ARRL RTTY Roundup
Call: W9KKN
Operator(s): W9KKN
Station: NW6P
Class: SO Unlimited HP
QTH: Cupertino, CA
Operating Time (hrs): 23.5
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band RTTY Qs Dig Qs
-----------------------
80: 228 0
40: 384 0
20: 760 0
15: 382 0
10: 0 0
-----------------------
Total: 1754 0 State/Prov = 55 Countries = 31 Total Score = 150,844
Club: Northern California Contest Club
Comments:
If you've been following my 3830 posts, you know that I've been gradually
adding/tweaking capabilities such as SO2R and remote over the last six months or
so to the NW6P station. The most recent addition was going to be a pair of new
solid-state amplifiers, B26-RF2K+ LDMOS kits based on the Ampleon BLF189s. After
they arrived in November, I managed to procrastinate assembling them until
Wednesday and Thursday evening before the contest, pulling all-nighters (and
still going into work) Thursday and Friday. The first amplifier was a bit tricky
putting together because the instructions aren't the best, but the second one
went together really quickly. Unfortunately, only one of them worked, and I
still haven't fully diagnosed the issue, but I did manage to isolate the problem
enough and swap parts enough to make one working unit, leaving me with Tom's
Alpha 87A, one new amp that had never been on the air, and an amplifier that
needs.. a friend or two. I had to do a bit of last-minute surgery with a
soldering iron the morning of the contest, but with 1-for-3 nights of sleep, and
not being the spry young fella I used to be, we were QRV! (Or something like
QRV, only more tired.)
I've only had tastes of true '2BSIQ'/SO2R operation, but have badly wanted to
try getting more practice into it (primarily limited by station, operating
classes, and operator capability thus far), which is why I had been so looking
forward to this particular contest, this was going to be my first full-bore
attempt at it. As far as modes go, SSB: I can hold my own, CW: coming along, but
RTTY is where I have the most confidence.
A lot of the work at NW6P over the past several months was leading up to it.
Nothing was going to stop me, not a failed amplifier, not a lack of sleep,
not... EVERYTHING ELSE THAT MURPHY THREW AT ME (that I can currently remember):
1) The wind Saturday afternoon managing to loosen up some elements of the
40-meter beam, making the SWR jump all around in the wind.
2) A failed band/decoder relay driver, which ended up just being a blown
internal fuse
3) Low power output levels on 40/80m from the new amplifier (turns out, it's
just a pot that needs adjusting)
4) Rain getting into one of the coax feeds, which brought me down to a single
radio at the end of the contest -- thank goodness that didn't happen earlier
5) The lack of a true EU opening... I worked a few token EU's but it didn't last
very long.
6) A pronounced lack of JAs, except for a few of the regulars.
7) A few cases of interstation interference that hadn't shown up before, but
were usually manageable by swapping bands/amps. The
Got off to a great start; once I got the QLF-rate under control, and my second
or third wind, I was trucking along, hitting rates I had never experienced
before in RTTY -- fueled by pure adrenaline and fun. The bands were weak, there
wasn't any completely special propagation to write home about, as I mentioned,
EU was a bit tough to roll into and didn't last very long. I watched as the east
coast ate my lunch in multipliers, but said -- too bad, I'm going to make up for
it in Q's, though in keeping myself honest, my main self-critique was getting
too addicted to the rate to go chase the mults, and it hurt my score. It all
went well with consistent 100-240/hr rates until the above-mentioned antenna
feed problem brought me down to a single-radio limp at 50/hr at the end across
the finish line.
For once, the Flex software mostly held together for me throughout the contest
-- perhaps feeling sorry for me given everything else going wrong. N1MM had a
slightly annoying bug that even after disabling call stacking would result in a
stack error appearing if you tried to replace a call you had clicked twice in a
row. Luckily, the application kept running...
The one semi-regret was that I didn't get to play with FT8 during this contest.
Overall, I'm happy with the result and learned a lot. As we used to say in
Illinois (primarily referring to the Cubs) "wait till next year."
Lots of people to thank for all of this, in no particular order, Tom/NW6P for
the use of his station and the hospitality, Jack W6FB for lending me a few
things needed to finish up the amplifiers, Ian W6TCP for letting me make a
surprise last-minute visit to pick up an autotuner I had purchased from him,
Dean N6DE for what turned out to be excellent operating advice, and K9CT for an
inspiring station tour during my winter family visit to Illinois.
Thanks for the Q's everyone, and we'll see you in the next contest!
73,
Bill/W9KKN
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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