Great conditions on 10 metres for the CQWW CW contest 2025

I had no intention of making a serious effort in this year's CQWW CW contest, held this past weekend. I had some other commitments, so was not going to be able to sit at a radio all weekend. 

However, on Saturday morning, seeing that band conditions were good on 10 metres (28Mhz), I decided to "dip my toe" in the contest and perhaps give out a few points.

A map of the DXCC worked during CQWW CW 2025 on 10 metres.

However, having chosen a "run" frequency, I was quickly inundated, and in the first hour of what I thought might be "casual" operating, I had 124 QSOs in the log!

I was using my Yaesu FTdx10 transceiver, which demonstrates excellent selectivity and sensitivity and seems a great contesting rig. The antenna was my trusty Antron-99 vertical, which has been in use at this QTH since 2009.

Having logged 300 QSOs after a few hours of part-time operation, I decided to do some "search and pounce". I nabbed some nice DX, including VK6T in Western Australia, and later VR2CO (Hong Kong), BG0DLA and BA8AG in China, VU2TMP in India, 7A0F in Indonesia, AH2R in Guam, JS6TSE in Japan and 9M6NA in East Malaysia.

By Sunday, I could see that my DXCC total was over 80 countries, so I made it my mission to work 100 DXCC by the end of the contest, through a combination of running and S&P. A great surprise when running on Sunday morning was to be called by TZ4AM, giving me a new country and zone. There was some nice African DX to be worked too, including TL8GD, 9J2FI and TY5FR. Also logged were 3B8M, 3B9KW, XW4KV and 5J0EA.

At 16:44 UTC on Sunday, I logged XE1CT for my 100th country, and a new zone. I was thrilled. By the time the 10m band closed at around 6pm Sunday, I had logged two more "new ones", VP9I in Bermuda and CE0Y in Easter Island.

Total QSO count: 585

CQ Zones: 31

DXCC: 102

Claimed score: 145,901.

I finally got my DV-Mega Genesis hotspot working with Yaesu Fusion after two days

Well, it's a success story. Of sorts. When my new DV-Mega Genesis hotspot arrived, I was very excited about connecting my Yaesu FTM-400D to it and having some QSOs on C4FM/Yaesu Fusion.

The excitement soon gave way to frustration. The hotspot came with no instructions (no fault of the maker - he just builds them, and they look fantastic), so a period of two full days was spent mostly watching YouTube videos to determine how to get everything set up.

Success! I'm finally able to access reflectors using the DV-Mega Genesis hotspot!

An important step in getting everything working is to connect your DV-Mega to your PC using an ethernet cable, and to access the settings in a web browser by either typing in the device's IP address or entering "pi-star" (which prompts you for a username and password, which are "pi-star" and "raspberry").

I knew I was making progress when the radio burst into life receiving signals. I had connected to the GB-CQ-WORLD reflector, and was not only hearing QSOs, but seeing the callsigns of the various hams operating on the system.

However, when I pressed the DX button on my radio, no connection was being made to the hotspot, and I was unable to transmit on any reflector.

I watched numerous YouTube videos, including those my Andreas M0FXB, who has a wonderful channel and LOTS of content which has helped many hams to get their equipment working properly.

But still no joy. I couldn't get the Yaesu radio to transmit through the DV-Mega Genesis hotspot.

And then I heard/saw Seamus GI4SZW chatting on the reflector. I have known Seamus for years. I reached out to him for help. We chatted on WhatsApp. In one comment, he mentioned "expert settings" and "tx offset". Apparently some radios do not transmit exactly on frequency, and a compensation has to be made on the Pi-Star expert dashboard. He told me how to do it.

I tried to adjust the tx offset on the Pi-Star window, but still nothing was happening. More frustration.

And then a flash of inspiration!

I have several handheld transceivers, including a few inexpensive Chinese-made models which have a "scan" feature, enabling you to determine the exact frequency of a nearby transmitter. So I put my Baofeng UV-32 into scan mode and keyed up the FTM-400D.

Imagine my surprise to find that the radio was -1,500Hz off frequency. I made the concomitant adjustment in the Pi-Star browser window and rebooted the DV-Mega hotspot.

Shortly afterwards, I long-held the DX button on the FTM-400D and VOILA! I was connected to the system, and for the first time I saw my own callsign - EI2KC - on the screen of the Genesis.

My first QSO, through the GB-CQ-WORLD reflector, was with JA2SYJ, Mac, about 250km north of Toyko. I was delighted!

Since then, I have been slowly figuring out how to disconnect from a reflector and connect to another one using ONLY the radio (i.e. without the hotspot being connected to the computer via ethernet). Now I am getting the hang of it.

