[3830] CQ WW RTTY K0D(K0RC) SOAB LP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, RTTY

Call: K0D
Operator(s): K0RC
Station: K0RC

Class: SOAB LP
QTH: MN
Operating Time (hrs): 20

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Pts  State/Prov  DX   Zones
-----------------------------------------
   80:   54   65       28       4     5
   40:  176  265       40      32    18
   20:  270  516       33      60    20
   15:   44  103        6      17    13
   10:    3    7        1       3     3
-----------------------------------------
Total:  547  956      108     116    59  Total Score = 270,548

Club: Minnesota Wireless Association

Comments:

KØD was a special event callsign operated by KØRC from my home QTH in
Minnesota. See www.qrz.com for the special event details. The KØD logs have
been uploaded to both eQSL and LoTW.

I had a great time with this year's CQWW DX RTTY contest. I had anticipated a
strong showing but propagation, weather, and adrenaline failure [read: getting
old] dictated otherwise! Friday night I quit at 11:00 PM and went directly to
bed. Saturday night the aurora was closing in and shut down the bands so I had
a perfect excuse for another good nights sleep. Sunday afternoon thunderstorms,
lightning, and precipitation static were additional excuses for restrained
operating time. I switched to my 40m sloper for some 20m contacts when signals
were drowned out in the roar on the TH-11DX. The SH5 utility shows I was active
about 20 of the 48 hours.

It was "interesting" to operate a world-wide contest using a Special Event
callsign [KØD]. After the contest I checked the DX Summit and I saw the call
was spotted 4 times over the weekend. I thought there would have been more
spots. There’s a lot to be said about the significance of "call recognition"
to help boost your rate. The first day, there were many many repeat requests,
to the point where I created a macro that included "special event callsign". I
don't believe the 1x1 format is very well recognized yet, at least in the
contesting environment. On RTTY, to the unexpecting, it looks like there's a
character missing. A number of stations took it upon themselves to insert the
missing character. For others, it was obvious KØD wasn’t a legitimate
callsign so they weren’t about to put it in their log! Oh well... The second
day this was less of a problem, although several stations gave up a QSO when
they didn't receive all 4 characters for a callsign. I wonder if D4C or G2F
experienced these behaviors?

I worked LU1HF, K1TTT, and HC8N on ten meters. I also heard VE3RM but he
didn’t hear me. Mostly the band was dead, but there were a few times when I
could hear RTTY signals popping in and out of the noise, in very short bursts
like a meteor shower event. It was never enough time for the decoder to lock on
and decode even a single character.

I started the contest Friday evening with a couple dozen contacts on 15m with
South America and Oceania, then dropping down to 20m, 40m, and finally 80m.
After 4 hours I only had 89 contacts in the log… quite disappointing. I
restarted about 6:00 am Saturday morning and my first contact was with Bob,
ZM2A and shortly after Wesley, ZL3TE. I bounced between 40m and 80m while
waiting for 20m to show some life.

I didn’t work any European or African stations on 80 meters but I did print
4o3a, ct9m, i4avg, i4ufh, iq1ry, s54e, and so4m. On 40 meters in the afternoon
I had to wait several hours before the reciprocal path opened up to Europe.
It’s the old phenomenon of receiving incredibly strong signals from the east
before dusk. I see others wrote about this in their soapbox comments.

I was running SOLP Unassisted and never got my rate above 100 until the last 45
minutes of the contest. I enjoyed this contest, even at the forced slow pace,
but like everyone else I’m looking forward to starting a DX contest on 10m
working Asia for the first two hours!

Thanks for the Q’s, thanks for participating in my “100th Anniversary
Special Event”, and thanks for the sponsors for supporting this event.

73 de Bob – KØRC in MN


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