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This year has been rather busy education wise before June 2004; I had my first set of exams/assignments to complete which I completed with great results. In September I then started the final year of AVCE information communications technology. Then in September 2005 I hope to start university doing a Multimedia Technology BSc course!

Right back to the radio side of 2004, this year has had its up and downs like you have read above. But over all it has been a good year radio wise, I’ve made a good number of qso’s although it isn’t as many as I might have liked its just one of those things.

A new rig has been put into the shack Kenwood TS-570dge and a Heil headset with the dx insert which work in a fabulous way together and make it much easier to bust pile ups, this is used during contests with a full size g5rv in and inverted V formation.

Although I haven’t really played about with any news modes on HF though I’ve been tinkering with APRS on 144.800 MHz using a Yaesu FT-1500m and a Watson WMM-3 interface and a soundcard with the UiView32 software. Which has been a good lesson in getting things working but now its working when I’m in the shack its normally on.

Outside operating on the bands I’ve attended quite a few amateur radio events radio rallies and the HF & IOTA convention where I met a lot of the worldwide young contesters (WWYC) members like M0BLF, M0RHI, G0MTN, M0CLW, DJ9AO (M0TAO), M0DXR just to name a few where we all spent a lot of time at the bar drinking to much.

Well this year I took part in around 20/30 contests a mixture of SSB, RTTY and PSK31 I would have liked to put more time into operating contests but education stood in my way!

This year I’ve tired to do a bit of VHF contest and took part in the RSGB vhf field day and some backpacker’s contests although I did not submit the log that will be my plan for 2005 to submit results and get a position on the contest table.

The SSB side of contesting this year has been fun, I’ve taken part in quite a few of these contests from the EU sprints to CQWW which I made 161q’s in using a Kenwood TS570DGE and for a change myself and my dad (M3JFM) erected a Full size folded back G5RV antenna this seemed to work really well and is now put up as and when during weekends to operate in contests.

Digital contesting I have enjoyed the most I’m improving my skills every contest whether it is operating or software skills these will help improve my score. My log also shows that 60% of it is made up of RTTY qso’s. Which I think will go up this year even more in % of the log.

Hopefully 2005 can bring lots of new experiences to.

Pre Contest Preparations

Before the contest it was decided that me and my dad (m3jfm) would put up a full size G5RV, this was done in an inverted V formation. Both legs of the G5RV were fixed right beside the river cherwell which is at the bottom of the garden.

Once this was done it was time to make sure the computer was ready to contest Writelog I set this up for myself and also dad (M3JFM) who would operate when I wasn’t.
Contest Starts

At 00:02 I had my first contact on 3768 with GM0B, from then on I had 35 QSO’s on 80m/40 although there was no DX contacts that did not matter I had great fun being able to work stations on 80m due to the fact the half size g5rv didn’t perform that great on 80m. At 02:31 GMT 03:31 Local time I decided I better get some sleep.

At 10:30 local time I woke up (yes I know but young people like there sleep) I got some breakfast and a cup of tea at by 11:06 GMT I was back in the shack working the contest first contact was LY2KO on 15m. During Saturday afternoon I had some time out to do some college work before carrying on with the contest

Sunday arrived but I didn’t get on the bands till 15:38 GMT during the few hours to come I worked a good stream of VE and USA stations. Then at 17:06 I stopped working the contest.
Summery of thoughts

After working many hours in the contest I think it went well rates could have been higher but over all I enjoyed myself although I had to mix in some college work which took up a lot of the weekend.

The full size G5RV would really great and allowed me to work a good amount of stations on 20m/40m/80m and on 15m I used my trusty slopping dipole.

Rig used was the Kenwood TS570DGE and the Heil Proset with dx insert, using this with vox was great it allowed me to bust many pile ups and also not having to hold a mic at the same time as typing is really good.

It is getting very popular with some of the wwyc members to go Multi User Multi-Transmitter operation in some of the major contests on the bands I have decided to do this article to tell you all how to setup the free contesting program N1MM Logger for this format.

The first thing you need to do is to make sure you have downloaded N1MM Logger, and the latest updates from the Yahoo groups site and the latest version needs to be on every pc that your going to be using in the contest.

Now you need to make sure you have all the IP’s of the station computers that are going to used on the network if you are using windows 95, 98, Me you can find out your IP by going to the start button on the left hand side of the computer screen then go to run and type in c:\windows\WINIPCFG.exe or if you using Windows 2000, XP you can find you computer IP by going to Start then Run and typing CMD and press enter the Dos window comes up and type ipconfig /all this will display your computer IP.

Once you have got this entire information load up N1MM Logger and setup the contest then go to ?Config? on the tool bar then make sure the Multi-User mode is ticked if its not click on it.

The next thing to do is in the same menu click on ?Edit Station Computer Names? it will then bring up a box with two columns one with ?Stn #(0-15):Stn Name? & ?Computer IP Address? this is were you need to enter in all the information about the station computers, and their computer IP Addresses.

