CQ Worldwide DX Contest, RTTY
Call: N2QT
Operator(s): N2QT
Station: N2QT
Class: SOAB(A) LP
QTH: VA
Operating Time (hrs): 37.5
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs Pts State/Prov DX Zones
------------------------------------------
80: 183 228 48 14 9
40: 355 675 47 57 16
20: 370 897 43 81 24
15: 566 1519 29 78 25
10: 528 1477 16 70 23
------------------------------------------
Total: 2002 4796 183 300 97 Total Score = 2,781,680
Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club
Comments:
Well as everyone now knows, 10M is back (and so is 15!). It was a great thing
to have two or even three bands open at a time. While I handily beat last
years score (which was unassisted, more about that later) I didn't get the
increase in qso totals that I was sure would result from having two bands open.
There were extended periods where I could not get a run going, although I could
work stations when I called them. S&P on two radios is productive, but not as
much as running, it also wears you down. I think this is why I shutdown
earlier on Saturday night than I should have.
I entered assisted since it was new, and I've always liked packet. However in
general the off frequency spotting done by many made most spots pretty
worthless. The other issue is that running low power made it pretty hard to
work a fresh spot effeciently. As a dxer I was also prone to picking off some
juicy dx instead of contesting. Assisted really is better stated as Single Op
Distracted. My total q's were only up 23 from last years unassisted effort. I
think a non packet effort would have had more than enough q's to make up for
whatever mults I missed. However, as the contest was winding down and I was
still short of the 2K qso's I wanted, there was someone spotting pretty run of
the mill stations. His spots were on frequency and I was able to get the 3-4
extra q's from that that let me make my goal!
I ran multiple decoders in N1MM this year and found it useful. However it did
push cpu utilization up on my 3Ghz P4. I changed the mmtty profiles to get the
utilization in the 30-40% range, but a new computer is in the offing.
With the panadapter it was easy to see the ratty signals that some stations are
emitting. Some stations emit a 2-3 khz blip of noise on key up, key down or
both. Others have extra images of the rtty tones that are offset from their
main signal. There images are at double or triple the shift, but since they
are at the right cadence you can't tune them in although they sound 'right'.
These stations may be hot switching their amp, overdriving the amp or the audio
for AFSK. It makes the contest congestion worse than it needs to be.
Radios Elecraft K3 (external fans)
KT34A at 60 ft,
3 el Steppir at 48 ft
40M rotary dipole at 54 ft
80M dipole 50 feet
shunt fed 60 ft tower on 80 M
Mark n2qt
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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