[3830] P40B SOAB ARRL RTTY Roundup

[Jacobo Oduber P43P]

Lots of fun with this contest and 1st try at running a RTTY contest with
Writelog.

Numbers as follows:

            QSO  STA  PROV  DX
80m        7        1      0      0
40m        65      0      0     10
20m        328    4      3     13
15m        392    26    3    17
10m        361    13    3    20
--------------------------------
 Total    1153    44    9     60   for 130,289 points


Hours worked: 23hours
Equipment: FT1000MP, ACOM 2000A, Writelog 10.13g, Soundblaster, varios Force
12 antennas.

MULTIPLIERS
States worked:
CT   MA   ME   NH   RI   VT   NJ   NY   MD   PA   AL   FL   GA   KY   NC
SC   TN   VA   AR   LA
MS   OK   TX   CA   AZ   ID   MT   NV   OR   WA   WY   MI   OH   WV   IL
IN   WI   CO   IA   KS
MN   MO   NE   SD

Provinces worked:
NF NB   NS   QC   ON   MB   SK   AB   BC

DX:
3B8   4X    5H    8P    9A    9V    A7    CE    CP    CT    DL    EA    EA8
EI    ER    ES    EU    F     G     GI
GM    GU    GW    HA    HB    HK    I     IS    JA    KH6   KL    KP2   LA
LU    LY    LZ    OE    OH    OK    OM
ON    P4    PA    PY    S5    SM    SP    SV    T9    UA    UA9   UN    UR
VK    VP8/h YB    YO    YU    YV    ZS

Only station worked on 5 bands was AE9D!!

Soapbox:

Met Brian (P40X/NX9O) at the Aruba Amateur Club meeting just a couple of
days before the contest. Guess he had enough fun last year "windsurfing",
that he scheduled another visit here again for the contest. Thanks for the
P4 Multiplier Brian. ;-)

Because of the problems experienced in the past with crashes running the
WF1B/K6STI software combination, I decided to try out Writelog this time.
Had about 2 days to learn how to work with Writelog and I must say the
software worked very nice overall. No serious bugs and NO CRASHES for once.
Still have to figure out how to get the rtty graphic receiver to display
again once it disapears, but that is just part of the learning process I
guess.

Not having a dedicated RTTY modem ( ** any suggestions on the HF packet
modems will be appreciated! ** ), I ran Writelog using the built-in windows
soundblaster interface on my PC and after about 4 hours of running, I did
have enough problems with picking up calls that I setup a spare laptop to
run K6STI software on a parallel audio output. Between the 2 I never really
had any problems picking up calls anymore, since I always could pickup
something from either screen. Not the best in the world, but it worked. Did
noticed that off-frequency calls were picked up a lot better with K6STI's
software, since especially with the noise on 80 and 40m, I would get better
results not having the AFC feature on in the writelog rtty rx display. Still
need to get some more experience runing with Writelog, even though WF1B is a
lot easier to get to work, so it is still a toss-up which software I will be
using for WPX.

Prep work for WPX: will probably install dedicated RTTY/PSK31 box to see if
that will be better at picking up calls than the soundblaster interface and
start planning on a two radio setup.

For those who need RTTY confirmed for P4, very nice picture QSL cards for
all P40B operations are being handled by Mario, I2MQP.

Thanks to the ARRL for organizing this contest, thanks to all of you that
answered my call and of course also thanks for those calling me through the
pileups and hanging in there.

                 See you all for WPX.

73 de Jacob P43P/P40B

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