I tried it. My friend Rusty W6OAT let me know about it last Friday. The contest runs one hour twice per week. Once on Friday and again on Sunday evening. I had other advice too from Hank W6SX who walked me through the N1MM settings that I should use. The settings of importance were the macro-definitions for the function keys (which I will include at the end of this post)
I missed the Friday session, but worked it on Sunday.
Recap on my try:
A lot of fun mistakes that were great ways to learn.
- I learned how to get my N1MM macros fine tuned. Thanks to W6SX.
- I figured out that Run without QSO's wastes valuable time. So I should switch to S/P time to time to keep rate up.
- I also started working in a section of the band (although recommended frequencies) were no stations.. They were lower -- Had I watched the spot window more carefully I would have noticed. My mistake. In total, added up I probably wasted about 20-25 minutes just working the band without a QSO in the log due to my mistake in locating the patch of operators in SST and trying to find them in 15 meters as well as 20 meters. I found them eventually!
- I had so much fun. Looking forward to the next SST. It's really a lot of fun.
K1USN Slow Speed Test - May 15
Call: W7BRS
Operator(s): W7BRS
Station: W7BRS
Class: Single Op HP
QTH: FALL CITY, WA
Operating Time (hrs): 1
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160:
80:
40:
20: 13 10
15:
10:
-------------------
Total: 13 10
Total Score = 130
Club: Western Washington DX Club
Comments: First SST and loved doing it. Thanks for the encouragement. Look forward to next weekend! Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
The Macros I used: The F6 key is going to send out a CQ in such a way that it will trigger skimmers to spot my station. If calling CQ twice with the callsign twice, the skimmers routinely will detect this and then spot that station. That's the feature of the RBN (Reverse Beacon Network).
I also recommend to consider setting N1MM to be in ESM mode (ESM = Enter Sends Message) which means that the Enter Key will progress the flow of the N1MM software to send what is the next logical phase of the QSO. The analog is what happens in FT-8. You're still in manual control in N1MM, but the logical next thing to send is managed by N1MM and it will cue that up for you to manually invoke.
Play around with it. The SPACE bar is very useful to transition the focus of the application to the field of interest given the flow of the QSO.
The partial call lookup and the call history files that are recommended are without doubt part of the way in which the whole exchange is smoother.
## In Run Mode
F1 CQ,CQ SST W7BRS
F2 Exc,{EXCH}
F3 Tu,TU W7BRS
F4 {MYCALL}, W7BRS
F5 His Call,!
RBN CQ,CQ CQ SST W7BRS W7BRS
F7 Tu,GL {NAME} TU W7BRS SST
F8 ?,?
F9 Name?,NAME?
F10 Call?,CALL?
F11 Tu,GE {NAME} {EXCH}
F12 Wipe,{WIPE}
## In S/P (Search and Pounce) Mode
F1 CQ,CQ SST W7BRS
F2 Exc,JEFF WA
F3 R,R
F4 W7BRS,W7BRS
F5 His Call,!
RBN CQ,CQ CQ SST W7BRS W7BRS
F7 Tu,GL {NAME} TU W7BRS SST
F8 ?,?
F9 Name?,NAME?
F10 Call?,CALL?
F11 Tu,GE {NAME} {EXCH}
F12 Wipe,{WIPE}
No comments:
Post a Comment