[3830] RTTY Roundup AC0C SO RTTY HP

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Sun Jan 3 20:37:46 EST 2021


                    ARRL RTTY Roundup - 2021

Call: AC0C
Operator(s): AC0C
Station: AC0C

Class: SO RTTY HP
QTH: KS
Operating Time (hrs): 22:50
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  RTTY Qs  Dig Qs
-----------------------
   80:    520      0
   40:    858      0
   20:    808      0
   15:    108      0
   10:      0      0
-----------------------
Total:   2294      0  State/Prov = 57  Countries = 56  Total Score = 259,222

Club: Kansas City Contest Club

Comments:

Very happy to put 2020 behind, but the year of 202 was just not willing going to
go quietly, at least here.  

A nice ice storm rolled in as we celebrated our quiet New Years eve, spreading
the joy of about 1/4" of ice on everything at ground level, apparently more
the higher up in altitude it got.  Not enough to cause worry that the any of the
otherwise well built JK beams would fall from the sky, but certainly enough to
detune things.  I was not worried - at the time - because the forecast was for
mid 30's (F temps) on Saturday and the hope was the ice would be gone by contest
kick off.  ha ha.  That was just not meant to be unfortunately...  

Temps on the first contest day stayed under 30F, so the ice was with me the
entire time.  It was not until a few hours before the end of the contest that
enough of the ice melted that SWR conditions returned to normal.  Fortunately
the lower in height beams were less affected by the ice and I was able to load
the fixed-on-SA beams on 15/20 as they were presenting reasonable loads.  

The 4SQ were happy to take power as well.  The 40m is a serious aluminum affair
and was unaffected physically.  I know from prior ice experience that the 80m
was almost certainly in bad shape - the elements on the 80 are wires suspended
from ropes off the 160m tower and while I could not get back to view it, they
were most certainly sagging badly and very detuned.  The magic of the 4SQ is
that you get a nice SWR load - even if all you are doing is warming up the dump
load!  The dump loads are not metered here so I had no idea what the signal was
like going out on any of these bands.  Had quite a lot more trouble with guys
firing up on top of me than what I normally encounter, so if that's an
indication, the signal here must have been on the weaker side!  

On RX, the bands generally sounded OK although especially on 20m, the band noise
was up and down through the contest with what I suspect was an ice-related
lifting of the noise floor as much as 20 db at times.

Struggled a bit with some logger trouble which helped break up the struggles
against the iced antennas.  Fortunately good performance by the recently arrived
Flex PGXL amp was a high spot - it's new to the shack here replacing the
otherwise fine performing Elecraft.  I was careful to pick a nice load for the
Flex as it has no tuner.  It's not setup for So2r yet (which was the reason for
the amp change) but the old homebrew tube amp was perfectly happy to drive any
of the loads, with or without ice.  

Thanks to everyone who worked me, and wishing everyone a much better year than
2020 turned out to be!  And fingers crossed that we have an ice-free CQ 160 and
WPX RTTY in the next couple of months.

73/jeff/ac0c
www.ac0c.com


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