Saturday was the Volta RTTY contest and I was looking forward to a day of RTTY contesting. Got on the radio at the start of the contest (8am ET) and there wasn’t a lot of activity, or was there? I had a horrible noise problem just on 20m. Other bands (G5RV antenna) were fine but 20m sounded like someone was frying an egg. I checked often throughout the day and the noise persisted.
With the noise problem, I had a hard time pulling in DX stations. US stations, most Canadian and Mexican stations were fine. Loud DX stations were a piece of cake and whenever I could hear someone they could hear me. So I worked what I could and took many breaks from the radio, popping back once in a while to see if the noise was there and if there were any new stations I could hear.
Around 6:15pm I got on for a check and the noise was gone, the band very quiet (except for RTTY signals) and I was able to make a few easy DX contacts before I had to leave to go to my younger daughters lacrosse game. How come the best activity is always when I have something else to do? After the game, my wife and I were heading into NYC to go into the NBC studio to watch Saturday Night Live. So my radio time was likely done for the contest since I wasn’t getting home until the very wee hours of the morning. That might not have been a big deal except I woke up the morning before at 4:30 from a wicked rain storm passing through and I was tired.
I don’t know what the noise was and it isn’t there today so I hope it doesn’t come back back, whatever it was. It was a fun contest in seeing how things are scored. It’s easily my highest score (1 million plus points submitted) even with just 67 contacts, off which 2 were 0 points. Seems this contest doesn’t count call signs in your DXCC with the same call area as you (in the call sign, not physically as N2BJ is in Illinois). But to see your points jump up drastically was a lot of fun and I will definitely participate next year, hopefully without noise and with more time to get on the air.
I logged 1 new DXCC from T77NM in San Marino. Since it doesn’t seem that he uses LoTW, I sent off a QSL card direct to him in hopes of getting a new one confirmed when he QSLs. I had 1 non-20m contact and that was a US station I logged just checking the other bands when I couldn’t stand the noise on 20m. Since it was the middle of the day, there was no 40m stations on but this one. Even though I wouldn’t win any award, I submitted my log as a 20m only effort. Below is my score summary from N1MM.
Band QSOs Pts Cty Sec 7 1 2 0 1 14 66 657 15 9 Total 67 659 15 10
Score : 1,103,825
73,
K2DSL