[RTTY] AA5AU 2004 ARRL RTTY Roundup report

[Don Hill AA5AU]

Wow, that was some fun, eh?  Sorry for this long dissertation but I actually
remember most of the contest this year!

Some pretty remarkable happenings in this year's Roundup.  I worked all 48
states plus DC in just over 3 hours - never did it that fast before.  Last state
was Georgia for the 2nd time in 3 years.  I worked several stations in each
state except North Dakota with NW0L being the only ND logged.  Thanks Marty &
co.!  Where was VE4COZ?  Sure missed him.  Where were the Russian stations?  No
Russian stations in the log.  Missed ZS4TX floating around on 40 meters.  Tried
fishing for him but didn't catch him.  I think there was one other multiplier I
saw but did not work.  I can't remember who it was.  Any two of these
multipliers would have put me over last year's score.

Having A45WD call me on 40 meters in the midst of a pileup was by far my best
QSO of the contest.  With several strong USA stations calling me, he was able to
slip his call in where I would see it.  Having S54E call me on 80 was also very
cool.

There were two major positive occurrences for me during the contest.  First I
was able to work all 48 states + DC in just over 3 hours.  I'd never done it
that quickly.  I don't ever recall doing it before I take my break at 0700Z.

The second incredible thing was the rate for the first 11 hours of the contest.
For 11 straight hours I maintained an average rate of better than 100 QSO's per
hour.  This included 6 hours of over 100 QSO's in the first 7 hours.  In those
first 7 hours, only from 2200-2300Z did I not crack the 100 QSO rate (89 QSO's).
In the 8th hour I made 98 QSO's.  The biggest hour of rate was when I moved from
15 to 40 meters on the B radio and the rate was 120 QSO's from 0000-0100Z split
between 20 and 40 meters.  That is the highest single hour rate I've ever had in
any RTTY contest.

The rate went way down after my break at 1300Z but this was somewhat expected.
Especially since I saw that the A and K index went very high while I was
sleeping.  However, the rate actually fell more than I originally thought it
would.  I knew there would be little, if any, European contacts on 10 and 15
meters to help keep the rate up.  Only the strongest of European stations were
worked on 15 meters and there were a few worked on 10 but overall 10 meters
never did much of anything.  There was a nice opening to W1-land on 10M at
around 1730Z where I worked several New England stations.  Just before that, the
band had opened to the west coast and probably stayed open for several hours but
there just wasn't enough west coast action to keep a radio there.  So I switched
between 20 and 10 meters on Sunday.  After my break, I could only manage a 58
QSO rate per hour from 1300Z to the end of the contest.  Total rate for the
entire contest was just over 78/hr.

Before the contest ever started, I did not believe it would be possible to beat
last year's score because of the forecast for poor DX conditions on the high
bands.  I knew I would be way down in multipliers this year.  I had to think of
a way to make up for it in rate.  These were not easy thoughts.  After averaging
75 QSO's per hour in 2003, it was very hard to imagine doing better.  I
experimented with my buffer messages and shortened them significantly but
maintained their integrity by keeping carriage returns and spaces to make the
messages stand out from the noise characters on the receiving station's screen.
Instead of sending my callsign three times while in the S&P mode, I shortened it
to two.  I removed the K from the end of nearly all the messages but maintained
a space at the end.  During the contest, I tweaked on the messages but found
they were highly effective for as short as they were.  I also discovered I
wasn't the only one who shortened their messages.  Seemed like a lot of people
did the same thing.  Exchanges for the most part were short and crisp.  The
quality of RTTY operators in the ARRL RTTY Roundup gets better every year and
this year it seemed almost everyone got it right.

Other than shortening my buffer messages, there is one other change I made for
this year's Roundup that probably was the most significant.  For the first time
in a RTTY contest, I used a great feature in WriteLog that allows the user to
import contacts from the previous year's log to pre-fill the QTH field.  Since I
did not want DX contact QTH information (serial numbers) to be pre-filled, I
used DXbase 2004 to filter only USA calls and save them in an ADIF file.  There
ended up being 650 USA callsigns with QTH info in the file.  I then imported
this ADIF file into WriteLog on both my PC's and it worked great.  Instead of
clicking on each QTH as it came across the screen, all I had to do was click on
the callsign and the QTH was already there in most cases on the first contact.
Then I just had to look at the screen and verify the QTH being the same as it
was last year and log the QSO.  Not having to click on or type in the QTH for
most USA contacts was a great time-saving advantage that also saved energy.  The
amount of energy saved was surprising.  This simple tool helped keep me fresh
and focused throughout the contest.  Despite working very hard to make contacts
on Sunday, I was not totally exhausted after the contest like I usually am.
Instead of taking Monday off from work to rest, I was able to come to work with
no RTTY hangover.

