[3830] WAE RTTY AA8IA Single Op LP

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                    WAE DX Contest, RTTY

Call: AA8IA
Operator(s): AA8IA
Station: AA8IA

Class: Single Op LP
QTH: Toronto OH EN90ql
Operating Time (hrs): 8

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Pts  QTCs  Mults
------------------------------
   80:    0    0     0     0
   40:   12   12     0    27
   20:   27   57    30    34
   15:   29   49    20    38
   10:  103  263   160    68
------------------------------
Total:  170  381   210   167  Total Score = 63,627

Club: Mad River Radio Club

Comments:

I had originally planned not to operate in this contest this year, mainly
because I have already achieved any goals that I had for RTTY.  But, a few
things caused me to change my mind.  (1)  It's WAE -- QTCs are fun.   (2)  The
Euro ops are often eager to send/receive QTCs in even the most trying
conditions.   (3)  There is DX to be had.

I played very casually.   Unfortunately, I had forgotten all about the
early/mid afternoon CWOps sessions that I was really excited about on Saturday
because I was having fun on 10m RTTY.

It always takes me a while to get back into understanding the sending/receiving
of QTCs in N1MM.  This is only my second year at it.   The first station that I
accepted QTCs from was DQ4W, who was extremely strong.   Two of the QTCs were
erroring in N1MM and I couldn't manage to log them.  I came to find out later,
after reading on the N1MM Yahoo! group, that I could CTRL-SAVE to force a save
anyway.  One of the errors was on BV100, and the other was on a PA# station I
think.   At any rate, no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get N1MM to
consider the batch sent from DQ4W as error free.   And during the process I
somehow messed up and lost the whole batch of QTCs, although I had aknowledged
with DQ4W that I received them.   I was bummed and tried to recreate the QTCs
in N1MM, but it kept telling me there were duplicates when I could not find the
QTCS anywhere in my log. I am sure I was just misunderstanding what N1MM was
trying to tell me.   I found it nearly impossible to copy the data from the
MTTY screen to save it and recreate the log entries later.  [As it turns out
you can set MTTY to log to file, which I did after the fact].  So I was feeling
pretty defeated and upset with myself that I couldn't manage to get the first
batch of QTCs logged.

I moved on.  I had fun, mostly on 10m.   On Sunday I worked PI4W for some QTCs
and couldn't get a clean copy on QTC 9/10.  While asking for a repeat, suddenly
I see that the QTCs I had logged changed to a completely different set of QTCs
that I didn't type in.  (thinking about it now, I bet somehow i saved the QTCs
that I received and then hit CTRL-Z again and had the sending screen up, not
realizing it).  PI4W was _extremely_ patient.  PI4W went as far as to tell me
it's supposed to be fun and not to worry about it.  During the contest
he/she/they were telling me how to go back later in N1MM and fix things.  It
was great to see the was somebody trying to do well in a contest but who was
still willing to be polite and patient and help me fix things.  A big thanks to
them.

Near the tail end I worked another station an was attempting to send them QTCs,
but for some reason all of the sudden N1MM wasn't adding a LF/CR on the end of
each row of QTCs.  They were all jumbled together and not copyable on the DX
end.  They asked me to try again and the same thing happened.   I apologized
and then said I could recieve their QTCs if they had any.  They did, and they
successfully sent me a batch of 10.  So in the end nothing was lost except a
little time.   I didn't bother trying to send another batch of QTCs to anyone
because I didn't want the same thing to happen again.  I ended up having 100
QTCs left to send but couldnt find anyone to send them to that I hadn't already
worked.  My apologies to those whose time I wasted.

I finished up an hour or two before the end.  I had a great time.   Thanks to
DARC for putting on such a fun contest.   I'll actually go so far as to say
that the WAE RTTY and CW contests are the best contests.

Thanks to all of the ops who worked me, and especially those who had to waste
time when things were broke on my end.


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