This weekend was the Makrothen RTTY contest and the PA QSO Party. Started out with the RTTY contest which featured three 8 hour time slots. I was able to work some of each of the 3 time slots.  I ended up with 134 contacts on 20, 40 and 80 meters. It is a funky contest in where the points for each QSO are calculated as the distance between my and the other contacts grid square. I ended up with 552,332 points. It looks like the 134 QSOs were made into 116 different grid squares.  A big QSO for me was a Montana RTTY which I needed for LOTW WAS and it is already confirmed – thanks WC7V ! I popped over to the PA QSO party on Sunday for a bit and when I came back to the RTTY contest, the bands were pretty empty.

Saturday afternoon, after some RTTY contacts I popped into the PA QSO Party. There were time slots for the QSO Party on Sat and Sunday In the end I had 126 total QSOs on 40m and 80m.  Of the 67 counties in PA, I was able to make a contact with someone in 50 of them. I heard other counties on the air, but they weren’t calling CQ when I heard them and maybe if I needed just 1 or 2, I’d ask the op on the frequency if I could piggy back to make the contact, but that wasn’t the case. The folks I had contact with were really terrific. They were very friendly and appreciative of the contact.

Also, at the beginning of the 2nd break in the Makrothen RTTY contest was a 3rd contest – the NA Sprint RTTY. I looked for a bit but didn’t see anyone so I went back to the PA QSO Party. I didn’t go back and look to see if something finally started up so I’m not sure what I missed. It would have been my first “Sprint”.

73,
K2DSL