[RTTY] W6YX NAQP RTTY M/2

[Dean Wood]

NAQP RTTY 2001
Call: W6YX
Name: Leland
Category: M/2
Operators: K6ENT, N6DE


BAND       QSOs      Mults
80m         15          8
40m         98         38
20m        190         50
15m        169         44
10m         20          9
---------------------------------------
TOTAL      492        149

73,308 total points


Station 1:
Yaesu FT1000MP, Hal DXP38, Writelog
Station 2:
Icom 761, Rigblaster, Writelog using Rttyrite internal decoder

Soapbox:

Well, that was fun!  This was primarily a Field Day style effort.
Kent K6ENT and I did not know if we would participate at all until
a couple days before the contest.  Friday night, we brought
Kent's DXP38, laptops, and software to the Stanford club station,
and stayed until 1am getting everything set up!  Our goal for
the contest was to get two stations on the air for all 12 hours
and have some fun.  We also used it as an RTTY contesting
demo for the club, trying to drum up support for RTTY equipment
in the shack instead of always bringing up Kent's stuff every
contest.

The DXP38 was easy to set up in FSK with Writelog and the
FT1000MP.  We just had to remember that "normal" FSK mode
on the 1000MP produces reversed tones, so we adjusted
the Writelog configuration accordingly.  The challenge was
setting up Writelog/Rttyrite/Rigblaster/IC 761/laptop audio levels
on AFSK for the first time.  We got it all working, but had to run
the IC 761 in LSB mode using the wide SSB filters for the entire contest.
It was an interesting experience, and one I would like to avoid
in future RTTY contests!  I thought Rttyrite performed well.

The non disturbed solar conditions compared to last year
allowed us to make nearly 200 additional QSOs and more
than double our total score.  We were happy with our QSO totals
and multipliers on 15m and 20m.  80m was a struggle once again.

The propagation on 15m was wild, as it seemed to stay long
throughout the afternoon.  We made our first European contact
at 1824Z with DJ8YQ.  ON4AME showed us the path was still
open at 2313Z by calling in with a great signal!  We made
24 EU contacts on 15m.  Not bad from the west coast
running 100W during a North American RTTY contest!
For a while it seemed that we could make JA and EU
QSOs while the W4s calling us were significantly weaker
than the DX!  Apologies to SP3FR who called us on 15m, but
we just could not pull out his name.

We started on 10m again this year, and just could not
seem to stir up any activity.  We went back to 10m at 22Z
and found the band was open to the east coast, South America,
and the Pacific.  We even got VK4WPX!  10m was open,
but there was not much activity whenever we checked.

We made a concerted effort to turn our beams toward
JA/VK/Pacific, particularly on 15m.  We made 5 JA QSOs
in total, and one with Taiwan (BV2WM).  Thanks to AH6OZ
and NH6XM for all the Hawaiian contacts.

Thanks to W6EI, WS7I, and K3MM for 5-band sweeps.
During last year's NAQP, AA6TY asked why we did not
use the name Leland!  It was a good suggestion, and
Kent convinced me that we should use it this year.
I was surprised that we did not get more fill requests for
our name.  I wonder how many people understood the
reference!

Kent saw one ugly frequency fight between N0AC and
a Colombian station (I think it was 5K3NA).  It was definitely
disappointing to see the profanity, especially since there was
usually room to move in the bands.  There is no reason for that
kind of behavior on the ham bands.  We also saw the exact
exchange that K9USA described yesterday between him and
a KO4 station, and how Jim tried to describe that people intentionally
use funny names in this contest!

It was good to be able to talk with club members and eat dinner
during the contest!  We had fun chatting with some of our friends
who called in, and we often laughed about everyone's wild names.
Thanks for all the QSOs!

73...
-Dean - N6DE