I look forward to making a contact with some of you on the YSF/C4FM reflectors. It took a while to figure it all out.

PS: I should note that the DV-Mega won't work with my home Wi-Fi. I think this is because my shack is too far from my Wi-Fi router. So I enabled my phone's hotspot and configured the DV-Mega to look for it/connect to it also. It works perfectly well through the phone's hotspot. I might have to figure out a way to boost my router's signal to the shack. But that's for another day!

Trying out C4FM with a DV-Mega hotspot

 Although licenced for almost 16 years, and despite having been active on VHF (2 metres) since my very first day as a licenced ham, I have only just - in the past week or so - finally had a digital QSO on 145Mhz.

This was on C4FM on Yaesu with another local Yaesu-owning ham on 2 metres.

I decided recently to try to connect to the world of digital communications, taking advantage of my shack's Yaesu FTM-400D. This would require a hotspot, for which I took the advice of Andreas M0FXB and opted for one of those really cool-looking DV-Mega Genesis hotspots.

The DV-Mega Genesis Nextion 3.5" is a beautifully attractive bit of kit.

Fast-forward to today, and the DV-Mega is here, and EI2KC (yours truly) is completely clueless as to how to actually get the radio working with the hotspot. Yes, I programmed the correct frequency into the radio for the hotspot - 434.5125Mhz (on the 70cm band). Yes, I made sure no repeater splits or CTCSS tones were programmed. Could I get the radio and the hotspot "talking" to each other? Not on your nelly.

Fast-forward again - this time by many hours - and while watching one of the many great instructional videos by M0FXB on his YouTube channel, I finally stumble upon the reason the two pieces of technology won't interface. It turns out to be one single setting in the Pi-Star configuration (auto AP should be set to "off), and once I changed that, I finally started getting a list of "last heard" stations appearing on the screen of the DV-Mega Genesis 3.5.

Now, to get a QSO! I'll keep you posted!

EI2KC

DXCC standings on Logbook of the World - August 2025

DXCC standings for EI2KC on LoTW - August 2025

Here are my current DXCC standings for 11th August 2025. A recent QSO with Z81D in South Sudan on 7 Mhz FT8 gave me a new one for both 40 metres and for digital. I am SOOO close to 300 entities on 17 metres. Still looking for that elusive 300th confirmation!

A nice QSL card in the post this morning: PR0T Trindade & Martim Vaz Islands

 I received this nice QSL card in the post this morning from M0OXO. It's from the PR0T dxpedition back in November 2023, confirming my three QSOs with them on 12m FT8, 10m CW and 30m FT8. Delighted to get card confirmation of this rare DXCC. 

I had only ONE other QSO with Trindade & Martim Vaz Islands, with PQ0T on 20m CW back in April 2015.

In QSO with John ON8EI on 20 metres - and he made a video for YouTube!

Many of you will recognise the familiar tones of the voice of John ON8EI in Belgium. John, who hails from Ireland ('home' call EI4GO), always has a tremendous signal from his excellent station. He records many of his QSOs and publishes them on his YouTube channel.

This morning, I spent a short time on 20 metres SSB, and put out a CQ. I worked a couple of European stations before I heard the familiar voice of ON8EI calling me. I heard John earlier, on a different QRG, and was going to call him but he said he had to leave the shack, so I was delighted when he answered my CQ on 14.165Mhz USB.

Among other things, we discussed the quality of the transmit audio from my new Yaesu FTdx10 transceiver. As you can hear, I think it is quite nice. John's comment was that my audio sounded stronger than my signal, which is always a good situation, especially for busting pile-ups on rare DX!

John runs a Hermes Lite 2 SDR transceiver witht he (free and excellent) Thetis software. As you can see from the video about, it is not only very attractive in appearance, but in audio quality too.

A blast from the past - video of a QSO (EI2KC and WA3SCM) from almost 13 years ago!

It's not often you get sent a video you've never seen of a QSO that you had almost 13 years ago! But that's what happened the other day when one of my ham friends, Don EI6IL, sent me a video he recorded in his shack of a QSO that I made with Dave WA3SCM in Pennsylvania in September of 2012. 

It's a short video, and looking back in my computerised log (I use Logger32 for logging), I see that Dave was the last QSO of the day, in what were challenging band conditions. At the time, I was using a two-element hexbeam, an antenna that was later destroyed by a storm.

Don was listening to our QSO on his Yaesu FT2000 at the time. If I remember correctly, my own radio at that time back in 2012 was the Yaesu FT1000MP.