ARRL RTTY Roundup - 2020
Call: ZF2WF
Operator(s): W9KKN
Station: ZF1A
Class: Single Op HP
QTH: Grand Cayman
Operating Time (hrs): 24
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band RTTY Qs Dig Qs
-----------------------
80: 300 0
40: 691 0
20: 946 0
15: 330 0
10: 4 0
-----------------------
Total: 2271 0 State/Prov = 56 Countries = 60 Total Score = 263,436
Club: Cayman Amateur Radio Society
Comments:
Thanks to the generosity of Andrew ZF1EJ, Dan N6MJ, Tim N6WIN, Marty NN1C, and
numerous others, I've recently been able to join the ranks of W* operators
occassionally on the DX side.
After CQWW SSB, Marty and I decided that after it all calmed down a bit (and the
amplifiers had a month or so to cool off from ZF2MJ's WWCW assault), we'd go
down to ZF1A during new years and work on a little bit of the technical debt
that we had both identified at ZF1A in preparation for the upcoming ARRL DX
tests. I was also going to go for an attempt at a great RTTY RU run from down
there, just to see what my limits were if the location/station were better than
the operator. A bunch of antenna and station upgrades were done during WWSSB and
we've only just started to put them to the test.
P49X is the gold standard of operating RTTY from the Caribbean, so I didn't
really have high expectations in terms of keeping up with Ed, but to be honest,
I really didn't know what to expect. I took a good look at his log to figure out
when Europe would be showing up, etc., knowing of course that P40 and ZF are
somewhat different in terms of latitude and propagation. I also didn't mention
to many people what I was up to, because in a way, I was being sneaky. Who is
this ZF2WF fellow anyway? He's everywhere! I certainly wasn't going to set any
records at this point in the solar cycle, but this would be a big score and I
was super motivated to leave a mark.
So I packed up my Flex radios, went down to ZF1A, and we worked on the station
for a few days. Marty and I got a few things we wanted done, but one of the
amplifiers ended up eating up way more time than we had bargained for. There's
still quite a bit more to do, but it was a productive trip, and I couldn't have
done most of it without him.
Earlier in the week, as is customary practice, I started to test out the
radios/amplifiers, with a few good CW and SSB runs. I had brought down two
Flex-6600's with the hope of doing SO4R during RU, but found that one of my
radios wasn't working and putting out any RF output at all. Fortunately, I had
seen this before and last time it was just a simple matter of hard resetting,
but in this case, no such luck. At least in such a case I could go down to a
single radio, and still do SO2R in a single box -- so we rearranged things a
bit, got it all set up for that, and it worked fine during the Friday even
practice session. I would be down to just SO2R, but I can still make a real dent
with that.
Marty was set to leave a bit earlier, Saturday afternoon as I had just started
the contest, then I'd finish Sunday, pack it all up, and leave Monday. Then
about an hour before the contest, I sat down to test again -- clear my head,
maybe just do one last check of all my settings only to find that it had spread
to the second radio (!) -- this one was a little different, it was putting out
only half the power the meter claimed that it was, but it wasn't right, and
shortly after a bit more testing, it was doing the same thing as the other
radio. Unfortunately, resetting didn't fix this one either. Something very bad
was wrong, and I wouldn't be able to fix it. Dan has a few Icom-7610's still
down there, so Marty, knowing a lot more about these radios than I helped me
quickly get two radios together. We didn't quite get it all together in time for
the start of the contest, and this had already ate roughly 20-40 minutes of good
running time. Even when we had it all going, I suspect due to a bad windows
driver (Icom tells you to install their own version and not use the defaults,
which we didn't do) of the Silicon Labs drivers needed to drive the virtual cat
/ fsk ports, it wasn't quite right for the whole contest. Occassionally, I'd
start sending a message, and instead of running to completion, it would stutter
and just stop diddling instantly, not really sending the bits. Luckily I could
hear it going on and deal with it, but with all of this going on, and being
distraught from having both of your race horses die on you completely before the
race (I use these Flex Radios in contests almost *every* weekend, and sure, they
have their excentricities, but really, I'm usually one of the few that can
whisper them into working no matter what.) I wasn't myself for maybe the first 3
hours of the contest.
