There was a 24 hour RTTY contest from Sat morning through Sun morning. I forced myself to use N1MM and MMTTY for the whole contest in preparation for next weeks big CQ RTTY contest. I think I’ve gotten the hang of how to best use the combination while searching around for contacts. Staying in 1 place calling CQ worked fine from the start, but I needed to figure out how to work with MMTTY moving around the bands and I think I’m all set now. I still rather use DM780, but until there’s a viable way to do so with N1MM I need to use MMTTY.

I had a bunch of breaks I needed to take throughout the contest and of course a bunch of hours for sleep, but when I was on the air, I did pretty well. I made a total of 85 contacts with 56 on 20m, 23 on 40m and 6 on 80m.  The point total was 7,215 which was helped with a few, but not a lot, of CIS contacts that really help with the points.

The big highlight of the contest for me was my first contact on any band/mode with Japan. It was easy and got through answering his call on the first shot and exchanged reports also on the first shot. Amazing for 100w into a wire antenna strung across my yard!! So thanks to Mitsui – JM1XCW for the QSO.  36 contacts were in the US and 7 were in Canada. The other 42 were primarily towards Europe and Russia with notables in Iceland and Argentina in South America.  Nothing else in South America though except for the 1 station in the very South of the continent. Also OE9R in Austria was contacted on 80m. OE9R is my first 80m contact to date outside North America with the exception of FM5CD in Martinique.

I’m becoming familiar with many of the call signs of folks that I’ve now frequently made contact with in other SSB and RTTY contests.  5C5W/CN8KD from Morocco, some of the folks in the US I always seem to contact in any contest I participate in, SP3GXH in Poland, and on and on.

Can’t wait for next weeks RTTY fest!!!

73, K2DSL