[RTTY] BARTG GU0SUP SOABLP

[Phil Cooper]

Hi all,

Hhhmmm! Not quite sure what to make of the conditions during the BARTG
contest.
I had several jobs to do round the home, plus of course it was Mothers day
here, so some time had to be set aside for that.
For once, I didn't set any targets, but grabbed time in the shack whenever I
could. Part of that time was also spent listening to 3B9C on CW, just to see
what sort of strengths they were at during different times of the day. Not
sure why I spent time listening really, as I knew there wasn't a hope in a
hot place of breaking the pile, but I did try once or twice, without luck.
I had planned to get up early on Sunday morning, but awoke without reason at
0430, so I got up and went to the shack. 20 was dead, 80 was quiet and 40
was full of SSB and CW signals. I saw several W's on 80 with big signals,
but they weren't hearing Europe at all. Still, I did work Bob ZL2AMI on 40
at about 0600, so I went back to bed till 0900.

The first day seemed good, and I had all six continents with just 42 QSO's,
and three were on 10m, which surprised me a little. There were some nice
openings to the west coast USA, with W7 and VE7 on the log.
Sunday was a different story, and I found it real hard work to get a run
going, or to get folk to hear me.
I managed to work Heijo EA8/DJ1OJ on all bands except 15m where he just
couldn't hear me.

When I did get a run going, I often had QRM from various sources, including
US7XX, who started calling right on my freq, and appeared to be working
those calling me. Oddly, he gave out 001 to the very first caller. Ah well,
such is life at times.

The fact that this contest coincided with the Russian contest was also
noticeable, as there were many calls playing in that one that would normally
be on RTTY.

Enough waffle, so here is my score:
              QSO        DX           Call areas
80             37         19                 0
40             65         35                3
20            209        49               17
15              73         25               12
10               8            7                3
TOTAL:    392
MULTS:    170
Continents    6
Claimed score:  399840

The log will be on LoTW soon, or QSL's are welcome either direct or via the
bureau.

73 all, and many thanks for the points
de Phil GU0SUP