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Those of you who are regular blog readers know I have had my fair share of RFI that has affected my PC, washing machine, headphones and key. I have been doing some reading that all ferrites are not alike. Yes, they may be a mix 31 but there are good and very good ferrites on the market. I looked around at the popular dealers that dealt with chokes both beads, snap on and rings. I have read many good reviews on the Fair-Rite brand of ferrites. There were two electronic dealers I have dealt with in the past Mouser and Digikey. Mouser was where I ended up as I had ordered from them and was very happy.  I found the Fair-rite snap-on chokes I wanted and ordered them along with one Fair-rite round ring ferrite. These items shipped the same day and were at my door in no time. My mission with the new ferrites was to solve my PC  issue. When operating N1MM+ contesting program now and then (mostly at the most inconvenient of times) the Windows hourglass would pop up on my screen. For anywhere from 4 seconds to 20 seconds I was not able to transmit using any of N1MM+ macros. Not good when a station is waiting for a contest reply from me. The other thing that happened again in  N1MM+ the log window would just go black. The only way to solve this issue was to restart the program.
I have an idea what the issue may be and I want to see if this Fair-Rite product is truly a quality product or not. More on that in the next post.

In this episode, we join Martin Butler M1MRB,Caryn Eve Murray KD2GUT, Edmund Spicer M0MNG, and Ed Durrant DD5LP to discuss the latest Amateur / Ham Radio news. Colin Butler (M6BOY) rounds up the news in brief and the episode's feature is Pennine Ham - Nick G4IWO.

We would like to thank our monthly and annual subscription donors for keeping the podcast advert free. To donate, please visit - http://www.icqpodcast.com/donate

• RADIO D.A.R.C. to broadcast out of England from January 2025
• Changes Underway in ARRL's Vec Program
• A Big Brother-Ish Use Of The 5.9 Ghz Band?
• Encourage Youngsters on the Air
• 25th Annual SKYWARN Recognition Day
• Santa Net Runs Through Christmas Eve
• RSGB HF Contest Changes

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.