[3830] RTTY WPX F6IRF SOAB LP

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                    CQ/RJ WW RTTY WPX Contest

Call: F6IRF
Operator(s): F6IRF
Station: F6IRF

Class: SOAB LP
QTH: JN35AU
Operating Time (hrs): 30

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Pts
-----------------
   80:  200   794
   40:  175   736
   20:  165   339
   15:  220   523
   10:   65   180
-----------------
Total:  825  2572  Prefixes = 346  Total Score = 889,912

Club: 

Comments:

Rig: IC706 barefoot, with 500hz filter and addtional fan- 50W 
HB inv-V 30/40/80 coax-trap dipole @17m, OPT6-3M tribander @12m (fixed AZ 335) ,
R7 vertical @6m.

My first "full time"  SO attempt in a RTTY contest. Can't say "serious attempt"
because with the rotator still out of order, no PA to get to the LP-limit, and
an ordinary F6 pfx, I could not really expect to be competitive. However, taking
into account this, it worked better than expected for my "small domestic"
station.
The diversity reception, with mixW and MMTTY running on 2 machines did a fine
job... Had noticed during the XE-test, that this was a very good solution as the
2 decoders cope differently with QRM/QRN/flutter/echo.  I like mixW especialy
for S&P; with the call "stickers" at the bottom of the "advanced" waterfall and
the multiple decoders, you can make sure very quickly that you have worked every
"runner" on a band, and  therefore save precious time for your own calling
periods. MMTTY running with "free shift" is really a killer for low s/n
stations, fluttered signals, for stations that use strange FSK shifts, or have
strong intermod - I would have lost a lot of time getting stations to repeat,
without this setup. 
The fan added on the top of the 706 allowed long calling periods @50W without
problems.
Find the SO-30 hours rule very good, as it makes more important the strategy...
Due to my rotator problem, I gave a preference to low bands, and took periods
off during the "asiatic window" on high bands... for sure doing this, I missed
many AS-PFX's, but anyway, with snow and low temps I could not get the rotator
exchanged, and I had to cope with this. 
In general I find the WPX rules very good, as the band-strategy is a key factor
to collect points and multipliers; of course it would have been better to have a
special prefix, but at the end I don't think that it would have made a big
difference in the final score.  Best hour QSO-rate around 50 on 15m at band
opening with states on sunday, but 40m still gives the best hour Points-rate
(150 saturday morning).
Tried the cluster during a couple of hours, but found it almost useless in this
mode, as you can't know which frequency is spotted - most of the time, I guess
the VFO-freq, but then you have to guess which tones and side-band the spotter
was using... Waste of time, as you can't click on a spot and expect to be on the
multiplier-freq straight ahead... turned it off; the S&P with mixW is far more
efficient than the cluster to find multipliers.
A great weekend - I like TTY contests more and more, probably the only mode
where calling with 50W and be able to keep his running frequency is possible...
Condx far from good, but anyway better that the 2 previous weekends-  
Thanks to everybody for the QSO's.
Patrick


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