CQ Worldwide DX Contest, RTTY
Call: NH2T
Operator(s): N2NL
Station: N2NL
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Guam
Operating Time (hrs): 43
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs Pts State/Prov DX Zones
------------------------------------------
80: 9 25 2 5 6
40: 251 743 29 38 23
20: 503 1498 30 64 28
15: 1037 3083 52 82 34
10: 1228 3662 50 73 29
------------------------------------------
Total: 3028 9011 163 262 120 Total Score = 4,910,995
Club: Florida Contest Group
Comments:
K3/AL1200
FT1000MP/SB1000
Spiderbeam @ ~50ft, "fan" dipole, 40m and 80m verticals, Beverage RX antennas
The last time I operated this contest was in 2010, and I wasn't really "sold"
on RTTY contesting after that effort. With a forecast for great conditions and
with all the increased RTTY activity, it seemed that the Oceania SOAB record was
reachable so I gave it a shot. I ended up breaking the record by about one meg,
and the claimed score is even just a hair over the OC multi op record as well.
This can all be attributed to the great activity and conditions on 10/15m.
After this weekend, my opinion of RTTY has changed quite a bit to the positive,
now that I've learned some of the tricks, but there are still some annoyances
that turn me off to the mode.
The idea of states as mults is interesting, and did make it much more important
to focus on running NA, but it does have a negative side in that it further
shifts the center of activity to E NA - W EU. The further away you are from
these regions, the more difficult it is to break through those EU-EU, NA-NA,
and EU-NA QSOs, and in low sunspot years it will make for a dismal contest
experience from parts of the world such as SE Asia. I could sense that this
weekend, from Guam where it is 7K miles from both Spain and Virginia, in the
difference between the high and low bands.
10m was fantastic all weekend, and the CME that hit Sunday only knocked the
band down a little. Propagation was very long at times - often I could not
hear the normal S9+ QRM out of China and at times EU were louder than JA. 15m
was not quite as good because most of the activity had shifted to 10. 20m was
typical. My state/prov total is poor on 20 because when the band is open
stateside from KH2, most in NA have already shifted to 40/80m. I spent a lot
of time calling CQ there and the callers were loud, but there were just not
many of them.
40 and 80m were both miserable from here. I wasted a lot of time the 1st night
leaving good high band runs to try to get something going on 40 without success.
Because of the mults, I had to try. The 2nd night was somewhat better but no
where near like I would have expected it. 80m was just dismal. With a
tropical cyclone forming just to my East, and with a strong 70mph tropical
storm over most of Japan, I barely worked anyone. I called a lot of people -
but very few could hear me - more of that EU-EU and NA-NA stuff going on. On
80, I4AVG gets best ears for pulling me out right away while no one else in EU
could hear me. I spent quite a bit of time calling CQ both in the JA window
and above 3580 without any success whatsoever, and I normally get out well on
80.
The best thing I learned to set up my macro to send "DXCALL 599 27 DXCALL".
The light bulb finally went on in my head that the Europeans will call and call
until they hear you - and only then they stop - and by sending the call of the
guy I'm trying to work at the end of the exchange, they usually get it without
repeats. Perhaps I'm a lid for not figuring this out sooner. Still chaos did
ensue at times, which required a spin of the dial and a start on a new
frequency.
Local OC/AS activity seemed down, probably due to the storm in Japan. SO2R got
boring during the day when you ran out of new guys to work following NA sunset
and while awaiting EU sunrise. RTTY is somewhat mindless - click the mouse and
push the function keys - even with SO2R. I had to sleep the 2nd night because I
simply could not stay awake, somewhat unusual for me because I've been able to
do 48 hours without leaving the chair before.
Thanks for all the Q's!
73, Dave KH2/N2NL
----------------- C o n t i n e n t S u m m a r y -----------------
160 80 40 20 15 10 Total Pct
---------------------------------------------------------------------
North America 0 2 97 91 355 323 868 28.7
South America 0 0 5 9 19 7 40 1.3
Europe 0 1 22 259 321 599 1202 39.7
Asia 0 5 118 133 308 274 838 27.7
Africa 0 0 0 1 7 5 13 0.4
Oceania 0 1 9 10 27 21 68 2.2
--------------------------------------------------------------
Total 0 9 251 503 1037 1229 3029
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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