How was my WPX RTTY? In a word-FANTASTIC!
I have been slowly working towards SO2R RTTY. Last year I was fortunate
enough to end up in the top ten in this contest, using only 1 radio. I have
now made the leap into SO2R. I still have ways to go, but this is a blast. I
set 2 goals before this contest started. I wanted to make over 1,000
contacts and score over 1 million points, both firsts for me. I exceeded
both of those goals.
Friday evening, my rotor quit working. Luckily it was pointing towards
Europe at the time. I was unable to turn the antenna for the rest of the
contest. My second radio is using a 43 foot vertical as it's only antenna.
How does it work- Better than I could have imagined. There were very few
stations I could not work. I have not installed band pass filters yet, so I
have some interference between the 2 radios, especially when one is on 20
and the other on 40, so I am somewhat limited there. All in all, I am
thrilled with the results, and what a blast to operate!
For those of you out there who think you have to have mutiple towers and
stacked Yagis to contest, you don't. You won't win the big contests, but you
can be competitive and have a ton of fun! I have only done 3 contests now
with the SO2R. the results? 2nd place low power in the TARA RTTY Melee, XE
RTTY was just a shakedown for the WPX RTTY, and this contest, the results
have yet to be seen.
Were it not for AA5AU's website and help via E Mail, I'm not sure I would
have ever gotten on RTTY and into SO2R.
My station consists of:
Radio 1- Ten Tec Orion 1.372 firmware
Mosley PRO 67 C-3 at 58 feet
80 and 160 dipoles
Band switching is done with Top Ten Devices Orion band decoder and 6 way
switch
Radio 2-Ten Tec Omni 6 Option 3
DX Engineering 43 foot vertical fed by an LDG AT 200 Pro Autotuner
All with 100 watts out, homebrew PTT and FSK interfaces.
Top Ten Devices DX Doubler
N1MM Logger software using MMTTY on both radios
Don
NT0F
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