But, alas, the first 4 hours or so are the ONLY hours that mattered in the
pseudo-battle between myself and P49X. Once I picked myself up off the ground,
brushed the dirt off, and got my footing, I was still 500 Q's behind, and while
I kept up with the rate for the rest of the contest and had focus, I couldn't
close the gap from those first couple of hours. Especially with a semi-flaky FSK
setup.
What's going on with the Flexes? Well -- my understanding is that the PA
calibration data lives on an EEPROM that I've managed to corrupt in some way (I
have a specific piece of gear that might be common to both places this has
happened), but we'll know more once we go through the motions. Unfortunately,
this will all but certainly involve sending them to the factory. We'll see what
that means.
As far as propagation was concerned, on Sunday the 15m opening was kind of late,
but very, very sudden. I managed to squeak a few Q's out of 10m, and on the low
bands, I was doing pretty well with Europe.
In any case, lots of lessons learned here and I'm not giving up this easy. For
my post last year, I said "wait till next year", and that still stands
:)
I'll also say that despite my sneak attack, I've got nothing but the highest
accolades for Ed/P49X, really -- he's always been nothing but kind and
supportive, I've learned a bunch from his presentations at Dayton and NCCC, and
he makes a outrageously good Pinot (we'll see if my wine club membership is
still active hihi.)
And now for some cabstats:
Cabrillo Statistics (Version 10g) by K5KA & N6TV
http://bit.ly/cabstat
CALLSIGN: ZF2WF
CONTEST: ARRL-RTTY
CATEGORY-OPERATOR: SINGLE-OP
CATEGORY-TRANSMITTER: UNLIMITED
OPERATORS: ZF2WF
-------------- Q S O R a t e S u m m a r y ---------------------
Hour 160 80 40 20 15 10 Rate Total Pct
--------------------------------------------------------------------
1800 0 0 0 32 15 0 47 47 2.1
1900 0 0 2 94 35 0 131 178 7.9
2000 0 0 32 99 0 0 131 309 13.6
2100 0 0 58 79 0 0 137 446 19.7
2200 0 0 68 85 0 0 153 599 26.4
2300 0 0 67 56 0 0 123 722 31.9
0000 0 28 47 5 0 0 80 802 35.4
0100 0 35 61 0 0 0 96 898 39.6
0200 0 60 57 0 0 0 117 1015 44.8
0300 0 38 46 0 0 0 84 1099 48.5
0400 0 26 42 0 0 0 68 1167 51.5
0500 0 45 41 0 0 0 86 1253 55.3
0600 0 36 32 0 0 0 68 1321 58.3
0700 0 20 11 0 0 0 31 1352 59.7
0800 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1352 59.7
0900 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1352 59.7
1000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1352 59.7
1100 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1352 59.7
1200 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1352 59.7
1300 0 0 16 35 0 0 51 1403 61.9
1400 0 0 11 82 0 0 93 1496 66.0
1500 0 0 3 31 3 0 37 1533 67.7
1600 0 0 0 57 37 0 94 1627 71.8
1700 0 0 0 47 99 4 150 1777 78.4
1800 0 0 0 47 59 0 106 1883 83.1
1900 0 0 0 55 51 0 106 1989 87.8
2000 0 0 5 64 28 0 97 2086 92.1
2100 0 0 35 35 1 0 71 2157 95.2
2200 0 0 24 34 0 0 58 2215 97.7
2300 0 12 32 7 0 0 51 2266 100.0
------------------------------------------------------
Total 0 300 690 944 328 4 2266
Gross QSOs=2330 Dupes=64 Net QSOs=2266
Unique callsigns worked = 1342
The best 60 minute rate was 161/hour from 1642 to 1741
The best 30 minute rate was 186/hour from 1656 to 1725
The best 10 minute rate was 198/hour from 1909 to 1918
The best 1 minute rates were:
5 QSOs/minute 14 times.
4 QSOs/minute 57 times.
3 QSOs/minute 239 times.
2 QSOs/minute 413 times.
1 QSOs/minute 425 times.
There were 1184 bandchanges and 724 (32.0%) probable 2nd radio QSOs.
