[RTTY] ANARTS AA5AU SO HP

[Don Hill AA5AU]

                   ANARTS WW RTTY Contest

Call: AA5AU
Operator(s): AA5AU
Station: AA5AU

Class: SOST HP
QTH: LA
Operating Time (hrs): 18
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Pts   Mults
-------------------------
   80:    0     0     0
   40:   15   165    12
   20:  261  4110    66
   15:  261  4419    73
   10:   45   808    28
-------------------------
Total:  582  9502   179  Continents = 6  Total Score = 10,207,148

Club: 

Comments:

The contest was much more fun than I'd anticipated.  Band condx Friday night and
Saturday were excellent.  15 stayed open past midnight local time.  I decided to
spend more time in the contest than I had planned and stayed active as much as
possible Saturday stopping only to sleep Friday night and spend a few hours
cutting the grass and doing yard work.  Plus tending to a few work calls.

As happens a lot, Sunday was not very good.  Thunderstorms caused me to shut
down several times throughout the weekend, but we needed the rain which we
got Sunday.  Saturday's weather was strange.  It was overcast with dark clouds,
lots of thunder and some lightning, but no rain.  I took advantage of the cooler
than normal temperatures to do the yard work.

The weekend was not without problems.  I kept having radio problems.
One of my TS870's started failing.  Everything would be distorted on both
transmit and receive.  I'd shut it off for a while and it would start working
again.  It did this 3 times on Sunday so I finally shut it off for good.

Biggest surprise was being called by BQ9P on Saturday.  It was my friend, Gary
W5FI.  I kept seeing the call in the midst of a EU pileup I was working and
finally had to turn the beam to Asia to find out if it was really him. It
was.

Nice to see Ekki having fun as MJ/DF4OR.  He was doing a great job.  Other
notable contacts were UP6P, 4K6DI, VK4WPX, VK4UC, VK2KM, VK2SG, VK6GOM,
JG1GGU/JD1 and BX4AF.  Found CN8LI on 10 meters for my last continent and ended
up working him on 3 bands.  ZP6DN was a nice surprise as was VP5/KW4DA and
PY0FF.

The bands were pretty strange.  10 was not very good but there was a short
opening to EU on Saturday.  15 was decent on Saturday and poor on Sunday, but
Asia opened at the end of the contest.  20 was pretty good.  When 10 couldn't
produce, I went to 20 and found JA's mid-morning local time which is unusual. 
EU came in earlier than expected in my afternoon and was surprised to catch JT1BI
CQ'ing in the late morning.  I knew he wasn't in the contest but I wanted to work
him anyway, but he didn't hear me.

I didn't plan on spending much time in ANARTS this year, but I'm glad I did.  I had
a lot of fun and it was great to see the usual RTTY crowd.

73, Don AA5AU
http://www.aa5au.com
http://www.geocities.com/writelog