My musings on Ham Radio … and stuff!
So, here I thought I had conquered the N1MM/IC-7300/MMTTY setup for the RTTY contest this weekend. Silly me! I had great receive, and could key the radio, but no modulation transmitted. It just shouldn’t be this complicated. I’ll conquer it by next contest.
73 de Dick N4BC
I worked two new countries this evening, both on FT8 … Oman on 40 meters and the Falkland Islands on 30 meters. Yes, Virginia, there is life left in the ham bands.
I also went ahead and updated the firmware on my IC-7300 with no problems noted. I don’t know why so many people have difficulties with this … if you follow the manual step-by-step, it’s hard to mess it up. DO remember, however, to save your configuration before upgrading, unless you want to go menu diving and setting up your whole operating environment again.
I downloaded MMTTY and integrated it with N1MM+ in preparation for the RTTY contest tomorrow. I haven’t tested it live on the air yet, but it should work fine. Tomorrow will tell!
Wow … three posts today! Maybe I should have saved up and dribbled it out more slowly. Oh well, I hadn’t posted for a while so I guess this makes up for it.
73 de Dick N4BC
Icom has issued a firmware update for the IC-7300 to ver. 1.30. There are also updates for both the Basic and Full manuals. You can find everything here on Icom’s website.
73 de Dick N4BC
I had a fun time Saturday morning in the IARU HF contest. I made 141 CW contacts … all search & pounce. I had a higher score this year than last year, so I did improve. I had a birthday party to attend Saturday afternoon and evening and then church on Sunday morning, so my radio time was limited to Saturday morning only.
Propagation was good. I had contacts on all bands, 80 through 10 meters. There were lots of good, strong signals. Eighty and forty were noisy, as is normal this time of year, but there were always contacts available.
I have to say that the IC-7300 was a pleasure to use. The bandscope and filters were so useful. That and N1MM+ made the contest fun! I used my 100 watts, homebrew vertical and tuner and was pleased with the results. I do wonder, though, what I could have done with a “decent” antenna? I remember the old days of paper logs, dupe sheets, and manual keying so well. No comparison nowadays.
I would encourage you to participate in contest operation, especially if you’re new to the hobby and haven’t tried it already. It can be a bit intimidating, but it’s a lot of fun. It’s a good way to work new countries/prefixes/counties or whatever. Maybe it’s not for you … that’s OK too, but you’ll never know unless you try it.
73 and Good Luck de Dick N4BC
We had our weekly net last night at 9pm EDT, and seven people checked in. This was my first check in, and I didn’t have much to contribute, so I just sat back and “read the mail.”
There were several interesting discussions during the hour. The net is primarily a place where locals can meet and ask questions of the “collective intelligence” and hopefully find answers … or at least sympathy.
We talked about DMR IDs, how individuals have programmed the function keys on their radios, POCSAG messaging, and the new interface for BrandMeister Hoseline. Some of the guys mentioned good deals they had gotten on a Radioddity RD-5R.
All in all, it was an enjoyable net and I plan to be a regular check-in. I learned a couple of new things last night.
73 de Dick N4BC