[UK-CONTEST] ARRL RTTY RU - G0HVQ

[Darrell G0HVQ]

A quick report from yesterday's ARRL RTTY Roundup.

G0HVQ - single-op, low power, unassisted. 90W to a Hustler 4BTV. Casual operating, a few hours on, a few hours off.

 Band    QSOs    Pts  Sta   Cty
   3.5      12      12    0    5
     7     107     107    5   30
    14     116     116   22    5
    21      18      18    0    1
 Total     253     253   27   41
Score: 17,204

I had planned to knock up an 80m vertical, but spent way too much time on Saturday on 2m taking advatnage of the Quadrantids meteor shower. Quick aside - I'm a recent convert to WSJT meteor scatter, it's really amazing what you can achieve with a simple setup (50W at the aerial, 9 ele yagi) during the major showers e.g. ES6DO KO27, SQ9QU JO90). Anyway, the 80m vert will have to wait, so it was a case of 'tuning' the 4BTV for 80m again, hence few 80m QSOs :-(

No real headlines in the contest. 15m was quite good Sun morning (even heard a VK) but I had to go out at 1030 and it had closed by the time I came back, 20m had the usual good run into the mid-West and West Coast around dusk, 40m was a bit disappointing to the US. Highlights - good run into the US on 20m on Sun afternoon, worked the usual big-guns (HI3TEJ, P49X), picked up 6W2SC on 40m, and got called by YV1JGT on 40m 5 mins before the end.

I had the odd technical blip. For some reason, N1MM/MMTTY has this 'feature' where it can change the TX and RX freq, and it occasionally turns this on (for no apparent reason, seems random). Unfortunately I keep that window in the corner of the screen so failed to notice (again, happened in a contest last year too), and spend a good couple of hours with QSOs being hard going due to having a 300Hz TX/RX shift. Lesson learned - check this before the contest.

Also got a few stations sending (or me receiving) serial numbers in letters - I asked for repeats but got the same. This seems to happen in most contests with a handful of stations, not sure if it's their end or mine, but useful to keep a Baudot crib sheet by the side of the PC!

Anyway, over double the QSOs in last year's event and four time the score, so I'm happy.

73 and HNY
Darrell G0HVQ