I was able to take both the Canadian Amateur Radio Basic and Advanced certification tests this morning, and much to my surprise, managed to pass both of them.
I was pretty sure I’d pass the Basic test with at least Honours (80%+). The Advanced test I was a little less optimistic about since I didn’t have as much time to prepare for it as I had wanted. Fortunately I managed to score high enough to pass both tests, so now I have my Basic with Honours and Advanced qualifications!
Less than 30 minutes after the examiner left, I was already able to apply for my call sign through the Industry Canada website (wasn’t expecting to be able to do that for another day or two based on what the examiner told me). Hopefully that will go through by the weekend and then I’ll be official!
Update: My new Canadian call sign is active! VA6BUG
Got the log check results from CQ WPX 2014 in my email today. Out of my 77 QSOs, 4 of them got busted (1 incorrect call, 3 incorrect exchanges) leaving me with 73 QSOs and a score of 13510. On the other side, 3 stations copied my exchange incorrectly. Not as good compared to last year’s CQ WPX. I’ll just have to keep at it to get better, right?
************************** Summary ***************************
77 Claimed QSO before checking (does not include duplicates)
73 Final QSO after checking reductions
202 Claimed QSO points
193 Final QSO points
73 Claimed mults
70 Final mults
14746 Claimed score
13510 Final score
-8.4% Score reduction
5.2% Error Rate based on claimed and final qso counts
0 (0.0%) duplicates (without penalty)
1 (1.3%) calls copied incorrectly
3 (3.9%) exchanges copied incorrectly
0 (0.0%) not in log
0 (0.0%) calls unique to this log only (not removed)
********************** Results By Band ***********************
Band QSO QPts Mult
Claimed 160M 0 0
Final 160M 0 0
Claimed 80M 0 0
Final 80M 0 0
Claimed 40M 4 4
Final 40M 4 4
Claimed 20M 2 6
Final 20M 2 6
Claimed 15M 5 11
Final 15M 3 7
Claimed 10M 66 181
Final 10M 64 176
Claimed All 77 202 73 Score 14746
Final All 73 193 70 Score 13510
*********************** Incorrect call ***********************
28625 PH 2014-03-30 1826 AB4UG 18 NY6Y 1623 correct NY6N
*************** Incorrect Exchange Information ***************
21447 PH 2014-03-29 1748 AB4UG 1 NE5D 0034 correct 934
28581 PH 2014-03-30 1920 AB4UG 48 9A73P 5718 correct 5708
21235 PH 2014-03-30 2118 AB4UG 70 US5D 3354 correct 2354
********************** Lost Multipliers **********************
21447 PH 2014-03-29 1748 AB4UG 1 NE5D 0034 correct 934
28625 PH 2014-03-30 1826 AB4UG 18 NY6Y 1623 correct NY6N
28581 PH 2014-03-30 1920 AB4UG 48 9A73P 5718 correct 5708
************************ Multipliers *************************
5E5 8P5 9A5 AD5 CT1
D4 DA2 DQ8 E7 E77
EA3 EC1 ED1 ED5 EI7
EI9 F5 G5 HA1 HA6
HG1 HG7 HK1 I0 IB9
II2 II4 II9 IK2 IT9
IY1 IZ5 J42 KB3 KP4
LO5 LT7 LZ9 N9 NP2
OA4 OL4 OT5 PJ2 PW5
S50 S51 S52 S54 S55
S57 SN2 SN8 US5 VA5
VC6 VK4 VP2 WB2 WG3
WP2 WP4 WX3 XE1 XE2
YP0 YS1 YT0 YT5 YV4
********* Stations Copying Your Exchange Incorrectly**********
28647 PH 2014-03-29 1810 EC1DBO 1452 AB4UG 0009 should be 5
28000 PH 2014-03-30 1844 US5D 2168 AB4UG 123 should be 23
28340 PH 2014-03-30 2019 YS1YS 987 AB4UG 0051 should be 61
Spent about 4 hours playing in the North America QSO Party yesterday. Was just doing some casual tuning around, working a few stations and listening to some of the pileups. Spent most of my time tuning around 20m and 40m. Wasn’t hearing much of anything up on 10m or 15m by the time I got on the radio.
While I was tuning around I also managed to find and work W1AW/5 (OK) on 20m and W100AW/4 in AL on 40m. That was the first W100AW station I had found.
My stats from last night, according to N1MM. Not a whole lot of contacts, but managed a a couple of good ones into OR and CA on 20m.
Saw that the SC QSO Party resultsfor 2013 were posted a little while ago. A record year for logs submitted, QSOs made and counties activated (all but 2 SC counties were activated).
My 30 contacts and 360 points were good enough to get me 3rd place in the single-op low power category. Woohoo!
The 2014 SC QSO party happens during the weekend I’m back in Edmonton, so I’ll be missing it this year. Next time though.
To make better use of the CARS club room on the USS Yorktown, Jim/KK4REM has taken on the task of organizing monthly operating days open to any club members. Being on the Charleston Harbour and with an HF antenna at a pretty decent height over salt water, the ship is usually a pretty good place to operate from.
There are several purposes for the operating days:
Teach new hams proper operating procedures
Let people who might not normally use HF experience HF operations
Put the club equipment to use
I was able to make it to today’s operating day, and with the club’s laptops, the plan was to do some digital work as well. By the time I arrived at the club room, there were a few people already playing on the radio making some contacts on 20m. One of the contacts even included someone who served on the USS Yorktown back in the 50s.
Operating in the WA4USN club room on the USS Yorktown
After a few contacts, the Signalink was hooked up and a couple people were introduced to some of the digital modes. Did a little bit of PSK and some RTTY. I was busy with other things so I don’t know if any contacts were made.
While they were playing radio, I was showing my sound card interface to Rick/N8BKN and discussing the possibility of maybe making it a build project for the club. Bryce/K4LXF showed up a little later and from him I learned a little more about the repeaters that the club maintains.
I also got the opportunity to see the WA4USN repeater room., located a couple decks below the top of the Yorktown’s island. There’s not too much in there: the 2m repeater, a repeater controller and the WA4USN-5 APRS digipeater.
WA4USN APRS digipeater
WA4USN APRS digipeater
One of these days I might have to help maintain these repeaters.
