[3830] CQ WW RTTY AG4W SOAB(A) HP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, RTTY

Call: AG4W
Operator(s): AG4W
Station: AG4W

Class: SOAB(A) HP
QTH: AL
Operating Time (hrs): 41.5

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  State/Prov  DX   Zones
------------------------------------
   80:   97       40      12     8
   40:  322       47      50    20
   20:  368       51      64    25
   15:  505       40      82    27
   10:  232       24      58    21
------------------------------------
Total: 1524      202     266   101  Total Score = 1,813,403

Club: Alabama Contest Group

Comments:

80 meter delta loop. 3 element 40 meter parasitic vertical array, 3 element quad
20-10 meters, FTDX5000, AL-1200, SB220

Very interesting and frustrating contest. Frustrating because the AL-1200
amplifier died 1.5 hours into the contest. Old green(SB-220) was pulled off the
floor and run for the rest of the contest. I was only running 850  watts when
the AL-1200 quit. I noticed that all the winning stations last year were SO2R
so I made an attempt at SO2V this year. I had a good time learning to keep the
2 VFOs straight bouncing between them doing search and pounce. 

I was also frustrated by the decoder because it was missing a lot of the first
part of transmissions. I had MMTTY set up for PLL decoding which works great
for weak DX but does mess up the first part of transmissions. I ended the last
12 hours using  2 decoders when I ran stations. Pretty neat. Going to do that
again. Got the best of both worlds. 

I also started the contest unassisted but turned into assisted later because I
left my 2 meter radio on to listen to the local DX repeater spots. I normally
leave it off so I don’t get the spots but was enjoying listening to the local
activity. One of the local guys spotted some good activity on 15 meters that
made me want to change bands. I made the change to assisted about half way thru
the contest and opened up Dxscape which turned into more of a distraction
because very few of the spots were multipliers. I have not figured out how to
get Writelog to see the subreceiver frequency so did not want to confuse things
with having one working and one not working for the log. I was not set up to
click on a spot so was not very competitive for assisted operation. I probably
only got a half dozen multipliers from the assisted spots. I learned that my
new search and pounce approach worked pretty good, but must of liked it to much
since my QSO count is well below last year and did not run stations near as
often. It seemed like I had more trouble getting traction running stations this
year. 

All that said I had a great time and appreciate everyone that called. This is
the one contest I try to put maximum time in the seat. Propagation seemed very
different this year than the last 2 years. It seemed like it should have been
better with the SFI up. My score was off about 10-15 percent over the previous
2 years and I don’t think it was the amplifier.


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