CQ WPX RTTY Contest
Call: P49X
Operator(s): W0YK
Station: P40L/P49Y
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: FK52al
Operating Time (hrs): 30
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
80: 532
40: 909
20: 1051
15: 590
10:
------------
Total: 3082 Prefixes = 858 Total Score = 11,577,852
Club: Northern California Contest Club
Comments:
13,494 points
3.6 QSOs/Mult
The contest was loads of fun and the weekend had its unique characteristics.
The station worked well but band conditions were disappointing. I narrowly
avoided having this be my all-time worst showing from Aruba in this contest.
Band Conditions
Unfortunately for me, Aruba seemed to be sort of a propagation black hole this
week which surprised me. With the SSN at 17 and 23 over the weekend and the
week before, I expected better conditions. Reports out of Europe and NA note
good propagation, but here it was a different story.
Sunday, for example on 20 and 15, signals were weak and sometimes in the noise
floor until about 1615z when almost instantly the signal levels popped up and
some OK pile-ups commenced. These conditions lasted until I stopped at the 30
operating-hour point around 2030z. There were brief times when the signal level
dropped out again, but mostly it was pretty good. There were also peaks in
signal levels that created instantaneous pile-ups.
Making QSOs was a struggle until the 16z hour when instantly 15 and 20 turned
on. Still, the bands drifted in and out, ranging from great pileups one minute
to struggling for contacts the next. The low bands also had their ups and
downs. At times they behaved almost like the high bands with lots of callers,
quiet background, crisp audio. Then, there were the periodic doldrums with high
noise and marginal signals.
Many times I could hear NA and EU running each other at high rates when I
couldn’t get much going down here. Signals from both continents were weak for
me and this was probably exacerbated by those stations beaming each other with
South America off the side of their antennas.
During the week, a precursor to the weekend was trying to work Z60A from here
which would normally be pretty easy. Most of the time their signal was in the
noise here while NA was reporting “Big signal!”. This was primarily on 20m
and up. 40 and 80 had the normally good propagation to EU and Kosovo.
Results
In comparing WPX contest results, QSO points are more useful than QSOs due to
the differential QSO points based on low vs. high bands. This is a nice feature
of the CQ WPX contests across the solar cycle. Our total QSO counts are down
now in the bottom of the cycle due to the absence of 10 meters and depressed QSO
counts on 15 meters. But, this is at least partially offset by higher QSO
counts on 40 and 80 where a QSO is worth twice what it is on the high bands. In
this year’s contest, my low band points rate was almost always higher than on
20 or 15. This makes the contest (from a competitive perspective) a low-band
contest. I tried to maximize my time on 40 and 80. In the end, 8600 points
were made on 40/80 with only 4900 points on 15/20.
My start was not as strong as 2017 so I bore down and tried to catch up
throughout Friday evening. When I took my first break at 9z (5am local), I
nearly on par with last year’s pace. It felt good to catch up.
On Saturday morning it started falling apart. The 15m bandscope was mostly
empty until late morning. 20m wasn’t much better. Both EU and NA answered
CQs on both bands but there was just no volume. In the 16z hour, things began
to pick up and there were rate spurts reminiscent of average high band
conditions in past years. But, the the high-band rate was far below 2x the
low-band rate.
Hour by hour I watched this year’s pace fall further and further behind last
year. Saturday night the low bands gave out 2 hours earlier than Friday.
Unless a miracle happened Sunday, it looked like this year might be the lowest
score in the 12 consecutive years I’ve done WPX RTTY from Aruba.
Sunday morning seemed to confirm that fear. I was about to take a break when
all of a sudden the bands quieted down, signal strengths increased and moderate
runs began. The hourly rate went from 38 to 160 in less than 60 minutes. It
wasn’t enough to make up for lost ground, but it stemmed the decline. At the
end of my 30 hours of score operating, I moved “up” to my third lowest
result.
