SCC RTTY Championship
Call: VA7ST
Operator(s): VA7ST
Station: VA7ST
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: BC
Operating Time (hrs): 8.5
Summary:
Band QSOs Pts Mults
------------------------
80: 15 29 12
40: 103 217 53
20: 138 344 52
15:
10:
------------------------
Total: 256 590 117 Total Score = 69,030
Club:
Comments:
SFI=67, A=3, K=1
FT-2000 + SB221
N1MM Logger + MMTTY
3 element tribander
40M twin half-squares (E or W)
80M twin 1/4-wave elevated verticals (E or W)
Thank goodness for SCC RTTY as a skakedown before the fall contests. Murphy
visited in full measure this weekend.
The contest runs from 5 a.m. Saturday till 5 a.m. Sunday. Friday after work I
saw that earlier in the day Yaesu had issued a promising firmware update for
the FT-2000. "Great," I thought at about 6 p.m. "I can load it up this
evening."
At 2 a.m., after far too many hours of failed attempts to upload the firmware,
I finally got the rig and computer talking to one another (the installation
manual actually has a photo indicating the wrong socket on the radio for the
programming dongle... figured that out early, but the clunky install software
wouldn't talk to the rig until I did something (unknown) in just the right
order). The firmware update process is simple, but it wasn't for me this time
around.
Slept until 1530z (8:30 a.m. Pacific), and had a great run on 20M -- radio
working great with several enhancements including noise blanker improvement.
All was well until some time Saturday evening, when working 40M to EU. Computer
froze solid with the rig and amp in TX mode. Did a hard restart. Upon restarting
Windows, the FSK interface on COM5 wasn't working. "Great," I thought. "I can
just restart again and all will be fine."
Nothing would bring it to life -- XP could "see" the PCI card, but it wasn't
configuring properly. After two hours of driver-installation hell, I decided
that the PCI card with 4 serial ports was fried and went to Plan B. Plugged the
FSK interface cable into COM2 (wired to the motherboard) and away I went for the
remainder of the contest.
After the contest ended at 5 a.m., I took a long nap and returned to the
computer. Deleted all the suspect drivers and pulled the PCI card from its slot
and reinserted it. Fired up the machine and Lo!, Windows wanted to install a
raft of drivers for the PCI multi-IO port, the bridge software and drivers for
each of the virtual COM ports 3 to 6. The physical COM ports were rearranged
from how they had been before, but FSK, CW and rig control are back up and
running. Whew. What a hassle -- I'm glad that's done with. SO2R here I come
again.
Conditions:
20M provided a pretty good European opening Saturday morning -- so good that I
started out with 100W and didn't turn on the amp till I'd worked the big guys
across the band. Due to threats of high wind, I went the whole way with the
tower nested, tribander at 25'.
40M was really strong earlier than I thought it would be (0000z 5 p.m.) but by
0330z 8:30 p.m. or so things had slowed to a snail's pace.
Went to 80M at 0500z 10 p.m. hoping to at least tie last year's 22 mults, but
after 15 Qs and 12 mults, there were no more Qs to be found. Worked mostly W7s,
and a few surprisingly weak W6s. Only non-West coast contacts were K3RWN, WB8JUI
and VE2FU -- great work on a horrible band, guys!
Went back to 40M for a while, but hit the sack at 0730z. Got up to close things
out on 40M in the final hour or so. Conditions were horrendous -- VOAprop
indicated good conditions to the Pacific and JA, but here in the real world the
band was flat. Most stateside stations were in the mud, and I only managed to
work a few ZLs, VK5NPR, XE1J, and two JAs.
All in all, it was more than the usual fun on the air -- especially that brief
but rather strong (for SFI=67) EU opening on Saturday morning. The techie
issues, because they were eventually resolved, are now nearly forgotten :)
I wanted to improve on by best-ever 2007 totals, and managed to do that despite
the down-time I had (8.5 hours on vs. 12 last year). Although 80M was a big
disappointment (mults down to 12 from 22), and overall Qs were down by 11 or
so, thanks to good 40M performance with the phased half-squares I ended up with
1 more mult and about 2,000 more points than last year. Not bad for the deep
doldrums of solarmin.
Highlight of the contest was working VU2NKS on 20M for a new one on RTTY. Maybe
the bands are getting better -- last time I heard India, it was VU2WAP on 20M CW
in 2004.
Thanks to all for the Qs in bad conditions. Hope to see you all -- especially
those 2007 and 2008 guys -- many more times this fall!
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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