[RTTY] GU0SUP SOABLP CQWW

[Phil Cooper]

Hi all,

The best thing about this contest was being able to finish the contest, and
with a log at the end of it!
I had planned on sleeping on Friday night, and starting once I got up on
Saturday morning, but for some reason I woke up at 4am (0300UTC) and decided
to start the contest.
After an hour or two, the PC froze, and when I tried to reboot, it wouldn't
even see the hard drive! After a few attempts, it did boot up, but the
monitors were an odd colour, and had no icons. A few more attempts got it
going, but it was rather worrying and I did wonder whether it would last the
contest.
As it happens, I had already bought a new hard drive, but I need to update
the BIOS to get it to see the disk, and decided that just before a contest
wasn't the time to do this. Maybe I should have done so!

Conditions at the time I started were OK, but not great, although I did work
HC8N on 40m, and they asked me to go to 80, which I accepted (well, who
wouldn't?) although my small inverted L isn't really a "DX" antenna. Even
better, they actually heard me, although I doubt it would have been a
successful contact if we had to exchange serial numbers. No matter, HC8N is
in my log for 80m!
I was also pleased to get Andy VE9DX on 80m, as that is also a new one for
me.

The rest of the day was mediocre, with no remarkable DX about. Sunday,
however, was a different story! A nice flow of JA's during the morning on 15
and 20, which was great, and also to the far east.
I had been checking 10m periodically, with no real sign of activity, but at
one point, I spotted a big signal in the display on the 756Pro, and it was
9J2KC working split! Got him after a few calls, so I had one QSO on 10m! A
bit later, I also found a couple of LU's, but that was the sum total of it
for 10m.
Late afternoon saw a great opening to KL7, KH6 and the west coast of W/VE.
Normally, it is hard to find KL7 in a contest, but I had three in the log in
less than an hour! CA, OR, ID, WA, AZ, BC, AB - not just once, but several
of each, and on more than one band!
Bob VE6YR had a huge solid signal here, with no flutter - thanks Bob!
On 20m, I found KH7X under a huge pile-up, and saw him tell an LX station
they were also on 21080, so I changed bands and yes, they were audible here.
Got them after a few calls, although I missed the confirmation as someone
decided to call me at that moment! However, they were working another
station, so I hoped all was OK. A bit later, I found them on 20m too.
I missed out on CO on 15m, as W0LSD said QSO B4, but it wasn't me!
No FL stations heard - for obvious reasons - and I guess there weren't any
on, but what has happened on RI? Once upon a time, that was a difficult
State to work unless you could find Ray WF1B, but I think I had 4 or 5
different calls giving out RI!

Opertaing without the cluster is interesting, although for me, it meant I
spent too much time tuning around instead of jumping to the spots.
One thing that made me smile was the number of times I would change bands
and immediately find some nice DX at the spot I had left before, such as
working PJ4/W9ILY on 15m, and then switching to 20m to find 9M2/G4ZFE
without tuning anywhere.

Anyway, here is what I managed:

Band  QSOs  Pts   State/Prov  DX   Zones
--------------------------------------------------
   80:   39     83         3            26     5
   40:   53    122        6            34    13
   20:  189    465      30           53    21
   15:  176    473       29           50    23
   10:    3       9          0             2      2
-----------------------------------------------
Total:  460  1152      68         165    68
Total Score = 342,144

Equipment:
IC756Pro running about 70 - 80 watts
Inverted L for 40/80 plus MQ1 mini-beam for the other bands.
Writelog 10.49D + MMTTY
No cluster for this one.

Thanks to all for the points!
73 de Phil GU0SUP

(Logs soon on LoTW)