----------------- C o n t i n e n t S u m m a r y -----------------
160 80 40 20 15 10 Total Pct
---------------------------------------------------------------------
North America 0 236 566 791 313 4 1910 84.3
South America 0 0 1 3 8 0 12 0.5
Europe 0 64 109 115 4 0 292 12.9
Asia 0 0 7 33 0 0 40 1.8
Africa 0 0 1 1 0 0 2 0.1
Oceania 0 0 6 1 3 0 10 0.4
--------------------------------------------------------------
Total 0 300 690 944 328 4 2266
Number of letters in callsigns
Letters # worked
-----------------
3 2
4 967
5 841
6 453
7 1
8 1
10 1
------------------ C o u n t r y S u m m a r y ------------------
Country 160 80 40 20 15 10 Total Pct
-------------------------------------------------------------------
9A 0 2 1 1 0 0 4 0.2
CE 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0.0
CM 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0.0
CT 0 0 2 1 0 0 3 0.1
CX 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0.0
DL 0 8 16 16 1 0 41 1.8
EA 0 1 3 2 1 0 7 0.3
EA8 0 0 1 1 0 0 2 0.1
EI 0 0 1 2 0 0 3 0.1
ER 0 1 1 1 0 0 3 0.1
EU 0 1 1 2 0 0 4 0.2
F 0 5 7 6 0 0 18 0.8
G 0 1 0 9 0 0 10 0.4
GI 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0.0
GU 0 1 0 1 0 0 2 0.1
GW 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0.0
HA 0 1 3 3 0 0 7 0.3
HB 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0.0
HI 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0.0
HP 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0.0
I 0 10 28 16 0 0 54 2.4
*IT9 0 2 2 2 0 0 6 0.3
JA 0 0 4 32 0 0 36 1.6
JT 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0.0
K 0 223 525 729 297 4 1778 78.5
KG4 0 2 2 2 1 0 7 0.3
KH6 0 0 2 1 2 0 5 0.2
KP4 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0.0
LA 0 1 1 1 0 0 3 0.1
LU 0 0 0 1 2 0 3 0.1
LX 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0.0
LY 0 2 1 1 0 0 4 0.2
LZ 0 3 0 1 0 0 4 0.2
OE 0 3 0 0 0 0 3 0.1
OH 0 1 0 2 0 0 3 0.1
OK 0 2 7 2 2 0 13 0.6
OM 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0.0
ON 0 3 2 5 0 0 10 0.4
OZ 0 1 1 0 0 0 2 0.1
P4 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0.0
PA 0 1 7 8 0 0 16 0.7
PY 0 0 0 0 4 0 4 0.2
S2 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0.0
S5 0 1 3 2 0 0 6 0.3
SM 0 0 1 4 0 0 5 0.2
SP 0 2 2 6 0 0 10 0.4
SV 0 0 2 1 0 0 3 0.1
TA 0 0 2 0 0 0 2 0.1
TG 0 0 1 1 0 0 2 0.1
TI 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0.0
TK 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0.0
UA 0 0 0 3 0 0 3 0.1
