WA2HOM is far from a contest station, but we do enjoy participating in the contests, especially now that our beam makes gives us a decent signal on 20m, 15m, and 10m. Why? Because it’s fun. There are several ways to enjoy amateur radio contests even if you’re not a “big gun.”

Last weekend, for example, the CQ World-Wide (CQWW) SSB DX contest was on. So, what we did was take advantage of the contest activity to add countries to our DXCC list. Over two hours of operation, we managed to make 63 contacts, including at least five new countries. The new countries that we added to our log included Iceland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, the Cayman Islands, and Madeira Island.

None of these is rare DX, but for whatever reason, we hadn’t worked them before. Now, we have.

Operating in a contest is also a good test of our radio and antennas. It’s true that contest signal reports are basically meaningless, but if DX stations regularly hear you on your first or second call, then chances are your antennas are working well. If they’re continually asking for repeats or never hear you at all, it’s a good bet that you need to do some antenna work.

We were working most stations on the first or second call. I even tried calling CQ for a while. Unfortunately, I wasn’t very successful with that, so I went back to the “search and pounce” technique. This tells me that we still have a ways to go compared to the big contesters.

We also enjoy working the smaller contests, such as state QSO parties. One reason for this is that they are a lot more friendly and laid back than the big contests like CQWW. Phone operators, for example, will often comment on your signal or even offer a bit of information about their QTH. One thing’s for sure. You learn a lot of county names.

In the end, it’s all about having fun. We have fun working contests, even if we don’t have the time or the equipment to be truly competitive.

Ryan was one of the Cub Scouts who participated in JOTA 2011 at WA2HOM.

At the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum Saturday, we participated in the 54th Jamboree on the Air (JOTA). As the website says, “The Jamboree-on-the-Air, or JOTA, is an annual Scouting event that uses amateur radio to link Scouts around the world, around the nation, and in your own community.”

We didn’t have a big turnout, but we had a lot of fun. The hams that turned out included Pat, W8LNO; Quentin, KD8IPF; and Mark, W8MP. Pat and Quentin are both involved in the Scout leadersip; Mark’s 14-year-old son, Brian, KD8EEH, is an Eagle Scout. In addition to Brian, we had four Cub Scouts, whose names I didn’t write down (sorry!), and via 2m FM, Stuart, KD8LWR.

They all were able to talk to other Scouts, all on 20m phone.

The highlight of our operation was our QSO with XE1L in Mexico City. XE1L is the station of Luis, a friend of W8MP. This was not a scheduled contact at all. We just happened to run across them.

Brian, KD8EEH, made the contact, and spoke in Spanish with the two Mexican Scouts, Stephanie and Alex, for more than 45 minutes. I was certainly impressed with Brian’s Spanish skills. I don’t think that I could have kept up the conversation so long.

In addition to the HF station, I set up our 2m radio and connected to several EchoLink nodes at which hams were participating in the JOTA. One of them was in California, the other in Ontario. Stuart talked to several of the Scouts in Canada.

Next year, we might think about being a bit more organized. That might make the experience a little more educational for the Scouts, but just getting them on the air was a lot of fun.

I didn’t make many contacts today, but I had a great time.

First off, I had planned to put PL-259s on the feedlines for the dipole and the VHF antenna, but when I went to do so, I found that it had already been done! That was very cool.

Next, I hooked up the Icom IC-V8000 to see what repeaters we could hit. First, I tried keying up the ARROW repeater. Nothing. Hmmmmm, I thought, maybe it’s just down. Next, I tried the U-M repeater, which is less than a mile away as the crow flies. I was able to key it, but the S-meter showed only a couple of S units. Something was wrong.

I swapped feedlines, and voila! Everything worked as I’d hoped. Somehow, we’d mis-labelled the feedlines. Not only that, there’s still nothing connected to the end of the dipole feedline, so I was actually able to key up the U-M repeater without an antenna!

Anyway, after connecting the right feedline to the radio, I chatted a bit with both Ralph, AA8RK, and Pat, W8LNO. Talking to Pat was fortuitous because he’s involved with Scouting, and when I mentioned that we planned to operate the Jamboree on the Air next weekend, he volunteered to come down and help out. That means we will be able to operate two radios, the HF station on 20m and the VHF station through the U-M repeater to EchoLink.

After that conversation, I turned the HF rig back on, and thought I’d see what was on 15 m. Tuning around, I found a small pileup on 21.017. I called up DXWatch and determined that the pileup was for T32C, the DXpedition to Chrismas Island. I accessed their record on QRZ.Com, found the bearing, swung the beam around to 260 degrees, and heard them quite well. After setting the transmit incremental tuning to about 2 kHz, I worked them on the second call! I just love that beam!