Yesterday was the 2009 NA RTTY QSO Party. As a single operator you can work 10 of the 12 contest hours. I needed to go pick up my 2 daughters at the airport yesterday so those 3 hours away in the afternoon easily covered the 2 off hours needed so I could operate the rest of the time without having to consider getting off the air.

I operated about 90 mins from the start of the contest before I needed to leave for the airport and it was all 20m and a few 15m contacts. I got back from the airport a bit before dark and spent more time on 20m before moving to 40m. 40m was pretty noisy at times with stations so on top of each other (they probably couldn’t hear each other but I could hear both) that even with the tightest RTTY filter they interfered with each other.

I moved back to 20m if I saw some spots such as for Alaska which I hadn’t yet logged but for the most part once it got dark I moved away from 20m. As the night went on 80m picked up and more activity moved there so I was moving back and forth between 40m and 80m. I probably spent about 40% of the time in run mode and 60% in S&P. Once I would go for a bit without anyone coming back to me in run mode I’d start spinning through the bands. At least for this contest finding a spot to Run wasn’t much of an issue, or I’m just more comfortable jumping in to spots now then I was a year ago.

Score summary:

        Band    QSOs     Pts  Sec   NA
         3.5      78      78   33    0
           7     132     132   44    1
          14     109     109   34    2
          21       4       4    3    0
       Total     323     323  114    3

            Score : 37,791

73,
K2DSL