Morse skill should have a go in these events, it’s a great way to improve your character recognition. I didn’t expect to work so many of the short special 3 letter UK and other EU countries contest calls. They weren’t around when I last took part in this type of contest ten years ago.
I haven’t met Barry myself unless I’ve seen and even talked with him at a ham fest without registering his call. I will make several contacts with him in the contest.
