AI6UA

10m Contest: no dice

I went to a local park to try to take part in the 10m contest. I brought the FT-817 because I don’t have a battery yet for the G90 and I don’t have an antenna connector for the KX2. For an antenna, I set up the Superantenna on the picnic table; I probably should have strung up something else but I was already getting enough weird looks.

I could hear quite a few people on SSB, and I could see a lot of activity on FT-8 and even some on JS8Call. However, I noticed my radio wasn’t transmitting at all. I poked around at it to see if I could figure it out, but couldn’t get it sorted. I had a brief bit of panic that I had blown the finals: at one point, the ATU had stuck in tuning mode. Fortunately when I got home, I thought to reset the radio¹ (hold down the F key while you power it on), and then it began transmitting. It wasn’t receiving V/U modes very well, though. I’m not sure if that’s normal (I almost never use it for V/U), or if something else is going on.

Some lessons learned:

• I really need to get some wire winders.
• It would be nice to simplify the setup as much as possible: right now, I’ve got the radio, Signalink, and Z-817, with cables to connect pretty much everything to everything else more or less.
• I’ve never had much luck transmitting on the MP1 Superantenna. It might just be bad luck, and to be fair, this time was due to the radio not transmitting. Still, I don’t think I’ve ever actually made a contact on it.

I’ve been coming to find I’m really only interested in FT8 as a “can anyone hear me” sort of deal. It doesn’t convey any useful information, and honestly just isn’t fun anymore.

1. Yes, I tried turning it off and then back on again (more than once, even) while at the park. ↩︎