This was about 2030z, so I decided to take an exercise walk around the
neighborhood. One of the real-time alternatives I considered during the weekend
was to take breaks such that the last two hours of the contest period would be
in my 30-hour operating score, and on the lucrative low bands. I got cold feet
and decided to get my 30 hours logged and then still operate the last two hours
outside the scoring and see how it was. Well, this year at least, I would have
been better off to skip the first two hours Sunday morning and operate the end
of the contest. EU, NA and JAs were calling in on 20m. 15m was open even
stronger than 20m to JA. The very few NA signals still on 15m were quite
strong. It was an exciting opening.
In retrospect, I should have started on 40 and 80 Friday evening rather than
20/40. Based on Sunday night, 80 was open nicely to EU by 22z, an hour before
local sunset. I should have started an hour or two later each morning when the
15 and 20 were closer to opening. And, I probably should have worked the last
two hours of the contest.
I continue to come in with less mults than those with less QSOs. This time I
worked hard grabbing all the copyable mults in the Packet-infused band maps.
Can’t figure out the discrepancy.
4RSIQ
2BSIQ (2 Band Synchronized Interleaved QSOs) is all the rage these days in CW
contesting. However, the RTTY mode frees up brain cycles to allow the operator
to extend this skill to interleaving QSOs on 4 or more receivers. I run an
Elecraft K3 in each band by running on the main receiver and doing S&P on
the sub-receiver on the same band. The same principle of 2BSIQ applies between
these two receivers. But with a 2-receiver radio on each of two bands, there
are now 4 receivers with QSO streams that can be synchronized and interleaved,
i.e., 4RSIQ.
One of my objectives in this contest was to improve my 4RSIQ skill. Both the
RTTY mode and spotting assistance in this contest facilitate working on this
technique. It’s fun when it works, but it is so easy to hurt yourself when
some irregularity happens and it all comes crashing down!
My second major objective this weekend was a complete overhaul of my IT system.
New PCs, new keyboards/mice (Bluetooth), new FSK keying (TinyFSK), etc. Pretty
risky but fortunately it worked flawlessly except for one PC that periodically
froze up on a temporary basis, resulting in stalled transmission for a few
seconds. I made generous use of all my known swear words.
Transmission Bandwidth
Wide QRM-inflicting signals continue to predominate the bands. I suspect most
offenders aren’t aware of their painfully obvious impact as viewed on a
bandscope. The worst signals were obliterating 5 operating slots on each side.
Really disgraceful. The ironic thing is that the more narrow your own transmit
signal, the more you are hurt by the wide signals. Narrow signals can never
operate close enough for the offenders to hear them. There is no feedback to
the perpetrator of the problem. Perhaps disqualification of the entry will
begin to get people’s attention.
Thanks
Contesting wouldn’t exist if a lot of us didn’t get on and operate. Thanks
to all participants, full-time or part-time for making this a really fun
weekend. 1973 of you worked me at least once. 118 came back for all 4 bands.
Thanks to W5XD for continued support and enhancement of WriteLog to increase
operator efficiency. Also, thanks to K0SM for the TinyFSK Auduino code.
Finally, thanks to Andy P49Y/AE6Y and John P40L/W6LD for use of the cottage
station.
