10 Meter contest joy

Dave - WB5NHL

10 meter contest was a real pleasure with my new Flex 6500. Absolutely incredible ability to hear individual stations right next to each other. Not the slightest desense or blocking!!

Tom K3TF

Hi Dave, I noticed the same thing here. Using the narrow filters I could get right next to a 40 over 9 signal and pull out the weak one. My Flex 6700 works better than my hi-end superhets. Once I work out the knob encoder issues and have RIT, I will be happy. Tom K3TF......

Ken - NM9P

Just finished up the paperwork from the 10 meter contest. Worked mixed mode with the 6500, 100 Watts, with a 160 Meter Offset Fed Dipole and an elevated ground plane. Not a big gun station, but had a lot of fun. worked some Saturday afternoon/Evening and Sunday Afternoon/Evening. Again, as with the 160 CW contest, filtering was superb. I am falling in love with CW contesting again! I received several "Excellent audio" reports on SSB. Really could use memories on tuner and 2nd antenna input. RIT/XIT will be very nice, as will be Slice Clone/lock. Display averaging will help, but Panafall will be a REAL boost to my contest station. Band stacking registers will help in rapid band changes from SSB to CW sub-bands. A few quick memories would have helped me store and come back to score some additional multipliers. I miss that on my TS-850. But the receiver strength was superb, again! Here is my score. BTW.. for the " 'Doh! " file: The CW is so smooth that after taking a break to fix lunch, I had turned off the break-in so my cat wouldn't bump the key. I returned and called three different stations and wondered why I couldn't get through to these S-6 stations..... only to look down and notice that I hadn't reactivated break-in! With my headphones on, I hadn't noticed that I wasn't transmitting! Now that is one for the books! (**** award...)

Greg

Tom, To get around RIT for now I open a second panadapter with Slice B. I mute the audio on slice A which is my TX slice and only listen to B. That way I can move around on RX and not alter the TX. Having it on its own panadapter makes operator errors less likely. However it would be AWESOME to have CAT commands such as A>B and B>A and A<>B that can be programmed into N1MM function keys. Using an A>B command after the TU message would have the same effect as {CLEARRIT}. 73 Greg AB7R

Tom K3TF

Greg, Great idea with using separate pan adapters for transmit and receive. It can get tricky when they are next to each other and if I QSY the RX sometimes they flip flop.

Al_NN4ZZ

Greg, If you are using DDUtil some of those commands are implemented behind the scenes currently. I'm using the AUX3 button on the FlexControl to make slice B = A for working split. More info and a video here: http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FlexRadioSmartSDR/conversations/messages/1321 and here: http://community.flexradio.com/flexradio/topics/cat_command_zzvs Regards, Al / NN4ZZ

Greg

Thanks Al. Yes....I know DDUtil has some of this functionality. But I was referring to dedicated CAT commands. In N1MM you can embed CAT commands in hex or ascii format into the function keyes. This allows you to automatically clear the rit (or equalize B to A) when the F3 is sent or in ESM (enter sends message) mode. The less you have to move your hands around when running a freq the better. 73 Greg

Al_NN4ZZ

Greg, got it. Agree it's all about efficiency and it's nice to have options. It looks like we will get it all eventually. Regards, Al / NN4ZZ

philip.theis

I used my 6700 this weekend on the 10m contest and had a blast. Am using it barefoot to get comfortable and familiar with the qsk. Nice to see what's going on the band while you transmit. Phil