[RTTY] W6YX NAQP RTTY M/2

[Dean Wood]

                     North American QSO Party, RTTY

Call: W6YX
Operator(s): K6UFO N7MH W6LD KJ9U N6DE
Station: W6YX

Class: M/2 LP
QTH: CA
Operating Time (hrs): 12

Summary:
  Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
    80:  165    46
    40:  257    54
    20:  275    58
    15:  205    50
    10:   69    25
-------------------
Total:  971   233  Total Score = 226,243

Club: Northern California Contest Club

Team:

Comments:

We had a great time and are really pleased that we've broken the M/2 
NAQP RTTY record two years in a row.

Our thanks to all the stations who attempted QSYs for us!  We 
appreciated the effort, even if propagation did not allow us to make the 
attempted QSO.

John W6LD and Mike N7MH arrived at the station early on Saturday morning 
to try to locate and fix the problem we've been having for months with 
the Hygain 205CA 5-el 20m beam.  They found a loose connection on the 
antenna and fixed it just before the contest started.  Thanks guys!

I started the contest on 10m while Mark K6UFO started on 15m.  K7SV in 
VA answered my ragchew on 10m before the contest with a great 599 
signal.  10m was open; I just wish more stations tried it!  At the 
expense of 15m rate, Mark passed me several stations.  It was worth it. 
  In the first hour, we had 52 QSOs and 22 mults on 10m.  Texas was 
shockingly weak on 10m, but from Arkansas to the east coast, the band 
was open.  In the end, our 10m mult total by call area was: W1 (MA, ME), 
W2 (NY), W3 (MD, PA), W4 (all), W5 (AR, LA, MS, TX), W6 (CA), W8 (MI, 
OH, WV), VE (NS, QC, ON), DX (8P).

We tried to make things as chaotic as possible for Mark on 15m, but he 
did a good job handling the pileups, passing stations to me, 
coordinating whenever a new mult was found on 15m, forgiving me for 
accidentally hot switching his antenna, and having different requests 
shouted at him at the same time: let's work a new multiplier.... no, 
keep transmitting there and switch to the west antenna because we just 
passed KH6GMP to you.... but keep working the stateside pileup with the 
other antenna and don't lose your run frequency!

We did not hear VT, DE, MT, NV, ND, and SK.  I was surprised at the 
number of NA DX multipliers active.  8P2K, HH4/K2AC, HP1DCP, HR1RMG, 
KP4JRS, NP4BM, and ZF2NT made it in the log.  We heard a few CM 
stations, and noticed some other stations reported that they worked an 
XE.  Aside from NA DX, there were also non-NA DX stations participating: 
JA, UA0, VR, HC2, ZS, LU, PY, CE, and R1ANF.

All our ops did a great job and had fun.  Thanks to K6UFO for helping 
with the setup.  It all worked well.  There was one intermittent problem 
on our second station where the PTT would occasionally drop in the 
middle of a message, but our MMTTY window in Writelog kept printing the 
transmit message as if it still still sending it.  I remember seeing 
this problem at NN6NN for WPX RTTY, but still don't know what is causing it.

John KJ9U joined us for the last few hours of the contest.  I called him 
earlier in the day and requested a pizza run.  He later arrived with two 
pizzas from Amicis (a local pizza restaurant with really good pizza). 
John then helped on 80m and found a bunch of new mults.  Oh, and the 
pizza was devoured within 30 minutes.  Mark brought some unbelievably 
good cookies.  When desperate for food, we raided his platter of 
vegetables until the pizza showed.  :)

Thanks to everyone for the QSOs!

73...
-Dean - N6DE