[3830] BARTG WN6K SOAB HP

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                    BARTG HF RTTY Contest

Call: WN6K
Operator(s): WN6K
Station: WN6K

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Vista, CA
Operating Time (hrs): 25:26

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Countries  Call Areas
-----------------------------------
   80:   21       4          7
   40:  195      12         21
   20:  195      14         22
   15:  164      18         23
   10:   60      14         15
-----------------------------------
Total:  635      62         88  Continents = 6  Total Score = 570,600

Club: Southern California Contest Club

Comments:

Opened a Notepad and did some random notes throughout the Sunday afternoon...

No African stations CME @0600UTC (17th) sure did not help with the poor
conditions

40 was so poor to Asia (left a lot of JA mults under the table)

By Sunday morning sunrise not a SINGLE VK (and they are valuable mults in the
CallArea 0-9 column - Yikes!)

Improvement on last year's score was great but only done by sheer persistence
(BIC time) and since the XYL was off to a wedding in IN, I had nothing to do 
but RTTY and entertain the cats (oh and supervise the Painters working on the
outside of Casa de WN6K)

Lots of the JA signals on 40m on Sunday morning were mere traces on the MMTTY
Scope window...they were there and it was WORK figuring out who they were and
thanks to those ever patient JAs who I did pull for hanging in there.

Had loads of time to clean out the incoming 3830 mailbox posts for contests
that I was not in....oh now i see - the WORLD was Sprinting or RU DXing...maybe
they knew something that we did not. 

When things are 'slow' in contests, I am known locally to read a book or two -
but could NOT do that as I was intent on catching EVEN the slightest of hint of
a "diddle" out there.

The trouble with a slow contest and a full Grande Coffee from $tarbuck$ - you
drink all the coffee in 2 minutes and only have 2 Qs to show for it in the
log.

Rules in BARTG don't have power limits so we LP types are in the fray so only
trying to beat last year's score was the motivator.  FT-5000 goes to 200 out so
that is where it got set (as opposed to my usual 100/150 depending on contest
rules) which helped a bit in these poorer conditions... but not much.

Major problem of FT-5000? Hears way better than I can be heard...LOL

Signals on 20 on Sunday morning when it was time to band switch were VERY
fluttery polar which is NOT a great help on diddle mode.

Nothing like a CME to force you to get your 20m totals up...

Used the 800Hz setting to get idea of how band was around me and when it got
more crowded I'd flip to 500Hz.

No matter what you need - a pit stop, more coffee,or just a plain old stretch -
NOTHING will get you out of your chair once you have a good RTTY freq.
established.

Needed ANY African and finally late Sunday, ZS6WB came through on 20 for a
double mult.

Experimented with %L and Push - don't make loud enough noise here so 'pileups'
are not much of a problem so "pushing" may not be all that useful.

Funny comment by a submitter that he was impressed with the newbies using 'nice
short exchanges' - well in this weekend"s very eratic solar conditions, I 
found the 'short exchanges' to be irritating as they required a fill from THIS
QTH because they were so weak, fluttery or whatever that they were wiped out...
and repeats are far more longer than doing it longer in the first place.  Its
RTTY - it takes a while to diddle.

I guess out of habit, folks are submitting to 3830 log reports that show SOAB
LP or HP - there are no such categories.

Yep towards the end here, I was to give out #599 and sure enough, it required a
repeat even THOUGH I had prefixed it with "NR" 599 599 <time>

Was sure glad to get to #600 and at this writing I am an hour and 14 minutes
left so I am sure I won't have trouble with #1,599 in this one.

They have a 5 min. rule when you change bands so there is not much chance of
'moving' a mult here in this contest although moving and finding a spot in 
RTTY is pretty difficult to say the least. (Meet me 50kHz above the mob
please.) And if you do move, it takes 5 min. to find someone you have NOT 
already worked on that band or to find a spot to park it and call CQ so guess
the rule is not all that harsh.

Very slow in this last hour since most of the folk have done their 6 or 12 hour
stints and only we sore-bottom-feeders are left to ensure that our digital 
clocks were synchronized accurately.

But wait there's more - My last QSO was IW1QN for a mult on 40m - take all this
griping back - it was FUN!

That's all she wrote folks!

WN6K, Paul  (SOAB 200w)


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