North American QSO Party, RTTY - February
Call: WP3TT
Operator(s): WP3TT
Station: WP3C
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: PR
Operating Time (hrs): 10
OpMode: 2BSIQ
Remote Operation
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
80: 76 28
40: 217 47
20: 241 51
15: 309 54
10: 333 50
-------------------
Total: 1176 230 Total Score = 270,480
Club:
Team: Deep Dixie CC Team Magnolia
Comments:
That was fun and extremely happy with the result, even though my comments my
suggest otherwise.
All week I have been hyping up this contest and result to my friends. I knew I
could compete considering I have operated many RTTY contests as LP and NA
contests previously, this is the first one from KP4. I know if conditions were
right 10/15 would be money bands, but I know I would be loud 10-40 as the
antennas at the QTH are perfect and hear extremely well, but then again I was
doing this remote from San Juan, not in the mountains at the station....
I created a plan that had 300Q on 10-20 and 250 on 40 and around 75 on 80M.
Results are pretty close to expectations and I was surprised by the turn out of
RTTY and how many stations were worked, more than I thought. I wish NA DX
stations got on more...
Besides the radio contest, I had two tennis matches scheduled for Friday and
Saturday morning, both against top tennis junior players on island, but I
thought with my experience they would be relatively easy opponents, but I have
not played them in awhile. I played tennis in college a few years ago and I
started back again on island in the past 2-3 years and play in a competitive
tennis league on island with top players and junior players. It is my non-radio
excitement and keeps me in shape to be able to operate the radio. Well my match
Friday afternoon went 3.5HRs and I had tons of crams and was severely dehydrated
after and was cramping on Friday night. I was hoping the rain would cancel my
Saturday match, but it did not. I did sleep very well Friday night and I thought
Saturday morning 10AM local (1400Z) would be a breeze, it was not. I got my butt
kicked 0-6 the first set then won the second set 6-3 and the third set went the
distance and I wont 7-6 (7-5) and I saved a few match points. Another 3 hour
match Saturday and I should have thought better. I say this because this did NOT
help me for the contest and I was tired the whole contest and my match finished
1 hour before contest time and I got back to the house 30 minutes before the
start of the contest, desperately hungry, dehydrated again, needing to do some
last second chores and shower. I finished all and was in the chair at 1 minute
before the contest. I was ready to go. Before my tennis matches, we had a brief
power outage in the morning that had me concerned, mainly because my internet
connection was not the same the rest of the morning and I was on the phone with
my internet company as I was driving to my tennis matches as the quality and the
speed was about half of what I am paying for. Thus, my connection with FLEX
Smart SDR and trying to connect locally was extremely poor the whole day
Saturday, despite all week having a top connection. I hate to say I have bad
luck with internet, but it seems like contest weekends I always have been luck
with the internet connection here. Some times it is perfect and I get this
feeling like I can do this all the time, then when I get comfortable, my
internet sucks again. Note: I apologize for all the repeats and, most likely, my
signal not being able to be decoded at times or the sudden disappearances.
Between 2300-0100 it was the worst and forced me to take breaks. I often had to
ask for many repeats because my connection was red, very weak. I tried remoting
into the local desktop without success either.
I started the contest on 10/15 and 10M was hot right away. 15M all stations
seemed very weak despite having a steady flow of callers. Nonetheless, I have
never had a rate like I did the first hour, it was incredible. I had 2-3x as
many Q on 10M than I was having on 15M. I actually thought something happened to
the 15M antennas, but it was just not open entirely to the US or the beams were
not pointed in this direction. I started off with 162 in the first hour and 135
in the second hour, followed by 108, 107, 122, and 129. I was heading in the
right direction in the right direction considering I just started on 20M and no
Q on 40M yet and it was 0000Z. It was very promising and I thought for sure I
could sustain at least two more 100+ hours on 20 and 40M for sure. Soon after
0000Z internet booted me from both computers and I had to have the internet
connection reset at the station since I couldn't even access the radios nor the
power outlet. I thought this was going to be the end of the contest for me and I
was a little disappointed. I did my break and dinner while the router got reset
and I waited. While the internet came back on, the connection seemed very weak
and was often red during TX which caused non-copiable signals, issues with my TX
and then delayed TX'ing. I was also running on adrenaline so it was catching up
to me as I was hitting wrong MACRO keys, not looking at the right screen, etc.
For the next 3 hours I was battling myself and the bad internet connection
forcing me to make additional breaks during peak 20M run time. This forced me to
have to stay on 20M until about 0200-0300, while every caller I could easily
here, not many callers were still there. Luckily some MULTs found me during
these difficult times and had another KP4 station call me, HP1, HI, VE6 and ND
give me a call to make up for the limited QSOs on 20M. I was extremely content.
Once I had a decent connection back up around 0300Z I started with 40/80 for the
~2hrs I had remaining to operate. 40M gave some good runs, but most people went
to 80M I believe after midnight.
NAQPs is one my favorite radio contests, I enjoy the short time period, much
more so than ARRL SS and it is not too bad on the body and mind for ten hours.
It is fun being DX, but I have said it before to many folks, I couldn't tell you
how many times I received "What's your state" and even had a few say
KP4 is not a state - no kidding its not, but its what the exchange is! I think
they should just give acronyms for all territories PR, VI, AS (American Somoa),
etc. or perhaps change the logging program instead of having "State"
in the exchange, which many are looking to put a state, they can change it to
"State/Province/DX" or something that doesn't make it seem like you
need to put it a state there. Of course just reading the rules and understanding
them should avoid problems in general, but just some additional things I would
change.
I know I will most likely have some Q removed or wrong exchanges due to the
connection issues, but very happy with the result and maybe next year I will go
on-site for the contest.
It was really cool to have the live scoreboard going and see just how close all
the top competitors were, even with the M/2 stations and the SO operators. I
look forward to the next battle with K7RL, AC0C, NJ4P, AA3B, K6UFO, ND7K, NE1C
all via the live scoreboard. In the last 2-3 hours there were so many changes at
the top, I am sure at the beginning of the contest there were too, but I didn't
start following until the end/when my internet problems persisted and got bored
and it gave me life/excitement back. One of these days I hope to finally master
this remote thing.....
73s Paul - WP3TT
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