[RTTY] SO2R W7WW

[w7ww at juno.com]

                    BARTG RTTY Sprint

Call: W7WW
Operator(s): W7WW
Station: K6LL

Class: SO Expert HP
QTH: AZ
Operating Time (hrs): 16
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Pts
-----------------
   80:   40   40
   40:  102  102
   20:  175  175
   15:  208  208
   10:  102  102
-----------------
Total:  627  627  Mults = 59  Total Score = 221,958

Club: Southern California Contest Club

Comments:

For the past few weeks I have been discussing the pro's and con's
of SO2R operation with K6LL. He finally got tired of hearing
my wild speculation on these issues, and invited me over to
operate his SO2R station across town for this contest, to see
for myself what it was all about.

Before the contest, he got the station ready and tweaked the
Writelog windows and messages. Everything was ready to go
when I walked in the door. I had absolutely no experience in
operating RTTY at his station. The hardware was all different
than I was used to using, radios, amps, MMTTY, antennas, etc.
I had absolutely no experience operating SO2R. At least I have
had plenty of experience with Writelog, and single radio RTTY
contesting.

Since the contest started at 5 A.M. local time, I spent
Friday night at LL's and had plenty of time for him to
show me how it all worked. Without much RTTY activity on
the band, though, it was hard to really get the gist of it.

At 5 A.M., I started on 40, and it was pretty much the only
band open, so I had plenty of time to listen to dead air on
20 in my right ear, and get used to twiddling the knobs on the two
radios. Later, a signal or two appeared on 20, and I
actually made my first second-radio QSO with no trouble
at all. I said to myself at this point, "I CAN DO THIS!"

I got progressively better at working the two radios as the
day wore on, and by the end, felt pretty confident that I
was doing everything right. I kept thinking to myself though,
that after this contest was over, I had to go back to operating
my one-radio station at home, with deed restrictions and high
line noise. Bummer! LL's place is the quietest location that
I have ever operated from.

I ended up with about 190 band-changes, which LL says is a
good indicator that I was working the two radios pretty hard.
My conclusion on the two-radio deal is that, once you get all
the hardware and software set up, an experienced single-radio
contest op can do SO2R quite easily, at least on RTTY. Having
an experienced SO2R operator show you the two-radio technique
before the contest is invaluable. This experience showed me
what a tremendous advantage SO2R has on RTTY, and I am glad
that the BARTG has taken the lead in creating the separate
category (SOE) for the SO2R operators. 

I was really disappointed that there was no good European
opening during the contest. Only the very loudest stations
from Eu could be worked, and the opening was very brief. Since I
had to get home on Saturday night, I operated only the first 16
hours of the contest, taking only one 30 minute break, while LL repaired
an amplifier that blew up. A solder joint had melted in the
output network. RTTY sure brings out amplifier weaknesses! Even with
the poor conditions, it still was a lot of fun. Thanks to everyone
for all the QSO's, and we'll see you in the SSB Sprint and RTTY WPX
coming up soon.

73 David W7WW