Sunday, November 30, 2014

CQWW CW 80m QRP

Event: CQWW DX CW ham radio contest
Logger: N1MM+ most updated version
Station: Yaesu FT-817ND, 5W
Antenna: 84m horizontal square loop on 7m AGL.
CW decoder: FLdigi & MRP40




CW is not really my mode. But since it is easy to make a Dutch record I decided that would be a nice goal. Since my 84m horizontal loop is best for 80m I participated on that band only and to make things really difficult I operated QRP 5W. And that was not the only handicap. I'm unable to understand CW code (yet) so I have to decode with the computer. With my IC-706 I have a built in 250Hz CW filter which helps a lot. Unfortenately my FT-817 doesn't have a narrow filter and so decoding is difficult with a lot of stations in the spectrum. This year I used N1MM+ with FLdigi as CW decoder. Sunday morning I decided to use MRP40 as addition to see if it would be really worth 49 euro to register the software. I was only QRV very early in te morning Sat. and Sun. and sundayevening for half a hour. Worked 55 stations in total and managed to work 7 (!) stations from the USA and 1 from Canada. I encountered just one fellow blogger OQ5M Franki.

Dutch QRP records
I didn't spend much time in the contest in total it might be 3 hours. But still it was fun. Especially working the USA with only QRP power. I was really surprised by the signals sometimes 599 real report. I can only remember a signal on SSB like that years ago in the PACC from a Canadian station on 80m. Normally USA/Canada are just audible on SSB on my side. I guess the propagation was good this weekend? At least I reached my goal to set a Dutch record on 80m QRP. I guess real CW contesters are smiling when they look at my score, 55 QSOs is what they do in half a hour :-). But I don't care, at least I had fun.



About MRP40. Well I know it gets good reviews on several sites especially on the MRP40 site. It's a nice piece of software and sometimes it did decode better as FLdigi, sometimes it did not. It shure is not worth 49 euro for me. However it was a nice comparisation test.



8 comments:

Paul Stam PAØK said...

Hallo Bas, MRP 40 is niet mijn favo software, zeker geen 49 euro. Fldigi kan ook decoderen maar niet de zwakke signalen. Tot nu toe de enige echt goed werkende CW software is CWskimmer. Het is wel 80 euro maar zeker het geld waard. Ik heb een 2KHz venster waarin ik alle CW stations, pak weg een stuk of 10 tegelijk kan decoderen. 73 Paul

Anonymous said...

Excellent job, Bas - but how did you decide on 80m?

John AE5X

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Hallo Paul, ik vond MRP40 niet wezenlijk beter dan FLdigi. Het was een beetje om en om. Decodeerde MRP40 niet goed dan deed FLdigi dat wel en andersom. CWskimmer probeer versie heb ik hier al een paar keer geprobeerd te installeren op verschillende computers. Tot nu toe krijg ik alleen foutmeldingen. Maar heb al eerder gehoord dat het wel werkt. Overigens is men wel bezig om een zelflerende CW decoder te maken. Alleen zal het nog wel even duren voordat we die kunnen gebruiken. 73, Bas

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Hello John, I formulated the third sentence of my post different now. Decision was easy as my loop is best for 80m. 73, Bas

Hans said...

Hallo Bas, interessante mogelijkheden. Ik heb inmiddels Fldigi gedownload en ga deze komende tijd eens uitproberen. 73 Hans, PE1BVQ

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Hallo Hans, niet dat FLdigi het beste is maar het is wel gedeeltelijk compatible met N1MM+. En dat is wel het logprog voor contesten. 73, Bas

SV1GRN said...

Hello dear Bas, have you ever compared cwskimmer with fldigi?
73

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Unfortenately I never got the cwskimmer software to install on any of my computers. I get a error message and that's all. If I have time I'll try it again next year at the CQWW CW. 73, Bas