[RTTY] P49X WARC & 160 Operation

[J. Edward (Ed) Muns]

The RTTY operation from P49X on Monday and Tuesday on the WARC bands and 160
meters was a lot of fun.  Not quite the rates as over the weekend, but it
seemed that people enjoyed the diversity.  I ran two radios in auto-CQ and
removed the TX interlock in WriteLog, so both were transmitting some of the
time.  That was certainly a challenge for this operator when a couple
stations were backed up on each radio!  Complicating it further were two
other factors.  First, the rate simply wasn't high enough to sit there
focused on the two radios all the time.  I also didn't want to do too much
rag chewing in order to keep the frequency open for everyone to get through
who wanted to.  So, I was catching up on email and web site administration
while listening to a radio in each ear.  Second, on 160, I was therefore
often slow on the uptake in picking up callers.  What would happen is that I
was busy with something else and EU would call me while the Beverage switch
was on one of the US antennas ... or vice versa.  The Beverages had good
selectivity.  This is great when people call in from both regions and I am
attentive switching back and forth but caused me to be slow in responding
sometimes because I was distracted with other things.  Anyway, thanks for
your patience.  I think most everyone got through where they wanted to.  12
meters was rough and many never got an opening.  But, I did work 12 meter
stations from all over the US, Canada, Central and South America plus one
Azores station.

A number of stations worked me on 6-7 bands overall.  I only worked one
station on 10 meters.  I know there were more 10-meter openings, but it
simply wasn't a productive place for me to have one of the radios,
particularly during RU.  I did QSY several times on Monday and Tuesday when
someone thought we might have propagation.  12 was also a challenge but most
made it if they persisted.   I imagine that 10 would have been about the
same, had I auto-CQ'd there for long periods of time.  On the other side, I
think most everyone got through on 160.  Some were surprised to get a reply
by loading up some other band antenna on 160.

Speaking of which, on the WARC bands I was running 100 watts to out-of-band
antennas:
	12 on a 4-el 10 or the C31XR,
	17 on a 4-el 15 or C31XR and
	30 on an 80-meter inverted V.

Here are the band summaries for the five days prior to Round-Up and then the
two days following:

	2-6 January 2006
  	QSOs	Countries
 80	 70      12
 40	266	   37
 20	149	   27
 15	115	   22
 10	  1	    1

	9-10 January 2006
	QSOs	Countries
160	 78	    8
 30	111	   19
 17	127	   24
 12	 38	    4

Thanks again for calling in,
Ed - P49X (W0YK)