[RTTY] WPX ZC4DW SO20 (LP)

[Dez in Cyprus]

CQ/RJ WW RTTY WPX Contest

Call: ZC4DW
Operator(s): G0DEZ
Station: ZC4DW

Class: SOSB/20 LP
QTH: KM65wc
Operating Time (hrs): 27

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Pts
-----------------
   80:
   40:
   20:  500  1436
   15:
   10:
-----------------
Total:  500  1436  Prefixes = 304  Total Score = 436,544

Club: Chiltern DX Club

Observations:

20m opened right on cue just as expected both days, but the N. American
opening
around sunrise did not happen. Fortunately though, the path to Japan was
open
both mornings - which was a pleasant and unexpected surprise.

It seems 20m propagation was better to my East, rather than to my West. This
resulted in twice as many JA stations compared to USA.

Sadly, the predicated 20m late evening opening to the States never
materialised
either. I only heard about a dozen big-gun US signals on 20m. W6IHG was
consistently readable, but failed to answer my calls. KL7AC was coming in
with
auroral flutter over the pole, but again could not read me.

South American and Carribean signals were very strong. I'm glad I had time
left
towards the end to pick up some useful mults from that part of the world.
The
one exception was LO7H who was endlessly s9 but couldn't copy me.

Apologies to PJ7/W1CX who I had incorrectly logged as PA7/W1CX on our first
QSO.
The software didn't flag as dupe and I couldn't find the original QSO
anywhere
in the log.

With DX Cluster allowed, I have to agree with Phil SUP about a few
questionable
spots. EA5BY was spotting EA5EG, and EA5EG kept reciprocating the favour.
Perhaps they struck a deal before the contest, which of course is forbidden
by
the rules and of course is difficult to prove.

It was blatantly obvious that T77CD was spotting stations on his own run
freq of
14091.5, this is very poor practice and certainly against the spirit of the
contest. K0WV was another station who clearly spotted everything on his run
freq
of 14104.8 which I think it pathetic to be honest.

I also noticed a worrying increase in people using AFC and NET turned on
whilst
in S & P mode. This is a bad habit, and is the major reason why stations
call
off frequency. One South American station who was running, either had bad TX
drift, or his AFC & NET were turned on; he kept drifing all over the place
on
each transmission. It was a nightmare but quite amusing following him!

Setup:

FT-1000MP
Inverted-L
75 Watts
Writelog 10.39 + MMTTY plugin
Kantronics TNC + soundcard parallel

73

Dez