[RTTY] GU0SUP SOABLP OK RTTY

[Phil Cooper]

Seasons greetings to one and all!

Conditions were great, which helped a lot, and it was very enjoyable to work
Norman VK6GOM on 10m and 20m.
Some nice short openings to W6/W7 as well, and I even copied Bob VE6YR, but
didn't manage to find him CQ'ing.

I had planned to start at midnight, but felt too tired to do that, so
decided to get up early instead. That didn't work, and it was just past 0700
when I woke up. Got to the shack with a cup of coffee, fired up everything
and got started. After 6 QSO's, I noticed that the IC756Pro was making a
funny sound, the display went dark, and I was only putting out about 10
watts! PANIC set in, and I started to play with the settings, trying to see
if I could isolate anything, then found it did this on all modes, and even
into a dummy load with no ancilliary equipment plugged in. Even more
worrying! I had to nip out to our club, as my IC756 was there, so that was
more time lost. Swapped rigs over, and that did much the same thing! Tried a
different PSU, and still the same!
In the end, I found it was only the power lead that was causing the problem,
so I swapped that and got back into things after losing about 1 hour of
contest time. Sadly, it meant that I lost out on a few 80m contacts at that
point.

Although 10m was open, I couldn't copy any of the OK stations, so didn't
really try hard on that band. 15m was in good shape, with plenty of W6/W7
around, and even a few OK's.
20m seemed good, but now I look at the score sheet, the points are well
down. Looks like 40m was the better band for me, which surprised me, as I
didn't really think I had done much on that band.

There were quite a few calls that I haven't seen before, which is always
nice, but some clearly need to watch the flow before they start hitting
keys! I had several instances of having to repeat exchanges, simply because
someone kept calling me in mid-QSO.

Looking at some of the scores posted on the 3830 reflector, I think I did
quite well!
This is what I managed:

CALL USED - GU0SUP    Zone  14

Class A) Single operator all bands


BAND     QSOs      Points      DXCC      OK stns
80             53          162           17            9
40             73          234          28           15
20             71             93          24           12
15             75           125          22            2
10             30             50           9             0
Totals:     302          664         100          38

664 pts X 100 DXCC X 38 OK stns  = 2523200

Station:    IC756Pro about 60 - 70 watts out
Antennas:   MQ1 minibeam for 10, 15 & 20, half-size G5RV on 40 and an
inverted L for 80.
Logging:    Writelog 10.44B + MMTTY

Does anyone know if we can submit a Cabrillo log for this one?? And why does
Writelog not produce the usual RTF layout?

Seasons greetings to you all, and I hope Santa brings you all the radio gear
you asked for!
Very best 73, and see you all in the SARTG HNY contest.
de Phil GU0SUP