[RTTY] How was your WPX RTTY?

Tue Feb 16 20:33:46 PST 2010

Don, 

I'm glad you asked!

After last year's troublesome effort when family affairs didn't give me a chance to give the WPX a full effort, I had hoped to pick things up in 2010 and I have been spoiled in every sense. In fact the only thing that broke this time was the coffe maker and it let go on late sunday afternoon so...no big deal.

I entered as usual SOLP and the reason is quite simple: I simply don't have the location, antenna farm and skills to compete against the best of the best in the HP class in this kind of contest. 

My goal was to better our LP VE previous record and I am very happy to have achieved that. Certainly helped by the absence of Scott ve1op hihi, together with massive participation and good conditions. 

In time I have tried to learn from my mistakes and the success of the great contest ops in the circle and it's starting to pay off. 

What I found hard:

1)having to give up on a calling station because just wasn't able to copy the exchange mostly due to qrm, in a few cases these were mults. Why? In at least 4 occasions the blank caused by me trying to copy the exchange from weak sigs, translated into someone just taking over my calling freq and completely disregard any attempt from me to get it back. This is something I would not allow when in HP.

2) Finding a running freq on any band

3) Listening to my good friend Daniel VC2E logging dx on 40M with his 2 L beam , and not being able to even copy 50% of them...maybe one of these days I'll be able to put up something more competitive than a dipole who knows.

4) Running into Mike, Ed, Boyan and getting their exchange # :(

Aside from that, this was a terrific experience and probably my best effort to date in any contest. I never really got very high rates but they were steady and lasted for several hours kicking the counter up. Not having the appropriate resources to put up a real fight, I played on strategy taking breakes when needed and hunting for mults and extra points , trying to make the best out of this memorable 2010 CQ WPX.

So you ask, how was it? Just great, just great!

73,  Fabi va2up 

> From: aa5au at bellsouth.net
> To: rtty at contesting.com
> Date: Sun, 14 Feb 2010 23:29:34 -0600
> Subject: [RTTY] How was your WPX RTTY?
> 
> I hope all of you had as much fun as I did. After years of low sun activity, wasn't it nice to have better high band condx again?
> I took my second tower down a few weeks ago in anticipation of having a patio cover installed (the tower was mounted on the patio),
> so I basically have lost my ability to do SO2R on the high bands until the tower is relocated. So I decided to do a 20M single band
> effort. With the flux rising to the upper 90's, I thought about going single band 15M, but just thought 20 would be more fun.
> 
> I got off to a slow start since the contest begins at sunset and just couldn't get much going. I took a look at 15 about an hour
> into the contest just for the heck of it and saw a load of JA stations (well after my sunset). I wondered if I made the wrong
> decision to go 20 instead of 15. At 0300Z signals disappeared on 20 so I went to bed. I awoke at 2 AM (0800Z) and decided to check
> 20M. To my delight, there were strong EU signals all across the band. I don't know how many years have passed since I've seen this
> opening. It used to be my "secret" weapon. This opening helped propel me to both my CQWW RTTY Low and High Power Single Op wins.
> When condx are right, I can work EU all night long (after their sunrise). The problem, as I encountered a bit this year, is that EU
> is not beaming NA just after their sunrise. So even though stations like 4O3A were booming in, they couldn't hear me right away.
> Only the western EU stations, like EA could hear me even though I was running 600 watts to a tribander at 55 feet. After about an
> hour, I could work any EU station I could hear. I was in bliss! Just before my sunrise around 1130Z, the EU signals nearly
> disappeared. I knew this to be normal, so I took an hour nap to come back and find the band chocked full of signals again. The
> rest is history. Saturday during the day, I had great runs of several hours into EU late into the afternoon (well after dark on
> their end) and of course, NA. I was disappointed in the lack of JA signals at sunset, but I had to quit early or I would run out of
> time on Sunday. I did wake up briefly at 4 AM Sunday to look at the band spectrum on PRO III to see NO signals at all. So getting
> that all-night opening to EU the first night was very lucky.
> 
> Sunday was not nearly as good as Saturday as the flux dropped at bit and the K rose to 2. But it was still decent. I love being
> able to use the Packetcluster in this contest. I had set a goal of 1000 Q's and 500 mults, but early Sunday I realized I had a
> chance to break the USA 20M single band record so I started pushing hard. I was on a mission and every new multiplier spotted
> became a "Search and Destroy" mission. It got to be a LOT of fun. There are only three multipliers I could not get - A61BK, ZC4LI
> (pileups too big or just couldn't hear me) and WW2R (in TX, couldn't hear me). At 1933Z, I broke the USA record but pressed harder
> knowing the score will get dinged a bit after log checking. My 3830 post is at:
> 
> http://lists.contesting.com/pipermail/3830/2010-February/191934.html
> 
> It amazes me that after more than 26 years of RTTY contesting, I still get as much enjoyment out of it as I do. Man, I just love it
> when the band are open!!! There's nothing in the world like it.
> 
> So how was YOUR WPX RTTY?
> 
> 73, Don AA5AU
> http://www.aa5au.com
> http://www.rttycontesting.com 
> 
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