The conditions for contesting were both great solar weather-wise and local weather-wise. The solar weather was very favourable during the entire contest which was nice. The sun has been very active these past few months and this weekend it was nice and calm. Local weather was just right for contesting as well...it was pouring rain and windy all weekend. Why is this great you ask..well during the contest slow periods no sun and the blue sky were calling my name to get outdoors. My goals for this contest were to have fun (check), run for 98% of the time (check), beat last year's score (double check) and hopefully have no radio or PC issues (check).

As always this was a very well-attended contest with lots of DX so even if you are not an avid contester there was an advantage to logging some rare DX. My radio was the Icom 7610 at 100 watts using the Hustler 4BTV vertical antenna. Max  CW speed was at 34wpm and toward the end I dropped it to 30wpm. For most of the contest, the Kp index was Kp3 and dropped to kp1 toward the contest end. The Bz index was in the plus for Friday and Saturday but headed in the negatives on Sunday. When the Bz dips in the negative numbers it accounts for problematic signal fading. At times the caller was there and then gone. 

I was very pleased all the way around,  the radio worked great, the PC and its software had no issues and the solar conditions behaved themselves. Mind you toward the end of the contest I  started to have a little brain fog and messing up similar CW letters such as H and S and on occasion transposing letters. This year I also made a point to not take things personally. What I mean by this is when asking for a few repeats because at my end I had either a close station wiping them out or another station calling me on top of the desired station. In the past when the station I was asking repeat from seemed to leave in a huff it used to bother me....well not anymore. In the past, I took things personally and that took the fun out of contesting....well no more. 

A very busy map of my contacts.

Some things that threw me off were stations coming back to me with "DE WXYZ". I would copy DE thinking it was the first two letters to only find out they were sending "DE" for "this is". I have my filter set for 400hz when calling CQ TEST and in crowded bands like in the CQ WW contest that is wide for me. I would have some stations come back to me way off my calling frequency. Most of the time I thought they were answering another CQ TEST close to me....but not so. I would end up adjusting the RIT make the contact and get back. But that was it and I am not by any means complaining just sounding off a bit. 

Well ok, just one more....those who when they send back their exchange would also send their call again which makes me think I messed up their call.  This became problematic when their call was "HSH" or "KH5" so made for unnecessary back and forth while others waited to contact me....or some would just step in with their call knowing the call was good the way I had it.  I also had fellow blogger Bas PE4BAS contact me during the contest as well.
When you hit 1750 CW contacts once you're done with the contest and in bed with your eyes closed you can still hear cw code in your head rolling around. I had a blast and am looking forward to the next contest.

Very happy with the outcome.

Hello and welcome to the 562nd installment of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this short topics episode, the hosts discuss upcoming Yaesu radios with a new DSP technology, 2024 ARRL BoD elections, the latest Linux kernel release, Automotive Grade Linux, Linux VMs in your browser and much more. Thanks for listening and have a great week.

73 de The LHS Crew

This coming weekend is the CQ Worldwide CW DX contest. You don't have to be a contester to jump in this contest. There will be some great DX  to be had so one can add contacts to an award you are working towards.  If you are a QRP op you can see how far your 5 watts will get you. At one time I even ran QRPp power and was amazed at the distances I made. The exchange in this contest is easy peasy a signal report (always 599) and your CQ zone. (Found here). If you are working your way up the contest code ladder this is a great time to log in some practice time. So double-click on your contest icon and roll in a few hours over the weekend in the contest.

The finished product.

Once a year I take some time to open up my PC and give it a nice cleaning out. I am shocked at how much dust collects just after one year. I built the system and spent some money on it so I want to do my best to look after the upkeep. My computer is tucked off to the side of my desk on a shelf built for it. Taking it out is a chore and I have to make sure each USB cable goes back exactly where it was removed. If not when I start my virtual com port program I get an error message that certain com ports are not working. 

I have been doing some reading on RFI these past few months and along with that comes the subject of grounding. One topic that came up over and over again was the front USB ports that some PCs have. Mine has such ports and it has been mentioned that most of the time these ports are not grounded to the chassis of the PC. They in most cases are grounded to the motherboard via the control cable that makes its way out to the USB  front board. 

Sure enough, my PC was one that did not have a chassis ground for the front USB ports. It was easy to do and was a jumper wire from the USB board to the PC chassis. At the time I had no green wire and had to use red but I will know what it is for. While I had the PC  open I did check the onboard USB ports and I have 11 of them and they are chassis grounded.

In this episode, we join Martin Butler (M1MRb, Chris Howard (M0TCH), Martin Rothwelll (M0SGL) and Leslie Butteresfields (G0CIB) to discuss the latest Amateur / Ham Radio News. Colin Butler (M6BOY) rounds up the news in brief and this episodes feature is Multimeters Revisited.

We would like to thank Steve Anness (KJ5T), Brad Councilman (W1BCC) and our monthly and annual subscription donors for keeping the podcast advert free. To donate, please visit - http://www.icqpodcast.com/donate

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AmateurLogic.TV Episode 199 is now available for download.

Tommy prepares for Parks on The Air activation. Mike visits the Communications and Electronics Museum. George creates Random Intelligence (or not) while exploring the recent Arduino Uno Rev4 WiFi board. Emile displays his mad slacking skills.

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