After a long preparation and with the geopolitical “approval” we managed to get together for install the WRTC equipment and test how it works together. Thanks a lot to the HG5C team letting us use their great contest station including the LZA-10-3 antenna which is very close to the “LZA-7-3A WRTC 2022” tribander. It seemed we probably picked a Sat with excellent propagation it was easy to spend time with lot of OC stns booming on 20m. But the contest itself had very challenging conditions. Of course the contest target was not pushing for full time but with lot of distractions, fixes and due to other topics we logged 48 QSOs only. Hat off to the fellow competitors who push all the way down despite the hard propagation. Managed to setup and fix the recording and the referee audio open questions too. The only “however” in the setup is why the monitor volume on both in CW and SSB needs to be so loud to produce measurable output which gonna kill my ears during the transmissions. This needs to be tracked down before the contest.
Originally we planned to go with N1MM as Alex has long experience with the SW and its configuration. I have not argued for too long, as myself with DXLog I use single laptop with no network (single own laptop keyboard on top), so I cannot really consider myself as networking pro. But after ~half an hour making such a painful mistakes I got rally shocked what’s gonna happen in July with the battle between “N1MM and HA3LN”. It is a pity that we used N1MM in both CQWWSSB @9A5Y team in 2023 and 2024 without an issue but now I could not make N1MM my friend again. I got used to so much the convenience of DXLog it was hard to translate back the visceral finger movements to N1MM. Probably a new sign that I’m getting officially to the “B side of the vinyl”. Alex seeing me struggling commiserated me and offered to move to DXLog. We stopped completely, and started to “rewire” the logging program. It took less than 15 mins, and DXLog was ready to Rock&Roll. DXLog RULEZ!! From this place too, I’d like to thank to Björn, Paul and the whole developer team for the quick responses, developments and customizations introduced for us even very close to the WRTC event.
After all we had great time with Alex, managed to try we planned. We are exited, determined and will see what’s gonna happen. CU soon.
