[3830] RTTY Roundup W6YX M/S HP

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                    ARRL RTTY Roundup

Call: W6YX
Operator(s): N6CCH,N7MH,W6LD,K6TT
Station: W6YX

Class: M/S HP
QTH: CA
Operating Time (hrs): 24

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
   80:  125
   40:  227
   20:  766
   15:  259
   10:     
------------
Total: 1377  State/Prov = 60  Countries = 50  Total Score = 151,470

Club: Northern California Contest Club

Comments:

Thanks to N6DE and ND2T for setting up the station both for their M/S operation
as ND2T and for the W6YX M/S.  We had one run station and one spotting station
for each operation.

We started on 20 meters and never made it to 15 on Saturday since rates on 20
were so good.  For several hours on Saturday afternoon and also for a couple
hours on Sunday afternoon we had both operations running on 20 meters at the
same time.  We also both ran on 40 for part of Saturday evening.

Last year our combined operation did poorly on mults, particularly on EU
country mults since we have limited openings to work into Europe.  We planned
to alternate operating on 20 meters in 20-minute stints during the EU opening
so that both operations had an equal chance at working available mults.   We're
not able to have both stations on 20 at the same time when pointing antennas
toward EU.

We had planned to take 6 hours off between 0800 and 1400 but I thought that
there might be an earlier EU opening at 1300 so I checked the band then and
found I was able to work 6 new EU mults in that hour.  The S&P rate was slow
because the band was only open to a few areas and signals were not strong so
some stations were not able to copy us.

In the 1400 hour the EU signals got weaker and disappeared as we began to hear
east coast US stations.  We were now competing against louder east coast
stations and worked no EU stations in the 1400 hour.  In retrospect I should
have taken this hour off as it was a slow hour and we ended up having to quit
an hour early due to the early start on 20.  The 1400 hour is usually when
European signals get much stronger here, but this didn't happen until shortly
after 1500.

We successfully alternated operating on 20 meters between 1500 and 1700 and
worked mostly the same EU and AF mults.  A few mults that we never worked were
heard calling other stations, a loud OZ4 is one that I recall.  We both tried
calling CT3BD many times but his exchange message that ended with TU resulted
in chaos on the frequency as everyone called him both then and at the actual
end of each QSO.  We had a few EU stations answer our CQs, but I don't remember
working any new EU countries by CQing.

We had a couple hours of good rates on 15 on Sunday but rates were not as good
as what we could do on 20 so we migrated back to 20 and finished there when our
time ran out.

We noticed that a lot of the packet spots were off by around 2 KHz and that we
were frequently spotted 2 KHz below the frequency we were transmitting on. 
Several spotters were making this same mistake, apparently subtracting the mark
offset.  If a spotted station wasn't heard we tuned up 2 KHz to see if the
station was there instead.


73,
-Mike, N7MH


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