1998 ARRL RTTY Roundup
Call used: K3MM
Location: MD
Entry Class: Single Op, High Power
Band QSOs Pts QTH DX
80 267 262 46 21
40 479 475 52 46
20 429 421 53 49
15 298 294 36 46
10 9 9 3 2
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Total 1482 1461 58* 63*
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* - Counted only once (not once per band)
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Claimed Score: 176781 *** NEW WORLD RECORD ***
Operating time: approx 23.5 hours
Off Periods: 1800Z-2110Z & 0737Z-1107Z
Average Rate: 61 QSO's/hour
Top Rate Hour: 89 QSO's - 0300Z to 0400Z
Lowest Rate Hour: 40 QSO's - 2300Z to 0000Z Sunday
Station:
(2) FT1000MP, (2) Alpha 87A, (2) Computers running WF1B v3.2c
and RITTY v2.21beta1
80M - Diamond Loop, horiz. polar, top at 175' & Inv V at 100' - EWE RX
antennas
40M - CC 402CD++ at 125' & Dipole at 45'
20/15/10M - (3) stacked KT34XA's at 38/72/112'
Separately rotating and fed in any combination using a T2X & TIC
Ring rotators and a WX0B Stackmatch modified with a bypass relay
for 2 radio operation.
Comments:
I had to work on Saturday, but luckily my schedule was changed at the last
minute so I got out of working on Sunday. This left we missing the first
3 hours of the contest, which I just converted to OFF time. I overslept
a bit the second morning, but only came up about 1/2 an hour short.
RTTY activity just seems to really be taking off. Every year the contests
are noticably bigger than last! This contest was no exception and amazingly
it seems like the word is starting to get out that you can use a band
other than 20 meters for RTTY! 40 meters was REALLY a hotbed of activity.
I was also pleased to find that more and more Region 1,2 and 3 stations are
crossing over to the other band segments to work stations. While calling
CQ on the low end I worked plenty of stateside and plenty of EU's when I
went high, up around 7085. In fact, all the bands were fairly good and the
high bands had enough short skip/ backscatter to be able to work almost
anyone on the same coast. 15 meters was fairly thick with stations most
of the day Sunday with a good (not great) European opening with signals
much better there than on 20 meters until late morning. 10 was probably
open but unused, due to the lack of band multipliers. I finally heard
a W7 calling CQ Sunday afternoon and stuck around to work a couple others
that answered a CQ. Signals were good but paths were long and selective...
not the place to be for this contest. There was a great deal of EU
activity, most of them sporting very respectable QSO numbers. Overall, the
rates were tremendous the first night. RTTY's last 10 rate meter hit 120/hr
several times and I'd never broken 100 before.
Nothing to report about DX. Worked a lot of the usual's including VK6GOM
both long and short path, but nothing really rare. LZ0A in South Shetlands
on 2 bands was about the only mild surprise. The polar paths to JA and UA0
seemed disrupted and poor, working just a few of the regulars. Worked all
W/VE except VE8 and VY1 (of course). Strangely enough, Nevada was the big
holdout, but finally worked 2 of them late Sunday for WAS.
The station played with no big surprises, but I got a swelled head when
ON4UN (OT8T) called me in the last minutes on 80 just to tell me I was by
far the loudest signal on the band! (I think he forgot to add that I was
the ONLY signal on the band! hi!). My new loop antenna on 80 must be
working. Now if I could only hear that well! With the high bands
improving, I realized I really had to figure out a way to get 2 radios
working at once between those bands. A couple months ago, I installed a
bypass relay on the top tribander feed which allows me to split that one
off onto a second feedline for the second station. It worked even better
than I had hoped, with almost no interference other than the normal
harmonic noise. Luckily my line noise that has gotten really bad lately
confined itself to 10 meters this weekend, so it was a minor annoyance.
WF1B/RITTY software had a couple of glitches. RITTY on one of my computers
decided to stop auto-tuning at one point early in the contest. After
restarting the programs, that problem never recurred. The little more
serious problem occured when a Sent QSO number that had been sequencing
perfectly for 1100+ QSO's decided to jump to about 4800! This caused the
program to crash on the next QSO with an out-of range error message which
simple editing would not cure. I then remembered the pull-down SYSTEM menu
which has a box for setting all the QSO numbers. Editing this back to the
correct number got things up and running correctly but I lost about 20 QSO's
on one computer (recovered with a merge) and 15 minutes of downtime while
I figured it out.
My PET PEEVE:
Contest operators who answer your CQ and send the exchange without waiting
to be acknowledged. This BAD operating procedure seems to be getting more
widespread! How many times am I going to have to complain about this rude
and disruptive behavior?? I guess these guys must think they've got this
huge signal that will stomp out any other station under any conditions and
that this practice actually saves time? BZZZT! WRONG ANSWER! There are
SO many reasons why this is bad practice that I'm not going to elaborate,
but not only does it NOT save time, it disrupts all QSO timing, often
confuses the stations calling (including the guy doing it!), and almost
ALWAYS takes longer...sometimes a LOT longer! This only seems to be a big
problem on RTTY for some reason. I'll also add that if you call me this
way and don't acknowledge my report/reply, I consider it an incomplete QSO
and it will not be in my log if someone happens to check. This is the only
way you could possibly save time using this method of calling and I dont
consider that a complete QSO.
73, Ty K3MM
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