[3830] CQ WW RTTY KI5XP(@W5WMU) SOAB HP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, RTTY

Call: KI5XP
Operator(s): KI5XP
Station: W5WMU

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Lafayette, La
Operating Time (hrs): 44
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Pts   State/Prov  DX   Zones
------------------------------------------
   80:  227   285       47      14    11
   40:  571   972       52      67    24
   20: 1007  1957       55      83    27
   15:  144   318       28      45    20
   10:    9    21        1       5     4
------------------------------------------
Total: 1958  3553      183     512    86  Total Score = 1,719,652

Club: Cajun Contest Club

Comments:

Well, this had to be the toughest contest ever for me.  44 hours is a long time
without sleep, much less when there's no one on the bands to work at 2:30am.

Things just went slow.  Qso's are nearly at the same level as 2 years ago, but
my point totals are nearly 400k less.  I just couldnt seem to find the dx or
the zones.  Runs on 20 lasted only a few minutes, and probably had the rate
meter above 120/hour for only the first 45 minutes or so.  Most of the time I
couldnt believe when I would look up and see it below 60.  By midnight each
night it would be in the 40's and by 2:30 or 3:00am, it was below 20.  15 qso's
an hour is no way to contest.  Its hard to work DX on 80m in La., and once 40
goes, so do the stations.   By Sat. morning, I had the majority of the stations
that I worked on 80, and Sat night, almost all were dupes.  The 3ele arrays on
80 played fine, but just too much static and noise with the rain and storms
that passed through to be viable.   Lost about 2 hours on 40 and 80 during Sat.
night.  Rains came and went all day saturday.

20 meters seemed to take forever to open up each morning.  Friday night it died
about 9:00pm local, that left me with an already chewed up 40 and a noisy 80. 
It didnt reopen until nearly 7:30am the next morning and even then signals were
weak until nearly 9:00am.  

By sometime sunday I scrapped all hopes of a win for either NA or US, and just
tried to get my qso total over 2000 and my 20m total over 1000.  Got the second
one but not the first.  

I finally managed to get one of my Icom's out to the camp.  Decided not to tear
down my station and bring both, so just the Pro2.  I ran one station with the
Icom, the other with Pat's Yaesu 1000D.  In side by side comparisons, the Pro2
absolutely, positively sucked the doors off of the Yaesu 1000D.  If you're
using this antique for RTTY, step up to the 21st century, you wont be sorry. 
Tight band conditions (and yes, yaesu has Inrad Roofing filter installed) are
no comparison.  I ran the RTTY filter starting with TwinBand off and at 350 hz.
 As signals dropped I kicked the TwinBand in, dropped the RF gain back and let
it ride.  On 20, in the crowd, I could drop it down to 250hz and all of my woes
with the IF Shift on the 1000D being off center were gone.  Signals were
absolutely not there unless they parked literally on top of me.  The ability to
tune across the entire subband and have it take more then 1 rotation of the knob
(the yaesu is EXTREMELY too fast for rtty) is just another plus.  No comparison,
the Icom's will return next test.

Thanks all and lets prey to the sun to please give us some spots next year,
else this contest may take a backseat to a missed LSU football game next time
around.  :)


73
Charlie
KI5XP


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