I hope all of you had as much fun as I did. After years of low sun activity,
wasn't it nice to have better high band condx again?
I took my second tower down a few weeks ago in anticipation of having a patio
cover installed (the tower was mounted on the patio),
so I basically have lost my ability to do SO2R on the high bands until the
tower is relocated. So I decided to do a 20M single band
effort. With the flux rising to the upper 90's, I thought about going single
band 15M, but just thought 20 would be more fun.
I got off to a slow start since the contest begins at sunset and just couldn't
get much going. I took a look at 15 about an hour
into the contest just for the heck of it and saw a load of JA stations (well
after my sunset). I wondered if I made the wrong
decision to go 20 instead of 15. At 0300Z signals disappeared on 20 so I went
to bed. I awoke at 2 AM (0800Z) and decided to check
20M. To my delight, there were strong EU signals all across the band. I don't
know how many years have passed since I've seen this
opening. It used to be my "secret" weapon. This opening helped propel me to
both my CQWW RTTY Low and High Power Single Op wins.
When condx are right, I can work EU all night long (after their sunrise). The
problem, as I encountered a bit this year, is that EU
is not beaming NA just after their sunrise. So even though stations like 4O3A
were booming in, they couldn't hear me right away.
Only the western EU stations, like EA could hear me even though I was running
600 watts to a tribander at 55 feet. After about an
hour, I could work any EU station I could hear. I was in bliss! Just before
my sunrise around 1130Z, the EU signals nearly
disappeared. I knew this to be normal, so I took an hour nap to come back and
find the band chocked full of signals again. The
rest is history. Saturday during the day, I had great runs of several hours
into EU late into the afternoon (well after dark on
their end) and of course, NA. I was disappointed in the lack of JA signals at
sunset, but I had to quit early or I would run out of
time on Sunday. I did wake up briefly at 4 AM Sunday to look at the band
spectrum on PRO III to see NO signals at all. So getting
that all-night opening to EU the first night was very lucky.
Sunday was not nearly as good as Saturday as the flux dropped at bit and the K
rose to 2. But it was still decent. I love being
able to use the Packetcluster in this contest. I had set a goal of 1000 Q's
and 500 mults, but early Sunday I realized I had a
chance to break the USA 20M single band record so I started pushing hard. I
was on a mission and every new multiplier spotted
became a "Search and Destroy" mission. It got to be a LOT of fun. There are
only three multipliers I could not get - A61BK, ZC4LI
(pileups too big or just couldn't hear me) and WW2R (in TX, couldn't hear me).
At 1933Z, I broke the USA record but pressed harder
knowing the score will get dinged a bit after log checking. My 3830 post is at:
http://lists.contesting.com/pipermail/3830/2010-February/191934.html
It amazes me that after more than 26 years of RTTY contesting, I still get as
much enjoyment out of it as I do. Man, I just love it
when the band are open!!! There's nothing in the world like it.
So how was YOUR WPX RTTY?
73, Don AA5AU
http://www.aa5au.com
http://www.rttycontesting.com
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