[RTTY] AA5AU SOLP WPX RTTY

[Don Hill AA5AU]

I quit posting my score here, but I'm real proud of this one and can't resist!

                    CQ WW RTTY WPX Contest

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

Class: SOAB LP
QTH: LA
Operating Time (hrs): 30
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Pts
-----------------
   80:  191   454
   40:  361  1084
   20:  435   686
   15:  592  1276
   10:   38    96
-----------------
Total: 1617  3596  Prefixes = 529  Total Score = 1,902,284

Club: 

Comments:

What a great weekend!  It wasn't because I had my best effort ever in WPX RTTY. 
It wasn't because I had over 1600 Q's low power for the first time in WPX or the
first time over 500 multipliers.  It was because I worked an all-time new
country on digital - VK0MT on Macquarie on 40 meter PSK Sunday morning when my
good friend Randy, WX5L, called me on the phone to work him.  I got him on one
call!  Randy had been working hard to get Dave on PSK and he finally did.  That
was my #321 current entity on digital leaving only 7O, BS7, HK0 and VU7 to go. 
Wow!!!

The contest effort was icing on the cake.  When I saw there was a possibility of
breaking my current USA record, I dug down a little deeper on Sunday.  And
thanks to excellent propagation was able to top my 2001 score with an hour of
time left to go.  I ended the contest at 2100Z on Sunday.

I took a gamble this year and started the contest with a two hour rest period in
order to relax after a tough day at work and to eat a good meal.  It must have
worked.  My first hour was over a hundred but I never did top the 100 QSO mark
for any other hour of the contest.

Fifteen meters was the money band and who would have figured it this part of the
sunspot cycle?

The biggest obstacle I faced was the tremendous amount of work-related phone
calls I had to deal with.  Call after call after call kept me on the phone most
of the weekend.  Had it not been for that distraction, I probably could have
topped two million points.  Conditions were that good.  I even worked some EU
stations on 10 meters but ten was very slow even though it was open to the west
coast and South America on Sunday.

Thanks for all the Q's.  Look for a more detailed report on rttycontesting.com
soon.

The Icom IC-756PROIII is the ultimate RTTY contest rig!

Station A:
Icom IC-756PRO III
Icom PS-60 power supply
Dell 2.66 Ghz Pentium 4
WriteLog beta version 10.53D
MMTTY plug-in
DXP-38
NIR-12 DSP audio filter
Dunestar 600 band filter

Station B:
Icom IC-756PRO III
Astron PR-40 power supply
Compaq Deskpro 233 Mhz Pentium II
WriteLog beta version 10.53D
MMTTY plug-in
DXP-38
NIR-12 DSP audio filter
Dunestar 600 band filter

Antennas:
Cushcraft A3S w/40 meter add-on at 62 ft. (Yaesu G-800SDX rotor#1) Cushcraft A3S
at 55 ft. (Yaesu G-800SDX rotor #2) 80M inverted vee Butternut HF2 vertical
(40/80)

Misc:
WX0B SixPak antenna switch
Dunestar 2 radio headphone selector
Heil headphones
Bird wattmeter

73, Don AA5AU