[3830] CQ WW RTTY NB1B SOSB/80 HP

[webform at b4h.net]

                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, RTTY

Call: NB1B
Operator(s): NB1B
Station: NB1B

Class: SOSB/80 HP
QTH: MA
Operating Time (hrs): 20

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Pts   State/Prov  DX  Zones
-----------------------------------------
   80:  543  1083      49      53    18
   40:                                 
   20:                                 
   15:                                 
   10:                                 
-----------------------------------------
Total:  543  1083      49      53    18  Total Score = 129,960

Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club

Comments:

Condx on 80M from here seemed to be quite good.  
First Day:   355Qs x 105 mults
Second Day:  188Qs x 15 mults

QSOs
Europe- 241
No Amer- 290
Asia-  5 (4 JAs, A45WD)
So Amer- 2 (YV6BTF, HC8N)
Oceania- 3 (KH7X, ZL2AMI, VK6HD)
Africa- 2- (CT9R, CN8KD)

Somehow, States missed VT, WV, Mt, Wy, ND and a bunch of VEs
Took over 500 QSOs before I finally got a Mn!

VK6HD is almost at the antipode for this station; I have 4 fairly short windows
with which to work him.  I worked him in the JA window at 1020Z Sat; I heard him
LP both afternoons about 2200Z, and he spotted me around 1000Z Sun (from the
OH2W spot search this morning).  

The major hardware change between this year and last was keying the radio in FSK
instead of AFSK.  Much easier to have the full array of filters available to use
in Rx.  Even though I made 543 QSOs, there were a number of times that I
couldn't get MMTTY to decode signals that I thought it should.  If I can easily
discern the mark and space by ear, I think the program should be able to decode
it; there were too many signals that I could hear that wouldn't decode.  I keep
thinking there must be something I need to change- some of the settings,
filters, level inputs, better sound card- to get all the signals.

I'm always searching for that extra dB....

When I arrived at the station about noon local on Friday, the 4-square showed a
high SWR on the NE/SW directions.  As the 4-square is really located in a salt
water marsh, I walked out there- without boots- to see if I could fix it. The
ground was damp, but no standing water. I found one of the connections between
the feedline and the NW vertical had broken, so I walked back to the shack, got
the stuff to fix it, and again walked to the vertical.  The ground was now a
little wet, but I said, heck, I'll only be here a few minutes.  In fixing the
connection, the coax center conductor broke, so now I had to strip the hardline
and prepare another piece of center conductor.  Needless to say, in the 40
minutes it took to do the job, I was standing ankle-deep in salt water! 
Thankfully, the SWR was now 1:1 and the antenna did a great job.

Dennis NB1B


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