Terry's idea of checking 10 meters at the top of the hour is an excellent one.
It's something I normally do anyway. As fact, I normally check it on the half
hour as well.
The main problem with 10 meters in the Roundup in this part of the cycle is that
RU is a rate contest. Unless there are LOTS of stations to warrant staying on
10 meters, people just aren't going to stay there. Even SO2R ops will tend to
stay on 15 and 20 and go for rate during the daylight hours.
I would normally start this contest on 10 and 15 meters. But last year I
started on 15 and 20 and will probably do the same this year. The first hour of
this contest is almost the most important. If you are SO2R and don't have 100
Q's at the end of the first hour (low power), you've fallen way behind. For me,
if I have 100 Q's at the end of the first hour, I feel like I'm in a groove
enough to jump to 10 and check for signals at the top of the hour.
Hopefully ten will be good enough to run some rate. Hope so. Last year 15 was
very poor here and I about worked 20 out many hours before the end of the
contest.
Another thing to think about is going to 40 and 80 early. If 10 and 15 are as
bad as they were last year, then you have to go to 40 a couple of hours well
before sunset. East coast ops do this anyway. But the rest of us normally wait
for JA's on 15. That may not be a good idea this year.
73, Don
-----Original Message-----
From: rtty-bounces@contesting.com [mailto:rtty-bounces@contesting.com] On Behalf
Of Terry Gerdes
Sent: Saturday, December 31, 2005 3:17 PM
To: RTTY@contesting.com
Subject: [RTTY] ARRL RTTY Roundup and 10 meters
Hi Guys,
This low in the solar cycle my experience is that ten meters is not a very
productive band for a RTTY contest. I think its non-productive just because not
a lot of stations use it. In the day light hours, there are sporadic-E
openings all over the US and some DX as well. For example, in the 10-meter
contest a few weeks ago, NX5M ran a multi-op mixed mode and made 1880 Q's and
180 mults. Here are the results:
ARRL 10-Meter Contest
Call: NX5M
Operator(s): NX5M, N5XJ, N5DUW, KU5B, NT5TU, KA5BKG, AB5K
Station: NX5M
Class: M/S HP
QTH: TX
Operating Time (hrs): 32
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
CW: 838 91
SSB: 1042 89
-------------------
Total: 1880 180 Total Score = 981,360
Looking at the NX5M scores from the past years, the 10 meter propagation is
there despite the current low solar flux numbers. The question is can we
make use of those openings and get some RTTY stations working there? In
some of the contests some of the ops have a agreement to check 160 propagation
at the top of the hour. What if we did the same for ten meters?
Would that be productive? Other options or thoughts?
73 Terry AB5K
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