[RTTY] 2010 RU

[Tom Martin]

I love this contest!

Every year I try to get off to a better start.  Each year I fail!  This year a friend of 40 years comes over at 1730 UTC and doesn't leave until 1845 UTC.  I had coffee with him and operated.  He wanted to see me in action on RTTY.  Well, I only had 19 contacts the first hour!  20 was lousy anyway:  SFI at 77 and located in the U.P. of Michigan makes for a tough going.  Heck, I'm closer to Hudson Bay than Detroit.  Well, not exactly but pretty close!

Missed WV for the first time in the RU.  Worked 53 countries, even though 20 was bad on Saturday.  Sunday morning was excellent to EU.  Too bad one of my breaks is at 1300-1500 UTC  for church.  That's one of the interesting features of this contest.  When to you take six hours?  I sleep four at 0600-1000 UTC, when 40 and 80 slow down.

Radio 1, AFSK and MMTY, cost me at least a dozen contacts, when the AFC started moving all over the place toward the end of then contest.  FSK and MMTY on Radio 2 was steady.  I'll have to make a change for the next contest.  I use MMVARI and Logger32 for day to day operation with no problems.  Of course, there aren't signals wall to wall like in the RU.

N1MM was superb as usual.

The 4 element SteppIR at 72 feet  performed very well and I used the Bi-Directional mode quite a bit.  That is a great feature.

My HF6V on the second radio is lousy on 15 and 20.  It is OK on 40 and 80 but doesn't work as well as my rotating dipole on 40, or the sloper on 80.  One plus with the vertical is that for the first time ever I didn't use filters or stubs.  No interaction even with both amps at a KW.  If I had room, city lot here, I'd put up a 3 element SteppIR on another tower.  

Glad to work the old timers and the newest members of the RTTY fraternity.  No strange macros received here.  I did read a few SKs at the end of an exchange.  Canada?  HI!

73,

Tom W8JWN

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