********************************************************************
Rigs: Elecraft K3Ss (2), K-Pods (2), P3s (2)
Amps: Alpha 86, Alpha 91B
FilterMax III low power band pass filters (2)
4O3A high power band pass filters
SixPak, StackMatch (2), BandMaster III decoder (2)
Tower 1: C31XR at 43 feet
Tower 2: 2 elements on 10 meters / 5 elements 15 meters at 55 feet
Tower 3: 4 elements 20 meter at 68 feet
2 elements 40 meter at 76 feet
1 element 80 meter Sigma 80 at 64 feet
160 meter "Double L" vertical at 67 feet
Four 400-500 foot Beverages using K9AY switching box/preamp (JA/W6, W1, EU and
Africa/VK-ZL
Logging software: WriteLog 12.25C on three networked PCs
RTTY Decoders (each K3): MMTTY, 2Tone (2), Hal DXP-38 on main receiver
MMTTY, 2Tone on second receiver
(setting both receivers on same frequency
yields 6 parallel decoders)
RTTY Encoder: Arduino Nano with TinyFSK code
Cabrillo Statistics (Version 10g) by K5KA & N6TV
http://bit.ly/cabstat
CALLSIGN: P49X
CATEGORY-OPERATOR: SINGLE-OP
CATEGORY-TRANSMITTER: ONE
CONTEST: CQ-WPX-RTTY
OPERATORS: W0YK
-------------- Q S O R a t e S u m m a r y ---------------------
Hour 160 80 40 20 15 10 Rate Total Pct
--------------------------------------------------------------------
0000 0 0 81 84 0 0 165 165 5.4
0100 0 55 100 6 0 0 161 326 10.6
0200 0 34 84 0 0 0 118 444 14.4
0300 0 42 95 0 0 0 137 581 18.9
0400 0 56 79 0 0 0 135 716 23.2
0500 0 60 51 0 0 0 111 827 26.8
0600 0 50 29 0 0 0 79 906 29.4
0700 0 33 59 0 0 0 92 998 32.4
0800 0 12 33 0 0 0 45 1043 33.8
0900 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1043 33.8
1000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1043 33.8
1100 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1043 33.8
1200 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1043 33.8
1300 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1043 33.8
1400 0 0 0 55 35 0 90 1133 36.8
1500 0 0 0 72 25 0 97 1230 39.9
1600 0 0 0 83 69 0 152 1382 44.8
1700 0 0 0 88 72 0 160 1542 50.0
1800 0 0 0 62 43 0 105 1647 53.4
1900 0 0 0 75 22 0 97 1744 56.6
2000 0 0 0 11 6 0 17 1761 57.1
2100 0 0 2 8 0 0 10 1771 57.5
2200 0 0 57 85 0 0 142 1913 62.1
2300 0 0 32 75 0 0 107 2020 65.5
0000 0 0 39 51 0 0 90 2110 68.5
0100 0 23 43 0 0 0 66 2176 70.6
0200 0 42 28 0 0 0 70 2246 72.9
0300 0 38 38 0 0 0 76 2322 75.3
0400 0 38 35 0 0 0 73 2395 77.7
0500 0 41 20 0 0 0 61 2456 79.7
0600 0 8 4 0 0 0 12 2468 80.1
0700 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2468 80.1
0800 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2468 80.1
0900 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2468 80.1
1000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2468 80.1
1100 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2468 80.1
1200 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2468 80.1
1300 0 0 0 4 12 0 16 2484 80.6
1400 0 0 0 23 22 0 45 2529 82.1
1500 0 0 0 23 16 0 39 2568 83.3
1600 0 0 0 65 45 0 110 2678 86.9
1700 0 0 0 58 79 0 137 2815 91.3
1800 0 0 0 51 62 0 113 2928 95.0
1900 0 0 0 54 56 0 110 3038 98.6
2000 0 0 0 18 26 0 44 3082 100.0
2100 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3082 100.0
2200 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3082 100.0
2300 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3082 100.0
------------------------------------------------------
Total 0 532 909 1051 590 0 3082
Gross QSOs=3129 Dupes=47 Net QSOs=3082
Unique callsigns worked = 1973
The best 60 minute rate was 167/hour from 0003 to 0102
The best 30 minute rate was 198/hour from 0003 to 0032
The best 10 minute rate was 222/hour from 0018 to 0027
The best 1 minute rates were:
6 QSOs/minute 1 times.
5 QSOs/minute 16 times.
4 QSOs/minute 114 times.
3 QSOs/minute 312 times.
2 QSOs/minute 520 times.
1 QSOs/minute 564 times.
There were 1727 bandchanges and 1056 (34.3%) probable 2nd radio QSOs.
Number of letters in callsigns
Letters # worked
-----------------
3 14
4 1172
5 1193
6 679
7 9
8 7
9 8
Multi-band QSOs
---------------
1 bands 1279
2 bands 397
3 bands 179
4 bands 118
5 bands 0
6 bands 0
------- S i n g l e B a n d Q S O s ------
Band 160 80 40 20 15 10
----------------------------------------------
QSOs 0 166 442 510 161 0
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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