UR 0 6 8 6 0 0 20 0.9
VE 0 9 34 55 15 0 113 5.0
VK 0 0 2 0 0 0 2 0.1
XE 0 2 1 2 0 0 5 0.2
YB 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0.0
YL 0 1 1 2 0 0 4 0.2
YO 0 2 3 4 0 0 9 0.4
YU 0 2 2 1 0 0 5 0.2
YV 0 0 0 2 0 0 2 0.1
Z3 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0.0
ZL 0 0 1 0 1 0 2 0.1
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Total 0 300 690 944 328 4 2266
------------ M u l t i p l i e r S u m m a r y ------------
Mult 160 80 40 20 15 10 Total Pct
-------------------------------------------------------------
-DX- 0 66 130 160 15 0 371 16.4
CA 0 19 37 67 20 0 143 6.3
VA 0 15 30 43 17 0 105 4.6
PA 0 6 35 40 20 1 102 4.5
IL 0 10 24 41 16 0 91 4.0
MN 0 13 25 28 19 0 85 3.8
NY 0 16 23 27 18 0 84 3.7
TX 0 10 20 40 8 0 78 3.4
OH 0 7 28 29 10 0 74 3.3
FL 0 12 18 23 10 0 63 2.8
NC 0 7 17 27 9 0 60 2.6
ON 0 5 18 25 11 0 59 2.6
NJ 0 9 17 16 8 2 52 2.3
MD 0 7 17 17 9 1 51 2.3
WA 0 4 13 25 9 0 51 2.3
TN 0 8 15 25 3 0 51 2.3
AZ 0 6 14 16 10 0 46 2.0
MA 0 6 12 14 12 0 44 1.9
WI 0 7 13 16 7 0 43 1.9
MI 0 4 15 17 6 0 42 1.9
IN 0 6 12 19 5 0 42 1.9
MO 0 4 15 15 6 0 40 1.8
SC 0 5 10 16 7 0 38 1.7
CO 0 2 9 14 9 0 34 1.5
AL 0 2 11 12 4 0 29 1.3
KY 0 4 10 10 3 0 27 1.2
OR 0 2 6 14 4 0 26 1.1
CT 0 3 5 11 6 0 25 1.1
ID 0 1 7 11 5 0 24 1.1
KS 0 3 6 8 4 0 21 0.9
IA 0 4 5 8 3 0 20 0.9
BC 0 1 5 13 0 0 19 0.8
GA 0 1 7 10 1 0 19 0.8
AR 0 2 4 9 2 0 17 0.8
MS 0 2 8 4 3 0 17 0.8
NH 0 3 7 3 4 0 17 0.8
QC 0 2 6 4 2 0 14 0.6
ME 0 1 5 3 5 0 14 0.6
NV 0 1 5 6 2 0 14 0.6
LA 0 3 3 4 3 0 13 0.6
NM 0 1 3 6 1 0 11 0.5
UT 0 1 3 6 0 0 10 0.4
SD 0 3 3 2 2 0 10 0.4
MT 0 1 3 5 1 0 10 0.4
AB 0 0 3 5 0 0 8 0.4
WV 0 0 1 6 1 0 8 0.4
NE 0 2 1 2 2 0 7 0.3
VT 0 2 1 2 1 0 6 0.3
SK 0 1 1 3 1 0 6 0.3
RI 0 0 1 4 1 0 6 0.3
OK 0 0 1 4 1 0 6 0.3
WY 0 0 0 3 1 0 4 0.2
NS 0 0 0 1 1 0 2 0.1
NF 0 0 0 2 0 0 2 0.1
DE 0 0 1 1 0 0 2 0.1
MB 0 0 1 1 0 0 2 0.1
DC 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0.0
------------------------------------------------------
Total 0 300 690 944 328 4 2266
U.S. Call Areas Worked
Area QSOs Pct
--------------------
0 221 9.8
1 127 5.6
2 166 7.3
3 195 8.6
4 264 11.7
5 145 6.4
6 173 7.6
7 152 6.7
8 158 7.0
9 177 7.8
--------------------
Total 1778 78.5
Multi-band QSOs
---------------
1 bands 749
2 bands 333
3 bands 189
4 bands 71
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 57 217 411 64 0
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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