[3830] NAQP RTTY W0YK Single Op LP

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                    North American QSO Party, RTTY

Call: W0YK
Operator(s): W0YK
Station: W0YK

Class: Single Op LP
QTH: 
Operating Time (hrs): 10
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
   80:   83    26
   40:  137    39
   20:  283    50
   15:   39    18
   10:    2     1
-------------------
Total:  544   134  Total Score = 72,896

Club: Northern California Contest Club

Team: Team K3

Comments:

Wasn't that solar wind dandy?  Seemed like maybe ten hours off-time and two
hours on-time would have worked better.  I could copy more than I could be
heard, particularly to the East Coast.  Mid-day, I heard W4NZ running stations
on 15, while I struggled to make 39 total contacts on that band.  Even though
Ted had a respectable signal out here, I could not get through to him on 15. 
This is one of the few contests that I didn't work AA5AU on 80-15.  I heard
other stations working Don on 15 and 20 early in the day, but I had no copy. 
Later we worked on 20 and also wound up calling CQ on top of each other on both
20 and 40 (but I couldn't get through to him for a QSO!).  There was a lot of
this going on all day long because there just wasn't solid propagation around
the country.  15 would all but die and then suddenly for 3-4 minutes the East
Coast would come booming in, all to die again.

I swapped in a Beta-Test Elecraft K3 for one of the ProIII's and it worked
great, holding its own against the ProIII.  My only complaint is that it
couldn't fix the propagation.  Guess we'll have to wait for the K4.  Will make
a separate report tomorrow to the RTTY and Elecraft reflectors on the gory
details.  It turned out that the K3 made all the 20 and 80 meter QSOs.  That
way I had the ProIII band-scope to make quick checks on 10 and 15 during the
day.

Team K3 had three of us using K3's (AB7R, N6XI and W0YK), one K2 (K6DGW) and
I'm not sure what N6EE operated with today.  I hope to try two K3's in the
October RTTY Sprint.

I ran both MMTTY and a DXP38 on both radios.  I was surprised how many times
the DXP38 copied clearly when MMTTY had gibberish.  This is not the usual
behavior, so there must have been something about the propagation today that
the DXP38 could deal with better. 

I took three 30 minute breaks and stopped at 0530Z.  My third break was
determined when the main 12VDC supply failed and both radios plus all 12 volt
equipment on the operating table went dark.  Swapped in an even larger supply
and kept going.

Thanks to all who moved bands for me.  And, of course, thanks for the QSOs. 
This will be more fun in the coming years.

73,
Ed


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