[RTTY] BARTG AA5AU SO Expert HP

[Don Hill AA5AU]

                   BARTG Spring RTTY Contest

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

Class: SO Expert HP
QTH: LA
Operating Time (hrs): 30
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Pts   Mults
-------------------------
   80:   24    24    16
   40:   78    78    31
   20:  339   339    79
   15:  403   403    83
   10:  373   373    88
-------------------------
Total: 1217  1217   297  Total Score = 2,166,912

Club: 

Comments:

It was an incredible weekend.  Being on-call at work, I didn't think I'd be able
to put in a full effort. Plus with Ducie Island starting off, I figured I'd
probably join that pileup.  Work calls were unusually heavy this weekend.  So
with a phone stuck to my ear under the headphones I was heavily distracted away
from the test several times.  But band condx were excellent.

For the first time ever, I was high power on both radios as I utilized my new
AL-80B amp that I had purchased for my station at work.  During the previously
week, I had picked up a little faster 333 mhz Pentium II computer and retired my
120 mhz Pentium I.

The contest didn't start out so well.  MMTTY kept locking up on the new
computer, probably from RFI, so I switched to my trusty PK232 and used MMTTY as
receive only.  That worked well.

Once I got that straightened out, things went great.  With 500 watts on both
radios, I was able to get some good action going.  40 and 80 meters were too
noisy to listen to, so I stayed on 20 and 15 for both Friday and Saturday
nights.  15 meters was open EVERYWHERE to nearly 1 a.m. local time.  It was
fantastic and a lot of fun.

10 and 15 meters were great in the mornings with terrific runs on both bands. 
20 meters was so quiet Sunday afternoon, you could hear a mouse fart.  It has
been a long time since I'd heard 20 so good.

I took a couple of poorly chosen rest periods.  Once when Ducie first showed up
on 15 SSB.  I waited for them for over an hour to get to the 5's.  However, when
they finished with the 4's, they went to the 8's - alas.  They were then spotted
on 15 CW.  I never got through to the station on 21022 which may or may not have
been them anyway.  I did work the station on 21020 so I think I have a good
contact.  That made me happy, but I didn't get any rest during my rest period
and stayed up until very early in the morning working 15 and 20 Saturday night. 
I took another 3 hours rest period and decided to get up at 1030Z to work JA, VK
& ZL's on 40M.  However, 40 was still too noisy.  I made the mistake of working
a couple of stateside stations, so I was stuck on the band or take another rest
period.

I decided to go back to bed despite it not actually be a rest period and got up
around 1100Z just in time for 10 and 15 meters to open.

Sunday was a little slow.  But I pressed on.  I took another 3 hour rest period
to watch the NASCAR race and fell asleep.  I awoke just in time to restart the
contest for the final 5 hours.  Things were really slow, but the sleep did me
well.  When I saw that N2WK had nearly caught me in serial numbers, it inspired
me to work hard, which I did.

I saw that I was fast approaching 2M points.  I quickly went to the Internet and
check the records to find both W1ZT's NA Expert and K5DJ's overall NA record
were within reached.  I worked harder.

With an hour to go I had all but given up on the record.  10 and 15 meters went
silent.  40 and 80 were not nearly as noisy as the previous two evenings but
still not great.  I worked a couple new EU mults on 40 and decided to go up into
the US part of the band and call CQ.  I was still missing several USA and VE
mults on 40 meters.  All the mults I needed either came to me or I found them
and moved a couple of stations from 40 to 80.  Found KP2D on 80.  Jumped on
8P6SH when he was spotted on 20 and he asked me to QSY to 80!  Worked him on 80
and he was my last QSO at 0157Z.  Wow...

I did eventually top both Ron and George's records.

This was the best BARTG I've ever operated as Single Op (Expert).  It was a lot
of fun despite all the distractions.  But it sure does get warm in the shack
with 2 amplifiers running!

Thanks to everyone that worked me and made this contest very enjoyable.
73, Don AA5AU
http://www.aa5au.com
http://www.geocities.com/writelog