North American QSO Party, RTTY
Call: AA4LR
Operator(s): AA4LR
Station: AA4LR
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: GA
Operating Time (hrs): 7.7
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
80: 24 14
40: 87 32
20: 97 33
15: 45 17
10: 0 0
-------------------
Total: 253 96 Total Score = 24,288
Club: South East Contest Club
Team:
Comments:
Antennas:
Cushcraft A3S / A743 (40m-10m) at 15m
15m shunt-fed tower (80m)
115 foot doublet at 10m (40m, 80m)
Equipment:
Elecraft K2/100 w/ KAT100 running 50 watts (with supplemental cooling)
Comments:
My objective for this contest was to fill in the holes in my RTTY
triple-play confirmations. I needed AK, DE, TN and WV. I worked one
each of AK, DE and WV, and two in TN. Three days later, I had the
confirmations in LoTW. You have to love that.
Goofed up on 10m, otherwise, I should have made a couple of Qs. The K2
has this kind of weird behavior above 20 MHz that it inverts the
signal, so it compensates by flipping to the opposite sideband. This
makes signals tune
backwards from the lower bands, so I often invert the CW sideband to
make it tune the same way. (This is an item on my K2 firmware
wishlist, if Eric and Wayne ever get around to it)
Well, somehow I wasn't thinking, and picked inverted RTTY on 10m. This
means, of course, that my mark / space are inverted as well. So, I
heard a couple of stations that I couldn't decode. I also called CQ
for a while with no answers. Once I figured out how stupid I was, I
heard no more signals on 10m. 10m was clearly open at the very start,
but not very many stations active.
I tried to emphasize 15m a bit, since I need lots of band-states on
RTTY, and I still need five states for 15m WAS. I wasn't lucky enough
to work any of those.
20m was jam-packed, as usual. Had a good run at 14112.5, which seems
way high in the band to me. Touch on 40m at 2130z, because 20m started
to sound really long, but it was too early. By 2230, conditions had
gotten weird -- 20m was nearly dead, but 40m had too much absorption
to get anything going. I took a break for some dinner and was back on
at 0000z. 40m was still not hopping yet, so I gave a quick scan of 20m
for some needed mults and back to 40m at 0030z. Finally!
Rates were touch and go through the rest of the contest for me. Not
much going on 40m, and 80m was really sparse, even though there were
many strong signals there. Had to QRT at 0300z, since I had to get up
early on Sunday.
Had a couple of weird incidents while I was CQing -- someone would get
next to me and put his mark frequency right on my space frequency. I'm
mean, right square on it. This isn't good for either of us, so I would
tune down and ask
them to QSY. This happened not once but TWICE. One guy proclaimed he
didn't know I was even there, because he had his super filter in.
Watch out for those filters, guys. If you have too tight a filter when
trying to find a CQ frequency, you may get some place where you cause
interference, and the other guy may interfere with stations trying to
copy you. The bands were never so crowded that you couldn't find a
clear place to CQ.
All in all, a lot of fun.
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
Bill Coleman, AA4LR, PP-ASEL Mail: aa4lr at arrl.net
Web: http://boringhamradiopart.blogspot.com
Quote: "Not within a thousand years will man ever fly!"
-- Wilbur Wright, 1901
|