[RTTY] NAQP from Europe

[Ian White, G3SEK]

Well, that was interesting, to spend a short time trying to give a few 
points away. This is one of those contests where it's nice to have a 
short name, and all my own too :-)

Signals on 20 were weak and watery, and I wasn't hearing much at all. In 
spite of running more power than you guys, there was a lot of AGN? in 
both directions. Only 17 QSOs from 2200-2250, so...

I got up early at 0330 to take a look on 40, which was in much better 
shape. It's kind of tricky to venture up there into the US RTTY segment, 
but there wasn't much SSB activity at that time, and I restricted myself 
to S&Ping stations on clear frequencies. Still didn't penetrate anything 
like so far south and west as normal, though. After an hour I had worked 
out all the stations I could hear. Instead of running pileups, 5U5B and 
ET3TK were struggling too.

80m was full of static - I heard a few RTTY stations at CW-copiable 
strengths, presumably you guys, but MMTTY couldn't decode anything 
through the crashes.


GOOD NEWS - G stations are expected to gain 7.1-7.2MHz in October, so 
that will begin to take some pressure off the low end. We can hope for 
other countries to follow quickly, but the transition period is going to 
be real fun.


-- 
73 from Ian G3SEK