[SCCC] WN6K - NAQP RTTY - SOABLP

[PAUL DOREY]

North American QSO Party, RTTY - February Call: WN6K
Operator(s): WN6K
Station: WN6K Class: Single Op LP
QTH: Vista, CA
Operating Time (hrs): 9:20 Summary: Band  QSOs  Mults
------------------- 80:   20    15 40:  159    44 20:  158    42 15:  100    33 10:   73    30
-------------------
Total:  510   164  Total Score = 83,640 Club: Southern California Contest Club Team:  Comments: I think it is now good to wait to write up my 3830 report till the next day. 
Had I done this last night after finishing the contest, it might have been a
little snarky (thinking I had not done all that well) but after reading some of
the reports this morning, I don't feel half bad! I got a very late start as I had a memorial of a former employee/friend of mine
to attend 50 miles east of here so that took the beginning of the contest out of
the picture.  When I started on 10m, it really sounded pretty sparse so I
thought I would make my 100 and move on... after an hour, I realized that 10
was either not going to be so I moved to 15.  Thinking I would do the 'makeup'
there with Qs and mults, reality quickly set in and after an hour and a half of
slugging it out there, I went to 20. ALL bands were noisy here all day - we have some dry weather here and line
noise and atmospherics were up a lot.  Lots of the 'print' was getting lost in
the noise and although the FT-5000MP has lots of tools, it could not fool
Mother Nature or Father Sol. N9CK was the only station worked on ALL bands with AC0C N0NI W4CDA making it on
4 bands - thanks guys for digging me out. A few JAs called me on 15 but very
little DX in the NA area was found... tried to work a CO2 who was trying to
horn in on my freq on 40m but neither attempt at that worked so I kept my freq
and plowed on. With conditions as they were, it was painful at times with
stations that sent RST (not needed guys) and by time regular report was coming
out they washed on the next wave. Some of the great ops have this figured out -
short NAME STATE once - if I don't get it, a repeat but lots of time was saved. 80m was just a place to go work some loud ones and collect a few mults so I
could climb above the 150 mults barrier but it was the noisiest of all the
bands. For those that don't do the 'deedle deedle' mode, it is surely one of the
slower events and my top 3 hours were 63,72 and 66 and they only way to improve
on that is to do what the SO2R guys are doing but my brain housing group (and
wallet) are just not set up for that. Thanks for the Qs and will hear everyone next weekend in the ARRL DX SSB. WN6K, Paul