ARRL RTTY Roundup - 2022
Call: AE6Y
Operator(s): AE6Y
Station: AE6Y
Class: SO RTTY HP
QTH: CA
Operating Time (hrs): 11
Summary:
Band RTTY Qs Dig Qs
-----------------------
80: 49
40: 90
20: 314
15: 249
10: 2
-----------------------
Total: 704 0 State/Prov = 58 Countries = 12 Total Score = 49,280
Club: Northern California Contest Club
Comments:
I've never been an RTTY operator, and last year I managed just 23 Qs in this
contest, just so that NCCC could have enough logs to get more than 50 for the
club score. This year with the contest as a focus contest for NCCC, I thought
I'd try to make 100 or so contacts just to help out. Well, one thing led to
another, and in spite of my very primitive RTTY skills and equipment (see
below), I started to enjoy myself and see that I could in fact be productive, so
I stuck it out for 11 or so hours. Conditions, at least domestically, were good
on 10 and 15, and I was very pleased to work all 48 states (plus HI and AK) and
most of the Canadian mults as well.
Since I wasn't serious, I thought it would be a good time to use my old KPA500
amp, which has been a backup and generally unused for several years. But when I
hooked it up Friday night, it acted very strangely. The OPER-STBY button did
nothing, and in fact all the buttons had odd behavior, if they worked at all.
I've had this problem in the past with radios (I seem to recall that on the K3
itself, this is a known problem, and Elecraft can upgrade the connectors), and
it has usually been a ribbon connector problem, so I released the front panel to
investigate. There are two ribbon cables, and I was only able to unseat the
40-conductor cable relatively easily. Fortunately, reseating it solved the
problem, which I guess was due to some kind of corrosion issue affecting one or
more pins, though it's hard to see where the problem would come from as the amp
is stored indoors in a low humidity environment. Anyway the amp worked like a
champ for the contest.
Although I have used N1MM, I've never actually configured it for RTTY, so my
current setup (which I've got to change to get into the 21st Century) simply
involves using a USB keyboard with my IC-7600, and squinting at the radio screen
to see its decoded signals. I then enter each call as it is worked into my
logging program CQPWIN, which has no RTTY facility, but at least keeps track of
the dupes. So there is a lot of duplicate keystroking and moving back and forth
between the two keyboards, but once I got the routine down pat, it actually
wasn't difficult, and the rate meter got above 120 per hour at times while
running stations on 15 and 20. I have to laugh when I hear the debates among
the RTTY cognoscenti about which decoders work best, as I am just using about
the most primitive form of decoding available -- which seemed to work fine on
strong signals, at least. I do apologize to various ops who were the
beneficiaries of occasional pressing of the wrong function keys or other QLFs
endemic in this kind of system.
Anyway, one thing led to another, and I started to really enjoy myself, so I
just kept going, first setting a goal of 400 Qs, then 500, then 700. I didn't
make any particular effort to find dx, but was keeping track of states. The
last one needed was ND, and I heard K0OP on 15 working NW6P as I was tuning
around a little before noon on Sunday. I didn't know if this would work on
RTTY, but I tried the time-honored CW contest tactic of calling CQ a little
about the frequency on the off chance that he was moving up the band, and sure
enough he called a minute or two later. Thanks!
This contest was a lot of fun, and there seemed to be good activity from many
parts of the country.
73 and thanks for the Qs,
Andy, AE6Y
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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