ARRL DX (SSB) Contest 2024

Spent a bit of time dabbling in the ARRL DX (SSB) contest this past weekend using the 10m dipole in the attic. In the process, I also discovered that the 30 or so meters of coax running from the shack to the outside, coiled up and hanging on the side of the house, also receives on 10m although not very well.

I was tuning around the band, hearing a few intelligible but faint signals, when I realized I had the radio on the wrong antenna input. When I switched over to the antenna input the 10m attic dipole was connected to, everything got much much louder.

I was hearing lots of DX activity on the band over the weekend. Most of my contacts ended up being on Sunday morning when I managed to work a few EU stations. Tuning around the band and working a few stations in between doing other things got me a total of 14 QSOs.

Not bad for a couple pieces of wire hanging from the rafters. Now I know the dipole works reasonably well.

Contest: ARRLDXSSB
Band QSOs Pts Cty Pt/Q
28 14 42 14 3.0
Total 14 42 14 3.0
Score: 588
1 Mult = 1.0 Q's

NC QSO Party 2024

Got W4BXC on the air again for part of the NC QSO party. Band conditions were about the same as yesterday, although didn’t hear quite as much DX on 10m today as I was hearing yesterday.

As usual, 40m was about the only band I could hear NC stations on. Toward the end of the contest, I started hearing one or two up on 20m, but none I hadn’t already worked on 40m. Did pretty well this year with 58 QSOs, including 4 out of the 6 bonus stations, and 38 counties.

Contest: NC QSOPARTY
Band QSOs Pts Mul Pt/Q
7 58 116 38 2.0
Total 58 116 38 2.0
Score: 4,458
1 Mult = 1.5 Q's

SC QSO Party 2024

The 2024 edition of the SC QSO Party was a pretty fun time. Had some friends over to put W4BXC on the air for the QSO party and we managed to get a few pileups going, which was a lot of fun.

Band conditions seemed pretty decent, and I was hearing a lot of DX on 10m from as far away as Czechia and Slovenia. There was even a ZS1 station that I heard (first time I’ve heard anything from that part of the world from here), but he went QRT before I was able to try for a contact.

Ended the day with 119 contacts in the log (41 more than last year) including the three bonus stations: W4CAE, WW4SF, and K4YTZ. Changes to the scoring means scores will be a lot higher this year than in previous years.

Contest: SC QSOPARTY
Band QSOs Pts Mul Mt2 Pt/Q
7 95 274 47 1 2.9
14 19 76 11 0 4.0
28 5 20 2 0 4.0
Total 119 370 60 1 3.1
Score: 26,370
1 Mult = 2.0 Q's

Not sure if the N1MM+ score is accurate but going by the QSO points and multipliers it’s showing, we should have (370*60) + 850 = 23050 points. I’ll have to wait until the official scores are out in a few months.

Kudos to the bonus stations and the mobile/expedition operators who went out to activate multiple counties.

SC QSO Party 2023 Results

While looking up the details for the 2024 SC QSO party, I saw the results for the 2023 SC QSO party, which I had forgotten to look for earlier.

W4BXC did reasonably well with a total score of 9696 points, 78 QSOs and 500 bonus points. That was good enough to put us in the top 20 for the Fixed Station (Phone) category (143 stations in that category).

The 2024 SC QSO party is coming up Feb 24. Looking forward to that and the NC QSO party the next day.

Field Day 2023

This year, W4BXC was on the air for Field Day as a 1E SC station after we noticed one of the Field Day FAQs said

Convenient access across one’s backyard to their home station facilities is not in keeping with the spirit of Class A or Class B portable operations. Such convenient backyard operations on property of home stations remain either Class D (commercial power) or Class E (emergency power), even if home antenna structures are not used.

ARRL Field Day 2023 packet

Like last year, we had the radio running on three deep cycle batteries connected in series, and they had no problems providing enough power to keep the radio transmitting at 100W the entire time we were operating.

Radios and laptop set up for ARRL Field Day 2023
Radios and laptop set up for ARRL Field Day 2023
Antenna set up for ARRL Field Day 2023
Antenna set up for ARRL Field Day 2023

I also set up a recently acquired Kenwood TM-221A 2m radio to monitor repeater activity.

Kenwood TM-221A mobile radio set up for ARRL Field Day 2023
Kenwood TM-221A mobile radio set up for ARRL Field Day 2023

I noticed this computer speaker used a 9V DC power supply, so I decided to power it with a 9V battery and connect it to the radio. Worked out pretty nicely. Note: if you notice that the noise characteristics from the speaker have changed, it probably means the battery is going dead and needs to be replaced. Took me a while to figure out what was going on.

Computer speaker connected to a 9V battery for power
Computer speaker connected to a 9V battery for power

The bands were crowded but pretty mushy during the day on Saturday. Lots of noise, quiet stations fading in and out, and only a few really loud ones. Things started getting better into the late afternoon and early evening and stations out on the west coast in the LAX and SDG (San Diego) sections started coming in pretty well. We waited for the ARRL Field Day bulletin and copied it down before calling it a night.

The next morning I got back on the air and worked a bunch more stations. A nice mix of sections across the country and into Canada. All the contacts we made ended up being on the 20m and 40m bands. Made a few forays up to 10m, but heard absolutely nothing there which kind of surprised me.

Ended up with a total of 106 contacts in the log for a total of 212 QSO points. 350 bonus points brought our total score up to 562 points. Final score might end up being a bit higher, because this year we’ve got some of W4BXC’s non-local members participating as well.