CQ Worldwide DX Contest, RTTY
Call: N1IXF
Operator(s): N1IXF
Station: N1IXF
Class: SOAB LP
QTH: CT
Operating Time (hrs): 40:44
Summary:
Band QSOs State/Prov DX Zones
------------------------------------
80: 93 28 14 7
40: 252 43 51 13
20: 437 30 67 20
15: 488 21 74 21
10: 31 6 11 9
------------------------------------
Total: 1301 128 217 70 Total Score = 1,320,115
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
Second year trying to make a serious effort in this contest from my "Little
Pistol" home station. My expectation were high when I saw the relatively
higher solar flux and the much lower A-index than we've had recently. Had fun
but it was much more work this year.
Before the contest, I had set up my YCCC SO2R box using the AUX port and EXTFSK
to drive the radios. Had tested it out in advance but hours before the contest
I encountered timing problems generating FSK that way. Instead of taking the
long nap that I planned to have before the contest, I had to abandon SO2R and
reconfigure my station back to my old home-brew com port interface. Argh!
I'll figure this out yet.
As others have noted, 10M was dead and I really missed the additional 317 Q's I
had there last year. With 10M out of the picture, it that meant that everyone
was squeezed into the RTTY contest sub-bands on 20 & 15 during the day.
This made for wall-to-wall signals and very few spots for a LP station to find
a run frequency. Whenever I did find a hole and established a run I would
quickly be squeezed out by HP stations moving in to either side. That was
challenging to say the least and meant that I spent more time than I would have
liked in S&P mode. As I swept the bands looking for new stations and a
place to call, it seemed I had no trouble finding stations engaged in frequency
"wars". Maybe it was my mindset but this seemed to be more of a
problem than past contests.
To keep things interesting I found myself setting little goals like trying for
WAS even though they were one-pointers. Never heard ND, SD, VT and while I
kept running into other run stations working UT I wasn't able to work them
myself. Tried to generate some action with SA but no such luck. I also made
an effort to look for openings to Asia but only managed to work 1 JA yet it was
a highlight to have YB1UUN call me as I was working EU on 15.
Used MMTTY and 2Tone to decode and, for the first time at my station, 2Tone
seemed to provide a bunch of decodes that MMTTY never pulled out. I think this
combination is good but do want to try GRITTY as well.
Station:
FT1000MP, N1MM, MMTTY & 2Tone
SteppIR 3el @ 55'
Inverted Vees on 40M & 80M
Thanks for the Q's and I'm really looking forward to CQWW SSB from W1TJL... MS
HP is way more civilized than SOAB LP: good company, fewer hallucinations,
better rest and dining room meals.
73,
Rich N1IXF
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