[RTTY] XE Contest

[Jim Martin - MM0BQI]

Missed BARTG last week due to office Christmas (!) night out and operations this weekend were severely curtailed by a RAYNET dinner and some exceptionally fine Scottish rugby on the telly.  I intended to try out SO2R from home in preparation for WPX next weekend.  Due to space limitations I have one 40/80m short dipole, nested dipoles for 10/15/20 and a trapped vertical for 10/15/20 at the bottom of the garden.  They are all within a few meters of each other. Sadly when I wanted to operate I could not find any two of my useable bands open! However running the MkV and the IC7400 side by side was a bit of an eye opened.  My impression has always been that the 7400 is slightly better for RTTY than the MP and the few hours I put in re-enforced this. (The MP wins hands down on phone!) Even with the fully Inrad filtered MP I was able to copy  better on the Icom when 20m was overcrowded with stations.  Next weekend I will make the Icom the Run radio and move the MP to 2nd radio position and see if the results repeat themselves. 
Used N1MM Logger again with the new 'Hover' feature which picks up the callsign without having to click the mouse or use the keyboard.  An amazing idea which is still in development and along with many other new features makes N1MM contesting software to be reckoned with. 
Only low point was having my run frequency sat on by UU7J who just called CQ on top of me out of the blue!  As I was not seriously taking part I left the auto CQ running and within a few minutes he stopped CQing and called me for a QSO!  They must have lost 7 or 8 Qs in that time, hopefully they will try QRL or just listen before using their power to try and muscle onto an occupied frequency.  All in all good fun, just not enough time spent at the keyboard!
Also listened to some superb CW from the FOC guys, quality like that I can only dream about!
73
Jim,  MM0BQI

    QSOs    Pts  Cty   Sec
   3.5       2      6    2    0
     7      30     91   19    1
    14     101    304   25    1
    21       1      3    1    0
 Total     134    404   47    2
Score: 19,796