[RTTY] CQWW RTTY 2006 VK4UC SOAB HP

[John Cashen]

Propagation was horrible from VK4 until 1900 on Saturday when the 
"effective SSN" (as reported on IONOPROBE 1.2) shot up to 200 and 
things became very interesting for the remainder of the contest with 
good long path openings, unusual propagation paths, daytime openings 
on 20M and massive pileups. Still very little activity on 10M with 
most stations probably writing it off without checking it out. As 
usual, most northern W/VE stations didn't keep their antennas pointed 
south for long; just enough to collect mults.  That is usual the case 
even in good times. Judging from some of the qso vs score reports, 
there may be some focus on working each like a domestic contest at 
the expense of listening for DX.
Its nice to get this station back on again for the CQWW RTTY after 
missing last year. Unfortunately, most of the antennas are down and 
trees stopped the rotation of my only working multi-band beam in the 
direction of W/VE long path and Africa. I used a makeshift inv-V at 
30m for 40m. Due to a personal tragedy I only arrived down under a 
few days before the test and had very little rest beforehand. The 
best I could do was 18 hours on and 30 hours off. Bad propagation and 
empty bands here probably accounted for half of the missed time.
Most interesting qso was with Bill, KA3PVA in VA at 2145 on Sunday. 
He was the weakest stateside rtty station I think I (ever) worked. 
Just to hear him I had to have the FTKMP audio full up, and forget 
about the S-meter. Now I had very low local qrn and use RITTY, which 
is hands-down the best weak signal decoder, and I didn't have much 
trouble printing him. Knowing what stateside qrn and qrm is like,  It 
was amazing to me that Bill was able to get any print on me at all. 
In those weak condx I usually give up trying to work stateside even 
though I can hear lots of stations, they never can hear me.

As Martin, VK7GN, says, "Its all about BIC (Bum In Chair)"....... I 
just didn't have it.


          QSOs   Points  Zones   DX:     States  Multipliers     Score
80m:       0
40m:      55    159     15      31      7
20m:     166    477     21      42      6
15m:     224    655     21      26      36
10m:      11    28      5       5       5
Total:  456     1319    62      104     54      220     290180

Hours:  18 on,  30 off




Thanks to all,  73  John  VK4UC/ W6KNC