ARRL RTTY Roundup
Call: WE9V
Operator(s): WE9V
Station: WE9V
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: WI
Operating Time (hrs): 18
Summary:
Band RTTY Qs Dig Qs
-----------------------
80: 293 0
40: 533 0
20: 405 0
15: 64 0
10: 0 0
-----------------------
Total: 1295 0 State/Prov = 57 Countries = 45 Total Score = 132,090
Club: Society of Midwest Contesters
Comments:
After living the last 6 months in China, I came back to a questionable
station status. Things were pretty much working when I did the last
contest in March 2018. Since returning home, most everything seemed
okay. Upon further investigation, a few things aren't right, such as
160M and 30M SWR (not an issue for this contest), my homebrew stackmatch
isn't switching between upper and lower, and my 2nd tower rotator isn't
indicating. The good news is that it still rotates, and I can observe
direction during daylight.
Because I didn't plan to operate full time, I started the contest
1.5 hours late. A few hours into the contest, I got the dreaded
"ERR 12V" problem on one of my K3's. The RX still works, but you're
limited to about 10 watts. It's one thing to do this contest low power,
but you really need SO2R to keep it somewhat interesting. Since I
wasn't operating seriously, I took an hour to tear apart the radio,
un-seat and re-seat the 100W PA connectors hoping that the oxidation
would have improved and get me going again. A few transmissions
later proved me wrong. So I turned the power way, way down to about
3 watts and drove one of my amplifiers to get the 100w out.
Took another hour off a bit later on Saturday night to spend time
with my daughter. Then, I got about 7 hours of sleep, operated a
bit Sunday morning, but found that EU was pretty sparse on 20M.
Then at 16z, took another 2 hours off to go to church and make
breakfast with my daughter. Operated the last 5.5 hours straight.
Yeah, quite the marathon chair session, huh? LOL
Another year I'm kicking myself after the fact for not operating the
contest full time. No one to blame but myself, and a little feeling
guilty for leaving my daughter to fend for herself most of the weekend.
Makes me wonder what I could have accomplished if I operated full-time.
Writelog says I operated just under 18 hours of the 24 allowed.
Note to self for next year: Operate full time!!!!
100% RTTY. I've been really enjoying HF FT8 since returning from China
(wow, did that really explode in acceptance/usage in 6 months!), but
I didn't want to be classified as assisted, nor did I think that you
could sustain the same rates. I was afraid that there would be less
people on RTTY, causing rate to go down the drain, but that didn't seem
the case, which is good. FT8 is great for DXing, but not ready for
prime-time contesting. Yet. FT8 is evolving a ton over the last 12
months, so I wouldn't doubt more changes will come and help FT8
contesting.
73 and thanks for the QSOs.
Chad WE9V
2x K3
50/100' KT34XA stack, Mosley TA34 for 2nd radio
XM240 at 110', converted to W6NL Moxon
80M Dipole at 95'
http://www.we9v.com
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
______________________________________________
3830 mailing list
3830@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/3830
|