This past weekend was the 2010 WAE RTTY ham radio contest. My pneumonia is gone and I was able to get on the air, albeit for less then half of the allowed contest time of 30 hours over the course of 40 hours. I did manage 11 hours (with short breaks during those 11 hours) with it mostly being on Saturday.

The contest is different in that it uses QTCs which is the exchange of 10 contacts between stations. In the RTTY contest, I can exchange (send or receive) 10 contacts with a station outside of North America. Though the 10 contacts don’t count for any multipliers, they do count as points so it’s a great way to really increase your score. This year I ended up making 305 contacts and exchanged 220 QTCs for a total of 525 contact points and 162,225 total points. I worked 2x the number of hours last year and did about 3x the number of total points. Maybe next year I’ll be able to work more hours as it is an enjoyable contest to participate in.

Started out late on Fri night making contacts on 40m & 80 for 1.5 hours before I was beat. I had a good run on 80m with about 1 per min for 40 mins calling CQ.

Started at 1pm ET (1800z) on Saturday after running errands and spent a total of 6 hrs 45 mins on the radio on Saturday. 20m was busy and 15m less crowded and quiter so most time was spent flipping between 20m and 15m with occasional checks on 10m. I ended up with 6 Q’s on 10m Saturday and even exchanged QTCs with LV5V in Argentina.  Saturday around 5pm ET (2200z) I started to switch between 20m and 40m until we went out to dinner. When I got back, I spent time on 80m switching back and forth with 40m to pick up anyone new I could hear and called it quits before 10:30pm ET (0330z).

Sunday I got back on the air at 8:40am ET (1340z) and 15m was already busy and I worked 15m for 1 hour before switching to 20m. Worked 20m for about 50 mins, switched back to 15m for 40 mins and then finished up on 20m for 15 min before I was done with the contest at 11:20am ET (1620z). Sunday’s 2hr & 45 min on air time added 61 Q’s and 150 QTCs to my total. Those QTCs sure do help. I set off to the Giants football game, but they played horribly and the lights went out in the stadium twice, once completely. I would have been better off staying home and making more contacts!

During the contest on Saturday night, I took a quick break to log 8J1RL in Antarctica. On Saturday afternoon, VK3TDX in Australia was booming in and I quickly logged him before there was any pile up. I did log 1 Japanese station on Saturday just after sunset here but didn’t hear/log any others, though they were spotted on the cluster. I also noticed that Africa was pretty quiet this weekend with not a lot of activity in the contest, or that I could hear/work.

Here’s a map of the 305 contacts made and you can click on it to see a larger view:

Here’s the score summary from N1MM:

 Band   Q/QTC  QSOs    Pts  Cty
  3.5    QSO    82      82   56
    7    QSO    52      52   81
   14    QSO   107     107   96
   14   RQTC    70      70    0
   14   SQTC    10      10    0
   21    QSO    58      58   68
   21   RQTC    90      90    0
   21   SQTC    40      40    0
   28    QSO     6       6    8
   28   SQTC    10      10    0
Total    All   525     525  309

Score : 162,225

73 & good DX,
K2DSL