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WAEDC CW Contest 2017 – 4E1A

Just finished the Worked All Europe DX Contest (WAEDC) in CW. It was my first participation as a non-European station using my vanity callsign 4E1A in the single operator low power class. Only contacts to European stations are allowed, and you can sent telegrams (QTCs) to them to earn additional points. Poor propagation conditions made it very difficult this year.  On the 40 m band there was a lot of noise due to lightening (QRN), and I could only make 3 contacts (QSOs). Nevertheless, it was fun to participate again after more than 25 years (!) ago 1991 under my German call sign DK4TB.

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RUMLog, Macbook and IC-718

In Singapore you need to get approval from the authorities for your type of radio, you intend to buy, before you can actually buy it. So in order to avoid any problems, I selected the ICOM IC-718 HF transceiver, as I knew it was approved before and available from stock.

Now, setting up my station, I was looking for a good logging program, running under OS-X on my new Apple Macbook (early 2015). I decided for RUMLog, as it is free and offers all features I need for my casual operation.

To connect to the IC-718, I use a Icom CT-17 CI-V CAT Programming Cable with a Prolific chip set.  The drivers can be downloaded from their support webpage and work without problem under OS X El Captain (10.11.3). Now frequency and operation mode are automatically transferred to RUMLog.