The first Stn PC with will be the master computer which will provide Packet/Telnet to all computers, set the computer clock on every computer so the times the same on them all, below is my setup the first one is the HF station which I am using as the master computer just incase I need to turn off the packet monitoring computer.

Once you have done this you can make sure they are taking with each other by going to Windows on the Toolbar and click on ?Info? it will then display if the computers are taking to each other and passing information to each other.

Once you have setup the Multi User support in N1MM Logger if you go to Config then Multi User Tools it will display all the options available that you can use in the program. The main features are the following

* Maximum of 16 networked computers with one ‘master’ station (0-15).
* Use of standard network interface cards (NICs).
* IP-addresses are used during configuring.
* Talk capability between networked stations.
* Automatic time synchronization.
* Pass frequency information between stations.
* Packet
o Distributed to all connected computers.
o The ability to send packet commands to the master station, from there it will be sent out to the cluster.
* Error messages when a station can’t be questioned / updated.

Multi User via the internet:

It is possible to setup some or all of the other stations outside your LAN on the internet. There are some caveats when trying this. You need more than basic computer knowledge for this. You need to know about IP-addresses, firewalls, routers, port settings, NAT etc.

You need to know your computer (external) IP-address. When directly connected to the web this can be obtained using the program ipconfig.exe (NT, 2000, XP) or winipcfg.exe (95, 98, ME). This command ipconfig should be entered in a DOS window to see the output. When your computer is in a LAN your connection to the internet will probably be made via a router. All computers will use internal IP-addresses; the router uses the external IP-address. This link will give your (external) ip-address in both cases: http://megawx.aws.com/support/faq/software/ip.asp

When a multi-user connection is not working anymore check the IP-addresses. This address changes from time-to time (when dynamic). Mostly after a reboot from PC when directly connected or a reboot from your router when in a LAN.

The router should be setup to route incoming traffic from port 12070 to your PC IP-address. No port transformation should be done. Instructions for this will not be given in detail. With the many different kind of routers this can not be done. Remember, this is a specialist job!

Firewall - Open port 12070 for incoming traffic.

Router - You probably should use NAT to route incoming traffic on port 12070 (for first PC in the list) to your PC IP-address.

Anyways I hope this helps a bit when setting N1MM up for Network Logging.

Peter, M3PHP

Well at the start I didn’t have any plans to take part in the RSGB vhf national field day, but on Friday evening my dad (m3jfm) asked me if we where going to try and work some of the stations taking part.

So once we decided it might be a bit of fun to take part we decided that we would put up another 144 MHz beam just to see if there was a difference in signal from the permanent 8element beam which is up all year long.

The antenna we put up was a 5 element crossed beam although we only used the horizontal part of the antenna because we haven’t got a phasing harness for the antenna. This was put under the main 144 MHz beam so it was about 13ft up the pole.

Next thing we had to decide on was the what radio we where going to use we had the option of two ICOM radios the IC-706MKIIG & ICOM IC-260E (a much older rig), we decided it might be fun to try both.

Friday night the antennas where up and all that needed to be done in the morning was to get the radios ready and connected to antennas.

Saturday morning arrived although I didn’t wake up till 11am, so we started to get all the radios working. Everything was setup by 14:00 1hour before the contest so we where still going to be able to start the contest on time.

Turning over the ssb part of the 2m band we found special event station GB4HS, locator IO92LL there signal report was 53 and I received the signal report of 43 but still was able to make the contact!

The contest started but I didn’t start making qsos till 15:00 below is all the stations I worked.

Date

Time

Callsign

Serial
03/07/04 1506 G3WIM/P 023
03/07/04 1524 GM3HAM/P 051
03/07/04 1536 G3SAD/P 034
03/07/04 1541 G4RFR/P 076
03/07/04 1553 G6GS/P 028
03/07/04 1601 G3TCR/P 036
03/07/04 1604 G3ZMS/P 041
03/07/04 1606 G0FBB/P 107
03/07/04 1642 ON4WY 078
03/07/04 1648 G7APD/P 058
03/07/04 1651 G5XV/P 034
03/07/04 1656 EI7M/P 113
03/07/04 1712 F6IFR 167
03/07/04 1718 F1CVU 027
03/07/04 1739 G6YB/P 069
03/07/04 1749 G3MDG/P 083
03/07/04 1818 G3RSC/P 047
03/07/04 1827 G8SRC 114
03/07/04 1923 G3CZU/P 049
03/07/04 1944 G0VHF/P 108
03/07/04 1948 G4ARL/P 072
03/07/04 1959 G5LK/P 173
04/07/04 1116 G4HSO/P 003
04/07/04 1152 G0ARC 074
04/07/04 1158 G4HLX/P 023

Below is the results plotted on a map: