[RTTY] WA9ALS BARTG SOAB

[WA9ALS - John]

BARTG 2002 HF RTTY

  Band   QSO Area  Cty Cont
   80M     0    0    0
   40M    34   10    4
   20M   248   20   48
   15M   301   23   50
   10M   338   25   47
 Total   921   78  149    6

Mults = 227

Total Score =   1,254,402

Time = 29:56

It might be hard to teach an old dog new tricks, but maybe I'm starting to
get it.  This was a HUGE personal victory for me!  My previous highest Q
total in a RTTY contest (not counting Caicos) was 600-something (once).  I
passed that by Saturday night, and everything on Sunday was just personal
gravy!  There's no substitute for "time in the chair", and this one's no
exception.  I think this was my first major full time effort since Caicos a
year ago, and it was sure worth it!  Various goals presented themselves on
Sunday - 700, then 800.  I didn't think I could make 900, but it turned out
that I had miscalculated my time by 1 hr in my favor, so that last hour
allowed me to make 900.  I had the whole family double checking the math on
the times!  Actually, they were simple:

0202 - 0355
1210 - 0306
1124 - 0031

I have no idea why I achieved the big increase in performance other than a
little more experience.  However, I still made some stupid mistakes.  I
really missed out on mults on 40 and 80M.  Although I checked the US portion
during the evenings, since I didn't find much there, I never bothered to
check the DX segment!!  REALLY STUPID!  I figured there just wasn't much on
the low bands because the high bands were so good!  I went to church on
Sunday and considered it one of those "hour" things.  However, it ended up
being about 2.5 hrs altogether, looking back.  If I had waited another 30
min and taken it as a break, I could have operated 3 hrs longer somewhere.
Although the last 3 hrs wouldn't have made much difference, I could kick
myself for not thinking about that strategy at the time - It would've made a
difference if I had had an extra 3 hrs Saturday night/Sunday morning!  Mults
are soooo important too!  I notice AA5AU made about 30% more Q's but TWICE
my score.  Oh well, I learned.  (Now, if I can just -remember- the lessons
learned in this one by the next time!)

One VK - VK4UC off the back of the yagi - THANK YOU!

Using the PROII and PW-1 together was a joy.  I still can't believe that an
amp can pump out 1000W on RTTY all weekend and the case remain -cool- to the
touch!

I was wired for SO2R with my IC706, but I only made 14 Q's with the second
radio due to the 5-minute band change rule in this contest.  I might as well
have only had the PROII wired because using the 706 meant using 100W and a
vertical whereas simply changing bands on the PRO would've kept the power
and yagi.  (I'm no good at SO2R anyway!)  I used MMTTYx2 for the first time
with 2 soundcards - worked great, but most of the time the 706 was just
turned off as it was no advantage in this one.  Lots of spots on the
clusters helped too.

Thanks for the Q's, especially everyone participating even with limited
efforts - Those stations make the whole thing work!  Great to see both new
and old friends' calls, and hope to see many of these at Dayton!

P.S.  Who said the midwest is a black hole of RF??  ;-))

------------------------------------------------------------
John - WA9ALS - VP5RY (2001)

     email:  wa9als@starband.net
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