[RTTY] NAQP

[Tom Moore]

NAQP JUL 2006
CALL: WX4TM
NAME: TOM
QTH: AL
CLASS: SOABLP
OP TIME: 5.5 HRS

SUMMARY:

80M     80    33
40M    134    39
20M    132    39
15M      0     0
10M      0     0
TOTAL  346   111
SCORE: 38,406

SOAPBOX

Mercy sakes alive! Is the moon still full? The gremlins were sure with me in 
this one. Talk about blowing it but good! A series of operator errors, 
equipment failures, WL goof ups (mine) and pure bad luck led to the worse 
contest start I've ever had. By the time I got it right, I gave up on 
antenna switching problems with the Six Pak; re-cabled antennas to the DX 
Engineering switch box and later thought it was going bad when I discovered 
the plug had pulled out a bit apparently when I moved it to a more 
convenient location; thought I had sound card problems; thought I had 
Rigblaster problems; thought I had radio problems; thought I had mmtty.ini 
problems; and finally uninstalled and reinstalled WL twice (because I didn't 
do it right the first time). The biggest problem apparently was a corrupt 
WL.INI file causing MMTTY to go nuts (intermittent no receive due to 
overflow) which I feel sure I  probably caused but don't know how. As it 
turned out, I only got, then lost, 28 QSO's btwn contest start and 0030Z (6 
1/2 hrs of pure unadulterated po'd frustration). After that, it was smooth 
sailing for the next 5 1/2 hrs. I apologize to my SO1R team members and to 
those whose QSO's I lost for not being 'up and ready' for this one. I hope I 
can say I learned some simple but very valuable lessons in this one.  Ah 
well, I guess thats what happens when one gets over confident and doesn't 
check, check, and re-check before contest start.  73 de Tom WX4TM