A farewell to 2008

2008 is going to an end with a spotless sun. This prolonged minimum is very annoying indeed. I hope that sooner or later sun will wake up and do its duty. By the way we have results for EPC PSK63 party 2008. Very big scores! Too many participants as the active members are more than 5000. No chance to get a descent place. I just got the first place in Greece. Not a big deal. But let forget all as the post is to wish you a Happy New year 2009 with a lot of radio activity, many dx and happy contesting time!

My Racal Ampligard Headset

A few days ago I found this piece of surplus in eBay. I bided it and finally got it. Nice equipment from the past. I wired it for YAESU, no big deal, and I put it on the air. It works perfectly. Well, it needs a bit more mice gain and the transmit audio is a bit of small bandwidth but no other problem. It is a proper headset for contesting or other heavy traffic operations in SSB. In construction it looks like a Roll Royce vs a sevy, compared with the trendy Heill sets. It is really amazing how they were manufacturing such things in the past.

CQ WW CW TEST

Last weekend of November! The CQ WW CW contest keeps alive the radio amateur bands. I am not really fond of CW mode. I never hid my love for the digital modes, mostly PSK. On the other hand with SCIMMER and so many decoders in our disposal, CW became just another digital mode. Still it remains the only one that human brain can decode. What machine can not handle, brain helps and the one confirms the other. So the game becomes more interesting, at least for guys like me who are not skilled cwers. With these thoughts in mind I decided to join the test this year. My tool was the MixW2, updated to the v2.19 beta. It run all the contest faultlessly.
I made more than 2 hundred QSO. I worked easily rare DX entities that otherwise it would be very difficult to work. I give you a small list: PJ2T, D4C, KP2M, HC8N, B1Z, AH2T, 3X5A, 5H3EE, 9J3A. Also I worked many stations from USA, Japan and Africa. I spent a really great time. Well maybe my score was low but I had a great time... and I found out that finally my dicision was right.

EPC PSK63 PARTY

This week end I joined the party of European PSK Club. I spent a nice time. Furthermore I never hid my love to digital modes. Even though the propagation was low, I made 500 qso mostly with EPC members and just a few dx. Spiros, SV8CS, just a couple of years ago, took the first place with 451 qso. But the situation has change since then. The members now are more than 5000 and I am afraid that my five hundred qso are not enough for a leading place. Any way I dad a lot of fun ruining the party. Among contacts were members from America Australia Japan and Africa. Well the club is spreading. Last year I had 400 qso but I unfortunately lost my log due to technical problems. Some people lost some points because of that and I feel sorry. But this time my log came safely to the contest manager. Long Live PSK!

Global Tuners

Global tuners is a well known site with receivers from all around the world that you can control through the internet. Recently, among the other receivers two Greek ones added. So you can find in the list SV2BWM and SV1BTL stations, available most of the time. In the picture you see the second one tuned in 15m, listening VQ9RD. Beyond the fun, using such a station it is an excellent tool chasing a DX, as you can check where it is heard in real time. Cluster does the same job but with much less fun regardless it does not say always the truth. I really cannot understand people who refuge using technology to extend their possibilities. It is so exciting.

Sniffing VK9DWX

This morning, even with a blank sun, propagation turned out to be favorite to work VK8DWX in 12m band. Suddenly it occurred to me to open CW Skimmer to sniff its transmission. Excellent tool, as you can in the snap. Even with 3KHz spacing it could copy almost all activity. Some people are sceptic about what machines can do. Some other, among them and me, they just use them.

DX came back

The 24th cycle seems that accelerates during the last days. Two groups of sunspots simultaneously...that's great news indeed. This alone it would be just an interesting statistical event. I do not know if there is any connection but a lot of DX stations are heard recently. T33Z, 5U5U, 9L1X, D44AC, TO5DX, C56YK, TN5SN, and of course VK9DWX. The last one is a major DXpedition organized by BCC and delivers big signals in any band or mode. So I can claim for sure that DX came back. Enjoy it.