[3830] BARTG Sprint VE3IAY Single Op LP

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                    BARTG RTTY Sprint

Call: VE3IAY
Operator(s): VE3IAY
Station: VE3IAY

Class: Single Op LP
QTH: ON
Operating Time (hrs): 10.5

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Pts
-----------------
   80:   27   27
   40:   26   26
   20:   67   66
   15:   67   67
   10:   20   20
-----------------
Total:  207  206  Mults = 52  Total Score = 64,272

Club: Contest Club Ontario

Comments:

I couldn't put in a full-time effort, but I decided to use the time available to
do a comparison of two sound-card programs: MixW and MMTTY. I ran MixW in the
contest, with MMTTY in a second computer fed with the same audio signal. I also
did a bit of receive-only testing with the software swapped between computers or
the same program in both machines. Both computers run Win98se (one is a 500 MHz,
the other a 233 MHz CPU), and both have ISA SB16 sound cards.

The overall differences seemed to be small. Although sometimes one program would
copy something when the other didn't, and vice versa, I don't think there was
ever a case where I could have copied well enough to complete a QSO with one but
not the other. In fact, I could make a greater difference to the copy by fooling
around with the sound card audio level settings than by switching from one
program to the other. Maybe next time I'll try recording the data from both
programs to see if I can detect any clear trends.

As for the contest: not much DX worked here, but I did manage to catch all 6
continents on 10m (JY9NX and FR5GS were my first two on 10, but pickings were
pretty slim after that). I managed to get a CQ run going for a while on 20m - 19
QSOs in 38 minutes (not exactly breathless excitement!), till I was called away
to the telephone.

On transmit I was having weird problems (using AFSK). There seems to be a very
low frequency oscillation in my TS-850. When I started the contest, the ALC
voltage would repeatedly leap up very rapidly and then decay more slowly back to
zero. Correspondingly, I could hear the audio level from the radio's monitor
drop, the current from the power supply would drop, and the output power would
drop to perhaps 60% of full output momentarily, all consistent with the ALC
variations. The decay back to normal took maybe half a second. The frequency of
the oscillation varied. At first it was almost once a second, then as the day
wore on it slowed down till it got to be around once every ten seconds, but it
got somewhat more rapid again when I came back the next morning (sensitive to
the temperature inside the radio maybe?). It happened on all bands. Does anyone
know what this is and how to fix it?


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