The only change in hardware for this year's contest was the replacement of my
ol' steady HP 200 mhz Pentium I PC with a new Dell Pentium 4 machine running XP
Pro.  I borrowed a 15" Dell LCD monitor just for the contest to along with my
19" CRT so I could run two monitors on the new Dell and take advantage of the
DVI output of my video card.  I don't believe this change was of any advantage
to me in the contest other than using a cool machine to RTTY contest with.

I did have one change in strategy using my antennas.  I kept the higher
rotatable yagi always on the S&P radio, whichever that radio was.  The fixed
beam stayed on the rate radio in most cases.  The only instance this isn't
possible is when I run 20 and 40 meters at the same time.  Then the higher
rotating antenna must be on 40 since it has the add-on kit.  This seemed to work
very well and allowed me to turn the antenna to the stations I was calling and
helped me get through pileups quicker.  I did a lot of alternating CQ's on both
radios but on Sunday I was scrounging for contacts.

I'd like to thank the Northern California Contest Club (NCCC) for the dry-run
they had Friday night before the contest.  I was beta testing a new version of
WriteLog and found a minor bug.  When I pressed the F5 buffer key, the contents
of F4 was sent.  In the new version of WriteLog you can map any of the command
shortcut keys to any of WriteLog's commands.  This is a neat feature, but
version 10.45F did have a problem.  Luckily Wayne was reading his E-mail Friday
night and shipped me version 10.45G which corrected the problem.  10.45G worked
flawlessly in all functions.

This year was different than in past years when I would sometimes go into this
"zone" where I was like a machine turning knobs, pushing buttons, doing multiple
keystrokes with ease and making lots of contacts with little or no memory of
what I did.  This year that didn't happen.  This year was more "real" and seemed
more fun and less work.  This years contest seemed to flow.  I seemed to have
enjoyed being there in the moment and not worrying about things like propagation
or what my score was going to be or if something was going to break or where the
next contact would come from.  I've had this happen before in contests a few
times.  It's hard to explain but it's a very enjoyable feeling - total fun.  I
had thought about this contest a lot the week before and how much it would mean
to me to keep my Low Power streak alive.  I decided I wouldn't let that consume
me.  I used a technique I learned last year where you visualize obtaining your
goal before you actually achieve it.  Go into the event with the outcome already
decided in your mind.  Overconfidence?  Not really.  And I also asked myself "If
I don't achieve my goal, can I live with that?".  With the answer being yes, I
had already decided I would achieve my goal and if I didn't, it's no big deal.
And because I didn't think it was possible to beat last year's score, that
didn't happen.  I'll be more positive next year!

In my opinion, the ARRL RTTY Roundup is the best RTTY contest of the year.  It
is my favorite.  If I could only operate one RTTY contest, it would be the
Roundup.  Thanks to everyone for the QSO's.  Now I have 51 weeks to think about
next year's Roundup and whether or not to go High Power for the first time.


Call: AA5AU
Operator(s): AA5AU
Station: AA5AU

Class: Single Op LP
QTH: LA
Operating Time (hrs): 24
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
   80:  221
   40:  410
   20:  555
   15:  572
   10:  125
------------
Total: 1883  State/Prov = 58  Countries = 57  Total Score = 216,545

Station B (15/40 meters)

Kenwood TS870 transceiver - 100 watts output 
Dell 2.66 ghz Pentium 4 PC WinXP Pro running WriteLog beta V10.45G & MMTTY
plug-in 
Dual monitors - Dell 19" CRT & Dell 15" LCD 
Hal DXP38 in a 2nd Rttyrite window 
JPS NIR-12 DSP audio filter 
Dunestar 600 band filter 
Dunestar 2 radio headphone selector
Heil headset
Yaesu G-800 SDX rotor and control

Station A 

Kenwood TS870 transceiver - 100 watts output 
Compaq 333 mhz Pentium II Win98SE with a 17" LCD monitor running WriteLog beta
V10.45G & MMTTY plug-in 
Hal DXP38 in a 2nd Rttyrite window 
JPS NIR-12 DSP audio filter 
Dunestar 600 band filter 

Antennas 

Cushcraft A3S triband yagi with 40M add-on kit rotatable at 60 feet 
Cushcraft A3S triband yagi at 45 feet fixed at 20 degrees North 
80 meter inverted vee with apex at 55 feet.

73, Don AA5AU