[3830] RTTY Roundup AA5AU Single Op LP

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                    ARRL RTTY Roundup

Call: AA5AU
Operator(s): AA5AU
Station: AA5AU

Class: Single Op LP
QTH: LA
Operating Time (hrs): 24

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
   80:  247
   40:  542
   20:  580
   15:  591
   10:  240
------------
Total: 2200  State/Prov = 59  Countries = 69  Total Score = 281,600

Club: Louisiana Contest Club

Comments:

I had these big plans for SO3R. I have been working on it for months. After a
lot of work, I had the station configured nicely with three radios.  I had a
Dunestar HF triplexer with Dunestar band filters connected to a pair of Kenwood
TS870 transceivers to share my KT34 through my SixPak antenna swtich.  My
SteppIR with 40M add-on would be dedicated to the PRO III.  Everything worked
fine for 8 days leading up to the contest.  Two hours into the contest I
decided the 3rd radio was slowing me down so I turned it off.  Big mistake.  It
never came back on.  So I was back to my normal SO2R setup.  I wasn't happy
about it so I just decided to take it out on the contest.  Good thing.  I
surpassed the 2000 QSO mark with a vengeance and scored 50k higher than my
previous best in 2006.  It's funny because I went back are re-read my 2006
contest notes before the contest and saw that the contest started on January
7th that year.  And it started on January 7th this year.  Not sure if that
means anything... but it did to me because the 2006 contest was an emotional
contest for me - my first after Katrina.

I actually made a few mistakes but they weren't fatal.  I started on 10 and 15
with the 2 main radios.  It was evident that 20 meters, on the 3rd radio was
actually better.  So after two hours I shut the 3rd radio down to put the
SteppIR on 20 with the Icom and the other Kenwood on 15 and that was the
ticket.  It was balls to the wall after that.  And now it's all just a blur.  I
think the biggest contributing factor to the score is that fact that my S&P
buffer was simply: "599 LA LA " and that was it.  If I thought someone had my
call wrong, I put it at the end.  The more S&P than I had hoped but it's hard
to get a run on both radios when running low power.

The low bands were pretty good Saturday night and I was able to keep the rate
up over 100/hr for the first 13.5 hours before I took my break.  I was about to
go QRT for some rest when I decided to go ahead and put the Icom on 20 meters to
have it ready for the morning.  Guess what?  The band was open to Europe!  Ah,
that rare all night opening to EU and they were strong and they heard me with
no problem but there just wasn't enough of them to justify staying there and I
was getting a bit tired.  I did catch ZC4LI for a new multiplier on 20M because
going to bed.

Sunday morning I restarted 30 minutes earlier that I had planned so that meant
I needed to take 30 minutes of additional rest sometime during the day.  I
restarted on 15 and 20 because it was sunrise and 10 had not opened.  After a
little while on 20, I checked ten to find only Ed P49X had the only signal on
the band.  A little while later there were finally signals but the band just
did not open to Europe like I had planned so it was back and forth between 10
and 20 meters on the PRO III until finally ten opened up stateside and Canada. 
The other Kenwood was holding its own with the KT34 on 15 all day with that low
tribander getting the most contacts on any band - 15M.

I tell you, RTTY contesting has come a long way.  The quality of operators
today  is outstanding which makes everything so much more enjoyable because you
can make more contacts and people are just getting it right!  Congrats to all.

My goal before the contest was 2000 contacts and 130 multipliers and to try and
 beat my old score.  Didn't quite make the mult total I wanted but I was close
and there were some nice surprises like 7Z1SJ and E21YDP calling in.  I'm sure
there were others but I don't remember them right now.

This was one for the ages and I'm glad I enjoyed it because even though I don't
like to say "never", this one will be hard to top, ever, for me.  Thanks to
everyone who made this the most fun RTTY contest I've ever operated.  And
thanks to my wife Shay for bringing me food and goodies!

73, Don AA5AU

Radios:
Icom PRO III
Kenwood TS-870 (2)

Antennas:
3 element SteppIR with 40M loop dipole @ 60'
4 element KT-34 tribander @ 40'
80M inverted vee with apex at 55'.

Other stuff:
Dell Dimension desktop PC running XP with WriteLog V11.01F
Dell Inspiron laptop running XP with WriteLog 11.01F
M2 RC2800 rotor controller
Ham IV rotor contoller 
Dunestar HF triplexer
Dunestar 600 band filter (2)
Dunestar individual band filters between triplexer and antenna switch
Array Solutions SixPak 2-radio antenna switch
JPS NIR-12 Dual DSP audio filters
Dunestar 842 2-radio headphone selector
Icom PS-60 power supply
Yaesu FP-757HD power supply
Astron power supply


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