North American QSO Party, RTTY - February
Call: WD6T
Operator(s): WD6T
Station: N6RO
Class: Single Op Assisted LP
QTH: CA
Operating Time (hrs): 10
OpMode: 2BSIQ
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
80: 114 47
40: 217 54
20: 186 54
15: 230 55
10: 185 52
-------------------
Total: 932 262 Total Score = 244,184
Club: Northern California Contest Club
Team: NCCC Team #1
Comments:
For the last few runnings of this contest, the N6RO team has done M2's. But
this time we decided to do a SO. Chris N6WM encouraged me to try a 3-radio
setup, which I'd never tried before. Many thanks to Chris for making a special
trip out to the station to get it all set up, as well as to Ken N6RO and the RO
team for the opportunity to operate.
The setup included a Flex 6600 and 6400 (interlocked), for a total of three
independent full duplex RXs, two Flex Maestros, two computers, two mice and two
keyboards. I also used a small audio mixer (a Universal Audio x4) so that I
could have each slice of the 6600 in one ear and the 6400 in the center. I
hoped this would help me to keep the radios straight (more on this later).
I first tried CQ'ing cyclically on three bands, but it was too early for good
20m propagation. While I did work a few on 20m, they were almost exclusively in
the West (and there aren't all that many of us.) I also found it difficult to
distinguish the audio of each radio. Eventually I solved this by changing the
tones of the 6400 (the one in the center of the headphones) to be different from
the other two. That made a big difference! Another annoyance involved clicking
on a packet spot on the third radio, and having it reconfigure the radio to
"DIGI" mode! This turned out to be a configuration setting in N1MM.
I ended up not doing much "3BSIQ" and used the third radio mainly for
band awareness, quick alternation of where I CQ'ed, and some S&P's. I
followed the strategy of S&P'ing mults on the lower band and running on the
higher one. This resulted in a very good mult total, though at the expense of
Qs, as I sometimes waited too long to start running.
The station worked flawlessly. I was particularly pleased with the performance
of the newest addition, an 80m rotatable dipole at 160' above ground, which
allowed me to work nearly every mult that was on, once the band finally opened.
All in all, an enjoyable contest with some great operators. Congrats to K7RL,
AA3B and the others whose scores reached the stratosphere. And thanks to all
for the QSOs.
73,
Dave
WD6T
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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