(sorry for the poor formatting)
CQ WW RTTY Contest
Call used: W3LPL
Location: MD
Entry Class: Multi Op, Multi Xmit
Band QSOs Pts QTH DX Zones
80 310 469 48 33 15
40 475 888 47 59 23
20 740 1573 51 88 31
15 838 2102 41 82 30
10 494 1173 38 67 23
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Total 2857 6205 225 329 122
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Claimed Score: 4,194,580 (New World MM Record)
Operators: Band Captain Assist
80 NO2T N3OC
40 NE3H N3UN
20 K3MM ND3F
15 N8YYS W2GG
10 K4GMH N3KTV
Software: RTTY by WF1B v4.2, RITTY 2.34, CT 9.27
Hardware: (7) FT1000MP x (5) 3-1000 Monoband amplifiers
(12) @!(#*& computers!
+ the normal W3LPL antenna arsenal
Power Output: 1500
Club Participation: Potomac Valley Radio Club
Comments: Overall conditions were rather bad at the start due to
the flare,but the low bands were still fairly good. As the weekend
progressed, things generally swung to favor the high bands and
10 meters finally came alive for real on Sunday with some decent
EU rates. 20 meters actually shut down during the day Sunday for
several hours here. The increased MUF which translated to much
larger numbers on 10 meters turned out to be just enough to
compensate for the high K and resultant lower numbers of Q's on
the lower bands, especially 20 meters. This allowed us to just
barely sneak by our World Record MM score from last year of 3.95M!
I spent 3 or 4 evenings setting up computers at W3LPL's
QTH the week before the contest. This meant installing sound cards,
updating software, building interface cables for AFSK and PTT for
many computers and radios. Unfortunately, after 3 evenings I had
to abort plans to run all WF1B computers networked. When I tried to
add the 3rd computer to the link, the computers seemed to be in
conflict and jammed networking caused the normal program operations
to come to a screeching halt. I had worked with Ray the past week
getting some new hot keys for certain functions used by Multi's
added as well as a frequency passing function, but he had left for
P40RY by the time the networking problem was discovered so it was
all for naught. I then went back to what we had done in the past
and used a CT-based network of computers to keep track of all
networked information, spots, frequencies, etc. Thankfully, Frank,
W3LPL, volunteered to set up the CT computers and network. This
meant double-logging of all QSO's, but it worked flawlessly. We had
created a special country file to fake out CT so it would at least
understand the state multipliers. I actually had some spare time
before the contest, so I set up a second station on 20 and later a
second station on 40 so any spare operator could tune around the
band during RX times (all the beverages were still down for the
summer). This meant 7 computers running WF1B/RITTY and 5 running
CT!
Other than the networking problem, WF1B and RITTY ran great
all weekend. Some of our operators had never used RITTY and it's
Autotune feature and were even skeptical of it's use. However, I
think everyone was sold on it by the end of the contest. It really
works well as long as it's used properly, with judicious use of
the Alt-F key to freeze settings during QSO's. I'm amazed at the
number of negative comments I get from various guys all over the
country about the use of Autotune in RITTY and I'm convinced that
it's all a case of improper use and/or possibly improper settings
in RITTY. It's always worked great for me and I wont use anything
else for my RTTY contest work. I've been trying to get the software
vendors to make the functions work more automatically to avoid
operating errors and a lot of unnecessary keystrokes. So far, NA by
K8CC is the only one to make some headway on this endeavor.
This year we had a lot of the operators from last year, but
W3EKT was unable to participate due to his son getting married in
FL. In his place, I managed to recruit PVRC member W2GG, Bob, and
N8YYS, Roy. Both of these guys did a great job, learning a lot of
new hardware and concepts, as did the rest of the crew. Every
year the teamwork gets a little better. I also assigned "band
captains" this time in an attempt to help insure good coverage of
all the bands. I think this worked out fairly well. I didnt require
any of the operators to purely work one band. Rather, they were
free to work any band that was available, with the "band captains"
maintaining responsibility for coverage of their band.
Most importantly, everyone had a good time and enjoyed
operating the contest from Frank's primo MM station, which worked
100% all weekend.
As promised, I'll be doing a 100% bureau QSLing to all DX
stations sometime in December. Anyone wishing a quick reply and all
US stations may QSL direct to me or W3LPL with an SASE.
Thanks to everyone that worked us, especially those that
QSY'ed for extra bands!
73 es CU in the next one, Ty K3MM
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