[3830] BARTG AB1J SOAB LP

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                    BARTG HF RTTY Contest

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

Class: SOAB LP
QTH: Waltham, MA
Operating Time (hrs): 30

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Countries  Call Areas
-----------------------------------
   80:                        
   40:   76      12         13
   20:  151      33         13
   15:  189      47         13
   10:   97      35          7
-----------------------------------
Total:  513     127         46  Continents = 6  Total Score = 532,494

Club: 

Comments:

This is a second tier contest that should be right up there with the big RTTY
events, but isn't.  What it has going for it are the Expert/48/30/6 categories,
lots of mults and being at the March equinox.  On the other hand, it is
remarkably user-unfriendly with the 5 minute rule, the 3 hour off minimum, no
low power category  and conflict with the RUDX.  Plus BARTG could drop the 599,
as they do with their Sprint.  This is a contest with a lot of potential if the
sponsors wanted to bump it up a notch or three.

Usually I go light on this contest, but this time I had some station testing to
do and my other weekend plans fell through, so I used up my whole SOAB 30 hours,
although it was more like 22 hours before being inflated by the 3 hour off
rule.

My main concern had to do with running a RCKskimmer in very close quarters. 
After previously trying some other schemes, I put a splitter in the RX antenna
loop on my FT-2K, dividing the signal between the FT-2K and the skimmer TS940S.
 Each signal is down about 3.6 dB, 3 dB due to the split and 0.6 dB from
insertion loss.  Most of the time I didn't miss the 3.6 dB, but if I needed it
back I could just pop the RX antenna button OFF to send all the signal to the
FT-2K. I did that maybe 8 times in the contest.  Overall this worked well and
is the best method I've come up with yet.  It's still a compromise situation. 
I think for some contests I might locate the skimmer station elsewhere and
Telnet it back to my QTH.

One guy refused to work me.  We had a previous busted QSO (from my POV) due to
QRM and when I tried again later he completely ignored me.  A similar thing
happened to me in the WPX-RTTY last month.  I wish word would go forth to all
nations and peoples that dupes don't hurt you in the computer age.  Often they 
save you points. 

Another guy worked me but NILed me out of his log because I wasn't sending my
exchange in the correct (according to him) format (Me: 599-123-1234  123-1234  
Him: AB1J NIL SET UR EXCHANGE ACCORDING TO THE RULES).  The funny thing was he
had a macro for this, which means he was locked and loaded and just waiting for
miscreants like me to cross his path.  Then BAM! he got me right between the
eyes.  I guess I made his day but didn't know whether to laugh or cry so I
QSYed.

With the 2 element exchange, I made heavy use of the three decoding windows. On
rare occasions I grabbed the call from one, serial from another and time from
the third.  This amused me for some reason.  I noticed lots of requests for
repeats.

The bands were good, but 40 had a lot of distortion Friday night.  This is
fairly common at my QTH in the evening.  I fight back with 2Tone set to Flutter
and using a wider MMTTY profile based on the Fluttered/Multipath profiles (these
are essentially the same under the hood) plus a lot of AGN AGN?.  I slept during
the night but wish I had stayed up to catch the late night 20m deep Russians in
this contest or the RUDX.

Thanks for the Qs.  I had a good time in spite of myself.  For me the next RTTY
big one is the WW in September.  Exciting times await.

73,
Ken, AB1J

FT2000-N1MM-MMVARI-MMTTY-2TONE-Win8
TS940S-RCKskimmer-XP
20-10 attic dipoles and outdoor stealth 40m coaxial dipole


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