Very odd indeed about 10 meters. I tried to encourage several of you to try 10 and it never worked. If N6RO and W7RN can't hear each other it must indeed be a dead band. (I'm curious about K6NV as well, I did ask him to move but I don't know that he tried it. I mean, Truckee at least should have been workable!)

I tend to let the bands tell me what to do. I start on the highest bands available - 10, 15, and/or 20 - and stay at it until the rate falls. Fortunately 20 was very strong and kept me at 100+ per hour for over 3 hours. 15 managed only 1/3 of the rate of 20 but provided many needed mults, including some I managed to move there from 20.

How long a break to take is the judgment call, but 40 has been opening very early and I decided to go for it after just an hour. 20 was also still working for another 2 hours and provided more mult moving opportunities. Then 80 opened wide just in time to let me run to the end of my 10 hours.

Speaking of moving mults, being prepared and practiced at it is key, as well as watching the spot in your logger where it tells you that you need them on another band. Obviously running on two bands SO2R gives you a great head start to move one to the other band, but being ready on another available band is best - I was able to get a KH6 to move to 15 because I was prepared to go there even though I was no longer running that band.

"Prepared" means you have a receiver set on a clear frequency in the band you want to have available. Your logger (probably) has the tools to read the frequency of any attached RX and send that as part of a message. I'm only familiar with Writelog but I have to think N1MM can do it too.

My message in Writelog to complete a QSO and request a move looks like this:

%RPSE %ZA.1 TU W7RN CQ %E

 The %Z command tells Writelog to send the frequency of the specified radio. I use one PC per radio and network them, so %ZA.1 says to send the frequency of the the first Entry Window attached to PC A, which in my case is the main VFO from. The decimal point says to send the number at 100Hz resolution - e.g. 14086.1. 

If you do SO2R from one PC the syntax would look like %Z.1 to send the first Entry Window, %Z.2 the second, and so on.

This seems complicated but once you have the right syntax set up it takes care of itself. Note that this also works for CW contests.

The next big RTTY contest happens to be the next NAQP RTTY in July. That should give you plenty of time to get this working. ;)

73 jeff wk6i

--