[UK-CONTEST] WPX RTTY

[Paul Beecham]

Hi All,
a story about our first SO2R RTTY contest.
Serge travelled all the way from Kiev for this one, he started out at
4am Friday (our time) and after a long journey he arrived here at 3pm.
After a quick cup of tea and delivery of a rather nice bottle of 25
year old Whiskey ( thanks Serge ) we got down to some aerial works and
setting the station ready for SO2R RTTY.
I decided to use the IC 7700's  and after making the necessary
adjustments to cabling etc they were ready to go for SO2R.
All though the Icom' s have on board RTTY capability we used Mix W
computer software.
Serge brought with him two Rig Expert Tiny usb interface units, we
plugged these into the rig's and the laptops ran the drivers etc. and
they worked first time.
These units also provide rig control via the Icoms CIV socket. It
wasn't all plain sailing tho' as the two Mix Win programmes wouldn't
talk to each other, a  fire wall issue was was fixed  but then we
found a logging problem between the two Mix W software's that we
couldn't sort. Fortunately Serge is a good friend of Nick UT2UZ  (who
is one of the authors of Mix W) who was able to sort the problem out
with only 5 mins to go before the start.
The first night was OK but trouble with the 80m Bobtail curtain caused
some grief as the amp kept tripping out but with a steady run of EU
and Asiatic Russia it was just about manageable. 40 was very good with
nice runs into NA to early morning.
The feed to the 80 m aerial was found to be waterlogged but not before
ripping the bobtail down and putting a high dipole up.(only to have
the same problem before we found the feeder fault)
Saturday morning showed some good activity to the far east on 20m but
15m was disappointing so switched the 2nd radio to 40m for most of the
day (in between rest periods) and found some nice activity again to
the far east.
Midday Serge turned the stack to NA and unbelievable runs on 20m well
into early evening, 40M was still performing very well on the 2nd
radio and it was getting very hectic with huge piles on both rig's.
Saturday night was a mixture of 80 and 40m but mostly taken as a rest period.
Sunday was the same as Saturday with huge pile ups on 40 and 20 m. 20m
was good into darkness but switched to 80m when when the band dropped
out.
All in all quite a busy weekend one way or another but very enjoyable
all the same picking up some tips from Serge.
Serge had to take a taxi to Gatwick airport at 1.30 am to catch a
flight to Alicante at 6am where he's in pre season training starting
this afternoon ! so that's dedication to contesting I guess !

Here's the stat's

Call: G6PZ
Operator(s): UT5UDX
Station: G6PZ

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: nr Bristol
Operating Time (hrs): 30
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Pts
-----------------
   80:  350  1426
   40:  799  3676
   20:  904  2339
   15:  167   387
   10:
-----------------
Total: 2220  7828  Prefixes = 758  Total Score = 5,933,624