[RTTY] 7O6T on RTTY

[iw1ayd]

Hello to all.
This mail will just tell what happened to me the 13th morning during the 
a  Contest. Nothing new.

Well, it was a nice morning, just toward the end of the RTTY Contest, 
more than half was done. The prop was almost strange, we started slowly 
the day before, compared to the 2011 edition of the same event.  The 
whole contest showed up much more difficulties about the slow rate than 
those for the higher one this year. Quite in the middle of ours local 
morning I was on charge operating RUN mode on 21 MHz. Before I was just 
awaken from a short nap, rate was really low, but no noise at all and 
even the lowest signal from JA or ZL went decoded well enough to get 
numbers here and apparently on the far side side. I was on 21080,there 
KHz ... a great place with few signals sliding in and out of sight  on 
the whole 15m band. Suddenly somebody shot a perfect nowadays gentlemen 
approach ... "IDIOT YOU ARE SPLATTERING ..." you know it. I just 
switched in the largest filter of my trusted 756P3 to see who was the 
offended, if any ... Nobody was there out of the cop. A look at the 
bandmap revealed a spot of the call in the subject quite tied to my 
RUN-CQ local autospot.  Nothing of strange that I was splattering as 
"they" landed on top of me, apparently. Then, in a matter of seconds, a 
raw signal occupied all my waterfall on the MMTTY screen. let say almost 
2 KHz all the way large. This beast showed up very well also on the 
bandscope of the 756P3. Much like a fake jamming weather radar signal 
than something other. BTW, a four element on 21 MHz was aimed to 
JA/ZL/VK at the time.
Just two more calls and I managed to get out of this mud moving slowly, 
looking at the beast, up to 21090. I shoot some calls there, as I was 
getting some relief from the above beast. But then the callers caught 
me. Time to move up again. My main activity in a contest, when in RUN, 
is to make answered my calls or better. Now to get a new place where to 
call I managed a sweep up to 21098. somewhere. I didn't take care of who 
was there, but as in the silliest scenario ... The mess was on for, let 
me say, ten or fifteen minutes. Then the blob of RTTY callers on my P3 
started to unravel on the higher end. Was it the tail of the beast? Time 
to check 21080, absolutely cleaned up, not even litter was there. What 
really happened? Who knows? I am wondering ... May be there wasn't that 
call operating, just the blood color was able to build up the mess. May 
be there was effectively a station from there and as usual they slipped 
away for a bunch on minutes, as usually they have done, forgiving to 
come back.
That's all what I could say about the call in the subject by direct 
observation.

The effect of the DX-expedition was to disrupt the RTTY sub bands, on 14 
and 21 MHz for the whole weekend. They threatened the bands and several 
peoples as a owned thing.  Even when this was made by the ongoing 
operations or by somebody ferociously  willing to help or guilty.

I hope this DX-expedition will happily finish, so we could have our 
places back for ours operations. Well, until the next CW/PSK widest 
contest, ;-> That's the problem, not politics, but fanatics, just plain 
old frantic fanatics <-; I hope not to become one of those, please wake 
up me gently or not, it doesn't matter.

But anyway, TU for any Contest contact, it was fatiguing to get it done 
on 24 hours this year. But it was nice as usual to get in touch with new 
and old friends.
It maybe that the fatigue was worst just as I am aging, that's not a 
prop or tech problem, isn't? I am happy as some more RTTY will cure for 
sure, it's not snake oil.

                                     73 de iw1ayd Salvo