A few years ago, I bought the Flexradio 6400 with the primary goal of achieving the 6M DXCC by making contacts in FT8.
It took a while before I dared to participate in CW contests with this 'black box.' After all, the absence of a tuning knob requires some adjustment. I had never done an SSB-contest with this transceiver before. The old faithful Yaesu FT1000MKV has never let me down, and the external voice keyer works perfectly.
These were my goals:
- Test all the possibilities and parameters of the transceiver related to voice
- Test the panadapter of N1MM+
- Try out the voice keyer within N1MM+
- Investigate whether there is an added value within non-assisted for using a spectrum scope versus the old method with the Yaesu
- At least 70 contacts for the RRDXA ranking, at least 250 contacts for an IARU award, and preferably some hundreds of QSO with some huge short pile-ups to the States/Japan.
- Test the new Optibeam yagi
Here are the results:
Having a wide bandscope via the Flexradio is an absolute added value. By making the time-out of the contacts in N1MM extra long, new stations appear very easily. For the first time, I also noticed that I receive local QRM, probably from a solar installation a few houses away. Every 50Khz, there is a noticeable peak. Not pleasant, but workable.
Flexradio spectrum filled with own spots (no cluster connection)
I couldn't determine extra added value of the spectrum scope of N1MM. Maybe the CQ function if the band is very busy.
The voice keyer in N1MM works quite well; I still need to figure out why there is a small dead time at the start. Probably a delay setting somewhere.
Equalizer, voice processor, bias, voice amplifier were tested and found satisfactory by the receiving ham stations.
The Optibeam works perfectly. Directional, but still just wide enough and a nice F/B ratio.
The 10-meter band, on the other hand, was the biggest disappointment of the entire contest. I did not see this setback coming. On Saturday, the path was wide open to South America and Africa. But the USA and Japan were absent. This costs hundreds of contacts. On Sunday morning, it was like calling into the desert, and this was the case for everyone. For that reason, I had to work hard to find contacts to exceed 250, but then I stopped 4 hours before the end. Time on Sunday is too precious to call without answers. Apparently, conditions improved in the last hours, but this did not matter to me.
Some excitement on Sunday when I heard a clubmate running a SSB pile-up with the USA on 28.414Mhz while I could only hear noise in all directions.
It took a few minutes before I realized he was on 14.207Mhz, and his 2nd harmonic was blasting through my receiver.
This is no longer for me: I use the high duty monoband 4O3A filter to reduce possible EMC problems with the neighbors and to keep other bands free from splatter.
Conclusion: 10 meter is not 15m nor 20m. It's always a risc to go for a 10 meter single band operation.
But I am ready for the CQWW SSB 10M. Hopefully for more better conditions at the end of October!
10m highway to South-America
