[3830] WAE RTTY 8P2K(8P6SH) Single Op LP

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                    WAE DX Contest, RTTY

Call: 8P2K
Operator(s): 8P6SH
Station: 8P2K

Class: Single Op LP
QTH: 8P
Operating Time (hrs): 35
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Pts   QTCs  Mults
-------------------------------
   80:   67    67     0   116
   40:  318   318   231   186
   20:  380   380   246   150
   15:  348   348   538   114
   10:  103   103    30    48
-------------------------------
Total: 1216  1216  1045   614  Total Score = 1,388,254

Club: 

Comments:

Warning - Comments are lengthy --

I am going to start my comments with a suggestion to the contest sponsors to
consider allowing the passing of QTC traffic to anyone outside you multiplier
area for RTTY rather than outside your continent. I will elaborate on it more
substantially, but it would remove any geographical advantage for non-EU's and
promote more use of the QTC which is absolutely brilliant and unique as far as
contests are concerned. 

I had decided this would be a very serious effort, after pulling down the
station to help with 8P9R multi-multi effort a couple weeks ago during the CQWW
SSB contest. In the rebuilding, we made use of a couple stackmatches, to provide
direction-switching and stacking on 20m, and for the 40m and 80m antennas.

After reviewing last year's and several year's results, I decided on a goal of 2
million points, for which I needed 1300Q's, 2000 QTC's and 600 mults. The final
result shows that I fell short of my QSO plan by 84 Q's and only achieved about
half of the planned'd QTC's. In contrast. I was able to exceed the plan on
multipliers, due in part to moving stations from band to band and also better
than anticipated conditions on 10m and 80m.

My plan was to use a very aggressive SO2R strategy to not just move mults, but
since I would be a mult to everyone, to actually move stations for QSO value. I
counted about 50 successful attempts at moving stations from band to band and a
total of 12 stations worked on all bands. These stations were VE1OP, VE3GSI,
VA3DX, W3PT, W3LL, PY2NY, AI9T, W4ZE/3, K9MUG/4, WB2RHM/4, K8UT and N2BJ. Many
others were missing either a 10m or 80m contact for the clean sweep.

When I reviewed the results, I concluded that there was a real possibility of
breaking the 1 million point barrier, and even to 1.5 million points, based on
my recent LP experiences. The keys would be performance on 40m and also on 15m,
along with getting everthing possible out of 10m and getting as many mults on
80m, which is really the easiest way to accumulate mults quickly. As it turned
out, by using clear frequencies on 40m, and sticking it out, we broke through
the 300Q barrier there, but we were short on the 15m total by about 150 Q's. 

My biggest frustration was the issue of QTC's. I guess I have a lot of respect
for ZX2B (I believe PY2NYL is the op.) who is able to consistently geherate a
very very high QTC count. He has a geographical advantage, since he can exchange
QTC traffic with both NA and EU, which generally will have very strong signals.
With 8P being in NA, my main QTC sources are SA and EU. There isn't high
activity in SA, so that leaves EU, which means I have about half the QTC sources
he has. The other issue is the very large number of stations that were not
either taking or sending QTC's. I asked nearly every non-NA QSO for QTC's once
the signal was good and I only got 68 stations to send (7 non-EU) and 38 to send
QTC's to, of which just two were in SA (Brazil). This may be an area where the
rules could be reconsidered for RTTY - allowing QTC traffic outside your
multiplier area - That is - if you're a W1, QTC's could be exchanged with anyone
outside the W1 call-area, if you're ZX2B, you could exchange QTC's with anyone
outside PY2 and if you're G0AAA, anyone outside of G would be valid for QTC's.
That might be worth trying, especially now that trans-atlantic openings are few
and tough to work. It would also allow JA's to turn in decent scores since they
could exchange traffice between call areas.

My biggest error in this contest was losing an hour to a bad time calculation in
which I woke up a couple hours late on Sunday morning. It meant I had no time to
spare in the event of a really bad band, or to have lunch with the XYL. As a
result, I only logged 12 stations during the 1400Z hour, while helping with
lunch preperation - there are some traditions not worth breaking if you want to
keep an XYL supportive of our crazy hobby.

Overall, the station worked well and the MK5's continue to perform well along
with the great International Radio 250Hz filters and roofing filters which have
been added to both rigs. Writelog continues to work well, and using a single
computer for SO2R seems to be my new preference, after being forced to do so
when I had a laptop die a few moths ago. MMTY with two soundcards (a la WA9ALS)
is working very very well indeed. Still can't figure out duelling CQ's, but
maybe one day. 

A final comment regarding SO2R. Could I have made this score as SO1R -
absolutely not. There is nothing like being able to move stations seamlessly
from band to band, check whether bands are open and even listen to other
competitors without compromising your score. I'd love to pioneer SO3R - but that
would require resources I just don't have. It has set a new bar with regard to
what's possible, and I'm still learning thanks to great ops like AA5AU who
worked me on three bands in about 2 minutes during the contest - 10, 15 and 20.
I still don't know if it should be a seperate category, but it makes it's mark
felt the most in RTTY. I also do SSB SO2R and from Barbados, the second rig is
mainly for working needed mults - but in RTTY, I can really milk the bands with
the two rigs. It does call for practice and patience, but anyone can do it. Most
alreadu have most of the stuff that's necessary.

Congrats to ZX2B who seems to have put in another outstanding effort and to all
the great ops who make it a pleasure to be involved in RTTY contesting.

Here's the station description:

2 FT1000mpMK5's
  Microham Microkeyer
  AMD Athleon 2.3GHz computer w/ 2 soundcards 
  Writelog v10.54c
  2 MMTY instances
  WX0B Six-pak
  F12 C3E tribander (3 feeds)
  F12 C3SS tribander
  F12 XR5 multi-monobander
  Phased F12 Sigma 40XK (40m)
  Phased Butternut HF2V's (80m) 

Regards,

Dean - 8P6SH / 8P2K


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