[3830] CQ WW RTTY AB1J SOSB(A)/20 LP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, RTTY

Call: AB1J
Operator(s): AB1J
Station: AB1J

Class: SOSB(A)/20 LP
QTH: Waltham MA FN42
Operating Time (hrs): 26

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  State/Prov  DX  Zones
-----------------------------------
   80:                           
   40:                           
   20:  413      42      69    23
   15:                           
   10:                           
-----------------------------------
Total:  413      42      69    23  Total Score = 122,342

Club: 

Comments:

Halfway through this contest marked my 5 year anniversary on RTTY. I've done 5 
1/2 CQ-WW-RTTY contests.  I don't know how I'm going to make up that half 
contest so I can graduate with the rest of the class.

The past two years I've gone back to my home town of Goshen, IN, and operated 
as AB1J/9 from the Goshen ARC station which has a beam on a 100' tower. Mid-
summer this year I blew out a disc in my back, leaving me with quite a hitch in

my get-along.  I couldn't make the trip this time so I operated from my home 
station with its more modest antennas.  At least I didn't have to fiddle with 
turning the beam all the time or having too low an angle of radiation to work 
statesiders.  Every cloud has a silver lining. 

Yeah, right.

I've finally settled on a N1MM screen layout using my laptop plus a outboard 
monitor. It took a long time to find an arrangement that works for me.  I run 
MMVARI plus two read decoders, MMTTY and 2Tone. Everything works fine according

to its own persona.  One thing I've learned is there are no magic secret
decoder rings.  Save your box tops.  The best thing to do is get lots of 
opinions and sort 'em out.  Crowd-sourcing, they call it.

That said, I have tried more read decoders but found it was too much to keep 
track of.  I had sensory overload.  The RTTY windows I use now (11, 13 if 
Assisted) use up all my attentive resources.

Thanks for all the QSOs. This contest is so much fun I'm sure it's illegal in 
some states or local jurisdictions. Or would be if folks knew much about ham 
radio contesting.  When I try to explain it to civilians, I get the most 
mileage by telling them we have CHEATING SCANDALS.  This gets their attention 
even if they still can't conceive of what I'm talking about.

Setup:

Rig: FT-2000/N1MM/MMVARI/MMTTY/2Tone/Win8
Ant: 20m attic dipole I put up there in 1979. Guess it's still OK. Right now I 

     can't climb up there to check on it. Seems to work.  


73,
Kermit (Ken), AB1J


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