ARRL RTTY Roundup
Call: W6YX
Operator(s): K6OWL W6LD N6DE
Station: W6YX
Class: M/S HP
QTH: CA
Operating Time (hrs): 24
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
80: 286
40: 459
20: 509
15: 307
10:
------------
Total: 1561 State/Prov = 57 Countries = 38 Total Score = 148,295
Club: Northern California Contest Club
Comments:
RTTY Roundup is one of my favorite contests of the year! We had a great time at
W6YX. Thanks to Rebar N6CCH for doing much of the setup. We ran two
simultaneous M/S operations for the contest - W6YX and ND2T. We were expecting
a lot of operators, so two efforts would allow everyone to have more fun, but
also contribute a lot more points to the NCCC club score instead of just one
competitive M/S effort.
Mark K6OWL started the contest. He had 100+ QSO hours for both of the first
two hours. All hours the rest of the contest were under 100. I got close with
a 99 QSO hour Saturday on 40m. 80m was surprisingly good. On Saturday night we
experienced bad rain static from the huge storm in the Bay Area. Having the
beverages allowed us to hear stations and continue in the contest.
The wind and rain storm also affected us in other ways. Our 6-el 15m beam and
5-el 15m beam were not usable due to high SWR, though it's not clear whether
this storm caused the problem, or whether it was the previous rain. The high
winds caused our 5-el 20m beam to free spin on the mast before the contest. We
were able to tie it off, orient it toward the U.S. and use it for the contest.
We still need to work on getting rid of the loop of coax that is currently
around the mast.
Risto W6RK and I were operating on Saturday night when the power to the shack
went off at 11:55pm! We were going to stop at midnight anyway, but I was
concerned that we may not have power for the rest of the contest. A few
minutes after we lost power, we heard all sorts of police and fire sirens
nearby. Once Risto found a flashlight, we searched and found the 1.5kW
generator in the trailer, however we had no idea what condition the generator
was in, when it was last serviced, whether the gasoline in gas cans labeled
2002 was a good idea to use in the generator or whether the labeling just
hadn't been updated. (it turns out that the generator was serviced and tested
within the last two years, gasoline was much fresher than 2002 and was
"Stabil"ized, so it would have been ready to go, but it wasn't obvious at the
time) I have a 2.4kW Yamaha generator at home that I knew worked well because
I had already tested it in preparation for the storm, and had a fresh supply of
gasoline. At least we could set it up and be active in the contest with low
power on Sunday. I went home, took a nap, loaded the generator into my SUV,
and headed up to W6YX. I was going to start the contest again at 4am, so I
headed up really early and found one of the roads off of I280 was still blocked
off by police. We later found that there had been a car accident which took out
a power line. I got back on 280, took the next exit, and drove the back way in
to W6YX. I got the generator and cables all set up, rigs and computers
powered, and Writelog up and running. Then at 3:30am, the building power
suddenly came back on! I reconnected the rigs and computer back onto the
building power and turned on the amplifiers. Power stayed on for the rest of
the contest! In retrospect, 11:55pm-3:30am was the perfect time for the power
to go out, and long term, gave us some motivation to test and refresh the
station's small generator. There's nothing like a contest during a storm to
propel us all to resolve these issues.
So that both stations had some time during the short European opening on 20m
Sunday morning, we swapped bands midway through the opening. The W6YX station
operated a lot on 20m Saturday, with the ND2T station taking a hit for a few
hours with low rates, so we reversed that on Sunday. John W6LD took over the
YX station for a few hours on Sunday, and had some good rates on 15m.
Thanks to everyone for all the QSOs! See you in NAQP RTTY and WPX RTTY!
73...
-Dean - N6DE
80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total %
NA 281 392 431 298 0 1402 89.8
AS 1 58 55 0 0 114 7.3
OC 3 4 2 1 0 10 0.6
SA 1 3 2 8 0 14 0.9
EU 0 1 17 0 0 18 1.2
AF 0 1 2 0 0 3 0.2
80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total
9A 2 2
BY 1 1
CN 1 1
CT3 1 1
CX 1 1 2
DL 2 2
DU 2 2
EA 1 1
EA8 1 1
EI 1 1
F 1 2 3
G 1 1
GI 1 1
GW 1 1
HI 1 1
HL 4 4
HP 1 1 2
HR 1 1
HS 1 1 2
I 1 1
J3 1 1
JA 50 49 99
K 260 361 380 277 1278
KH6 2 3 1 6
KL 1 3 4
KP4 1 1 2
LU 1 1
OE 1 1
OK 1 1
ON 2 2
P4 1 1 2 1 5
PY 3 3
S5 1 1
UA9 1 1 5 7
VE 20 29 43 20 112
VK 1 1
VR 1 1
XE 1 1
YV 1 2 3
ZL 1 1
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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