[UK-CONTEST] GW3NJW ARRL RTTY RU

[Clive Whelan]

Band Qso   State Prov  DX

3.5Mhz  5  0  0  2
7Mhz 41 2  1  3
14Mhz   25 4  1  9
21Mhz   18 4  1  0
28Mhz   132   27 1  26
  
Total   222   37 4  40


     
Score 17,982     

Station
_______

TS870S, Alpha 78, 400 watts
212ft inverted vee doublet at 30 ft ( mostly 28, and always 3.5)
Hybrid W1CF/Butternut array ( always 7, sometimes 21 and 14)
Writelog 10.38D

Comments
________
After toiling away on 7Mhz in recent (CW) events, decided to 
chill, park up on 10m and let the world go by for a few hours!. 
Both SD and ND passed by which would have been good even in a CW 
event, but cdx to W6 were patchy to say the least, and the 
Pacific NW was notable only by its absence. It is however 
surprising that 7Mhz still yielded two new states in mid evening 
Sunday; a band to be reckoned with.

Made a few token QSOs on 3.5Mhz, but failed to find GM and GI. I 
still have to adjust to the lack of pace on RTTY which resulted 
in my doubling a few times, when I thought my report had not 
been received. My perception also is that most QSOs are- to use 
rugby parlance-, second phase-, i.e. are a result mostly of a 
previous QSO , rather than a response to a CQ call per se ( yes 
I know, there's a paradox in there somewhere; chickens, eggs, 
probably!). It is frustrating for a long time CW operator to 
have to tune the signal accurately, before being able to copy 
it, and often the caller had quit before I arrived! Also an 
unexpected difficulty, was having to read a callsign from the 
screen, *and* type it simultaneously; rather like chewing gum 
and walking at the same time; I am used to using my ears and not 
my eyes for the former function!


Will I learn to love RTTY? Well the jury has been sent to a 
hotel for the night on that one. Certainly the inability to use 
one's native talents, such as they may be, in decoding, is 
frustrating in the extreme. I wonder if anyone has ever learned 
to manually decode ( i.e. cerebrally) RTTY. It should not be 
impossible at 45wpm, but this dog may be too old for such new 
tricks!


73


Clive
GW3NJW