15m DXCC Awarded!

 I checked yesterday and the ARRL has accepted the submission for 15m DXCC!  I will probably get my certificate sometime next week.

Another Reason I Like FT4/FT8

 Within 15 minutes of the end of the FT Challenge contest, I had confirmed via LoTW around half of the Q's that I had made during the contest.  That is a pretty good response IMHO!  So I decided to check and see what the overall average of my confirmations on FT4/FT8 were.

I have 5597 individual FT4/FT8 log entries and of those 4204 have been confirmed via LoTW.  That is a rate of just over 75%!  So for every four contacts I make, on average three of them will be confirmed via LoTW.  That is a pretty darn good return.

Results and Impressions - 2024 FT Challenge 'Test & Future Digital Contesting

 This was the first year of this contest, which was a revamp of the FT Roundup.  They did a pretty much entire rewrite of the contest, to include the exchange and multipliers used!  So there is no way to accurately compare my 2023 effort against this years run.  Last year it was states that was the multiplier, this year it was Fields.  In 2023 I made 89 Q's and 37 Multis. The closest analog is the WWDDXC in August as the rules are virtually identical.  This is an interesting situation as the the only difference is the propagation based on the time of the year.  One is in late summer and the other is in early winter.

Band Conditions:  They were "acceptable" - not great, but not crappy.  Lots of deep QSB on Saturday and it seemed 40m was in pretty decent shape Saturday night at the start of the evening, but got a bit more soft as time went on.  Decided to call it a night around 0500 Z (2300 L).

Started back in around 1300 Z (0700 L) and went to 20m.  Jumped around to 15m and 10m, but went back to 20m to finish out the 'test.  Ended up with a raw score of 14,204 with 213 Q's and 53 multi's.

PLANS FOR FUTURE DIGITAL CONTEST OPERATIONS

I have operated now in both the 2023 and 2024 events of the 3 large scale digital contests - ARRL International Digital Contest, World Wide Digital DX Contest, and this one - both as the FT Round UP and now as the FT Challenge.  And I have come to the following conclusions.

1)    40m/20m are the primary bands for QSO generation - I receive the best SNR reports and plenty of stations to work.  80m is really poor for me and 15m/10m while providing some great multi's, I have difficulties on that band with decent received SNR reports.  Simply put, I have poor signals on 80m, 15m, and 10m most of the time. 

2)    I need to devise some additional cooling for the IC-718 if I am going to go really full bore for very extended periods of time.  The finals were getting pretty toasty.  I have until August 2025 to get that done, but I have a couple ideas on how to do it.  If I am going to do a Run, I got to have that cooling, when It started to get really hot, the SWR went up - which is understandable as the heat was affecting the component values in the RF deck.

3)    I need to get N1MM properly configured to work with WSJT-X as it relates to the IC-718 - it doesn't update when I change bands via WSJT-X.  Works fine on Phone SS, but need to get that nailed down if possible

4) Create and maintain a master expected band/field list using my records for all digital contests.  Two of the three use band/fields as the multiplier.  The ARRL one uses the 4 character grid to grid distance as the multiplier for each QSO.  That one will need a list as well.

5)    FT4 is the best format for contests hands down.  It should be the primary source for Q's, especially on 20m.

Will have more later on......

After 25 years - Finally!

 Hit the magic number of 100 DXCC entities confirmed on LoTW on 15m Sunday.  Submitted it to ARRL that evening.  15m has always been a "difficult" band.  So, now we will see how long it takes for it to be processed.

NOTE:  It may be a bit before it gets processed as I think there is still a huge backlog frm the system outage earlier this year.  I saw a post this week that they were processing JULY LoTW applications right now, so I may be a couple months before it gets to me!