[RTTY] WAEDC RTTY - GU0SUP SOABLP

[Phil Cooper]

Hi all,

What a fun time that was! Good to see far fewer "SRI NO QTC" messages than
in previous years, although there were obviously a lot of folk new to RTTY
that hadn't read the rules on who you can or cannot send QTC to.

Propagation was much better on Saturday than it was on Sunday, which meant I
didn't get to TX/RX as many QTC's as I had hoped.
I didn't get to start the contest until well after lunchtime on Saturday,
partly due to household chores, and partly due to the fact that I picked up
a bug, and felt lousy for most of Saturday.

Last weekend, I put up an inverted L for 80m, but it is only about 15 feet
above the ground, and only has two radials.
WAEDC was a good test, and I made almost 50 contacts on 80m, which was
great! Best of all was catching Mike VK6HD on this little piece of wire!
Sadly, I wasn't feeling good enough to stay up on Saturday night, so I
didn't get a good chance to try out the DX'ing abilities of this little bit
of wire.


I spent most of the time S&P'ing, but on the few occasions I did call CQ, I
often ended up with either someone sitting a few Herz away, or suffering
what might best be described as "deliberate" QRM. On 40m, I got some idiot
who kept sending QSY QSY in CW, and he was right on my mark frequency,
despite the fact that I was well inside the RTTY segment. I also saw one
"gentleman" sending PLS QSY RESPECT THE BANDPLAN over and over again in
RTTY.

Despite the QRM/QSB/SFI and other minor problems, I managed to beat last
years score with fewer QSO's and less QTC's. I guess I can thank my 80m
score for that!

Here is what I managed:
             QSOs       QTCs         Mult's
80m:        47              0              104
40m:        97             10              117
20m:        99             40               86
15m:       134           176              100
10m:         49            96                50
Total:  426 + 322     * 457 = 341836

Thanks to all for the contacts, and the QTC's.

73 for now
Phil GU0SUP