315 QSOs
37 Mults = 11,655
Hourly breakdown:
73
80
80
82
Wow, that was fun! This was one of those rare times when condx
favored the east coast for a stateside contest. 20 stayed open for
us pretty late, and more importantly, the skip stayed short on 40.
Usually, guys like K5ZD and K3MM would be virtually unreadable
here on 40 by 0100Z, but they were 30-40 over S-9 the whole time!
For this reason, as well as the "work'em again after 3 QSOs" rule, I
had zero QSOs on 80. Every time I took a quick listen there, it was
deserted.
I definitely got into the grove with the 2 radios pretty quickly. Unlike
the CW Sprint, where I find search and pouncing more productive
than CQing, on RTTY it was the opposite. Alternately CQing on 2
bands with a KW worked pretty well. I got some new bandpass
filters last summer, and they definitely cut down on interstation
QRM. Also, not going near 7040, eliminated second harmonic
QRM on 14080. I pulled ahead of Don pretty quickly, and was
about 15 QSOs ahead of Ty until about 0230Z. At that time my 9
year old daughter came running down to the shack (previously
given instructions "no interruptions unless it's an emergency.")
Well, this was it - she reported the toilet overflowed! Took about 5
minutes to deal with that, and I was hoping it wouldn't be my
demise. When I got back on, there was about a 10 QSO difference,
then, over the next hour, Ty was within 3 QSOs. He had some
amazing momentum, andI thought it was all over for me.
Fortunately, things picked up the last hour, and I pulled back away
from him. Even more fortunately, when I went through the log after
the contest, I found Writelog had assigned a number of duplicate
serial numbers, and when I gave out number 300 at 0359Z, it was
actually QSO number 315!
I had the same experience as Ty, about a few guys not QSYing,
and a few refusing to work me for a "dupe." There were also several
of folks not following the suggested exchange format, which
caused some confusion on frequency at the end of a QSO. I ended
all exchanges where I had to QSY with TU. I heard several sending
TU QSY, which was a great idea. Experienced CW Sprint pros,
like K5ZD and K3MM, knew exactly when to drop a call in for that
quick pair of QSOs, which is key to this contest.
73,
Barry
--
Barry Kutner, W2UP Internet: w2up@mindspring.com
Newtown, PA FRC alternate: barry@w2up.wells.com
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