[3830] CQ WW RTTY W4AAA(KK9A) SOSB/20 HP

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Thu Oct 1 23:51:50 EDT 2015


                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, RTTY

Call: W4AAA
Operator(s): KK9A
Station: KK9A

Class: SOSB/20 HP
QTH: North Carolina
Operating Time (hrs): 36

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  State/Prov  DX  Zones
-----------------------------------
   80:                           
   40:                           
   20: 1696      57      99    33
   15:                           
   10:                           
-----------------------------------
Total: 1696      57      99    33  Total Score = 784,917

Club: 

Comments:

I recently finished building a second 10m beam and I just purchased a new
transceiver. I was anxious to try both of these out in the CQWW RTTY contest. I
spent the prior weekend learning how to use my new Elecraft K3S and interfacing
it with my RTTY accessories. Conditions at that time were horrible. I never
even heard a signal on 10m or 15m so I decided then to operate 20m S.B. for
this contest. I was able to get the sub receiver also decoding, but I ran out
of time to set it up 100%. So I will call my setup SO1-1/2V �" Single Op,
one and one half VFOs since I could not automatically transmit on the sub
receiver and it lacked good RTTY filtering. I installed 2Tone and  would have
liked to make other computer upgrades, but I did not have time. I had a busy
work week and unfortunately a root canal on Thursday night so I was really
tired before the start. I finished my station setup about an hour before the
contest and I made my very first RTTY QSO on the new radio which luckily worked
fine. Conditions were noticeably better than earlier in the week but I was now
committed to my 20m single band plan. It was already raining as predicted for
the entire weekend and I had concerns about thunderstorms and bad rain static
stopping my operation. At 0000 I started calling CQ and at first I had trouble
decoding some stations. I opened up the K3S RX filter one notch and the new
radio and software were decoding perfectly. This was my first time running
2Tone on my main computer I found it to be a fantastic RTTY decoder. I had been
QRT since February and it was nice to see that the antennas and rotators were
still working perfectly. 20m was in much better shape than I anticipated, the
band was often open to many continents at the same time.  On Saturday morning I
had some very high rates into Europe and things were going well until I noticed
that the shack was getting very warm. I ran through the house to grab a couple
of fans and continued running the pileup. It kept getting warmer and warmer and
finally I had to take a break and investigate the problem. The A/C was turned on
but the condenser fan outside was not running. Since I have another identical
unit for a different section of the house, I made a quick part swap and got the
radio room A/C running again. I had a quick lunch and got back on the air. The
shack slowly started to cool and I was again having fun on RTTY.  At some point
I noticed that my amplifier output was less than 10 watts.  For some reason my
K3S output though the 100 watt module was almost zero at times.  I found a
temporary solution and Elecraft later sent me calibration instructions that
hopefully will correct the problem. On the second day conditions improved even
more and the band never closed at night. I wish that I had woken up earlier as
the band was wide open to EU when I started on Sunday morning. As the second
day progressed everyone went to 15m and my rates became agonizingly slow. I
really used the second VFO during these slow times to find anyone new to work. 
I was also looking hard for mults trying to break 100 countries, but I never
quite found enough. I would like to thank everyone for the QSOs. Please QSL via
WD9DZV. I hope to work everyone in CQWW Phone, I will be in Aruba using the
callsign P40A.

73,
John KK9A �" W4AAA
http://www.w4aaa.com


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