[3830] WAE RTTY K7IA Single Op HP

[webform at b41h.net]

                    WAE DX Contest, RTTY

Call: K7IA
Operator(s): K7IA
Station: K7IA

Class: Single Op HP
QTH: New Mexico
Operating Time (hrs): 18:23

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Pts   QTCs  Mults
-------------------------------
   80:   14    14          36
   40:  212   402   190   147
   20:  111   261   150    76
   15:  150   380   230    90
   10:   85   185   100    56
-------------------------------
Total:  572  1242   670   405  Total Score = 503,010

Club: 

Comments:

Great conditions, great antennas, and lots of operators made for a lot of
action.  Unfortunately, radios here weren't the cat's meow--K3 still in the
shop;  Ten Tec Omni-6's RTTY offset fixed at 2125 (mark), a tone I can no
longer hear;, so the ICOM 706 got the nod.  While it functions as an FSK RTTY
(and has low freq tone offset), it isn't really a RTTY rig.  It's RIT knob has
a "clicking" action (keeping it in place during mobile ops), very
unsatisfactory for RTTY tuning (and there is a lot of tuning needed for the
majority of ops!).  

I both started late and quit early on Friday evening.  Sat AM found me kludging
some commands that N1MM could send to the '706 to make VFO-B into a rudimentary
RIT for Run mode (but not S&P).  It worked, but it wasn't like operating a K3!

Here's a RTTY tip badly needed by most operators:  to make parsing incoming
text easier (both by eye and by N1MM, as it attempts to find your callsign),
begin and end EVERY line of macro text you send with a space character.  This
includes your callsign macro.  That means every line of text you send should
begin in the second "clean" column.  The junk characters that invariably appear
in columns 1-3 (due to the soundcard's processing of the audio decay from the
previous transmission) will be separated from your transmission by a leading
space.  My soundcard's favorite junk character is "V."  Thus, for those ops who
send my callsign without a leading space, N1MM usually parses it as "VK7IA," a
very nice mult, indeed, which subsequently junks up the Grab Window.  For those
who transmit their callsigns only twice, with neither a leading nor a trailing
space, N1MM cannot parse out ANY callsign, prompting a request for a repeat.

Get to know this digi mode and its mechanical origin--it has little resemblance
to either a typewriter or a word processor!

Lastly, a little trick I tried for the first time to (help) supress the
aggressiveness of pileup operators who call and call without paying attention
to the flow of an ongoing exchange:  I manually typed "PSE--DX CODE OF
CONDUCT--ONLY <callsign> ONLY <callsign>  TNX"  That silenced the pile, except
for <callsign>!  More than that, the pile let me work all of them, one at a
time, and it proceeded with an unusually great rate.  I now have a mcaro key
programmed with this message.  That it worked is an indicator of the
effectiveness of the outreach and acceptance of the DX Code of Conduct, created
by Randy, W6SJ, and a host of other players.  Significantly, DARC, among other
contesting and DX associations, has embraced and is promoting the Code.  If you
are unfamiliar with it, then please check it out:

  www.dx-code.org

Thanks not only for the QSOs but the QTCs.  Last year, many ops refused them,
but this year, refusal was a rare event.  N1MM Logger makes it unbelievably
simple to increase your point count!  Oh yes, despite N1MM's color code for
callsigns that can accept QTCs, I tried to send more than a second batch of
ten.  To those ops, I apologize and promise to send them next year!


Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/