Hind sight is 20-20, of course, but a SB 15 would have been a lot of fun
this weekend. It looks like more people chose 20 over 15, probably based on
the past few years experience. But, take a look at the multiband entries,
and you'll find 15 QSO totals larger than 20 in many cases. In my case,
running on 20 and 15 simultaneously plus a bit of 20 and 40 together, I had
974 on 15 vs. 787 on 20. That tells the story, which I think is more due to
activity than propagation. That is, with 15 open so nicely, the casual ops
(90% of total participation) were on 15 more than 20. Look at band totals
on 10 and 15 back at the solar max ... it is incredible. In those years, a
lot of QSOs are with 5 watt mobile 10 (or 15) meter stations in downtown
Tokyo or Melbourne! 15 was open to JA two hours after local sunset here and
that is a long haul path. That has been rare for the past several years but
commonplace at the solar cycle peak.
In WPX, your rate on 20 has to be 2x your 40 rate to justify being there
when 40 is open. Of course, with SO2R you need to trade 20 off with 80
rates during the nighttime hours. And, then once you get SO3R perfected you
can run on 20/40/80 all night long!
Ed - P49X (W0YK)
-----------------------------
Muns Vineyard
www.munsvineyard.com
www.facebook.com/munsvineyard
> -----Original Message-----
> From: rtty-bounces@contesting.com
> [mailto:rtty-bounces@contesting.com] On Behalf Of Don Hill AA5AU
> Sent: Monday, February 15, 2010 1:30 AM
> To: rtty@contesting.com
> Subject: [RTTY] How was your WPX RTTY?
>
> 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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