I’m a little late getting this summary out from this past weekends ARRL RTTY Roundup ham radio contest. It’s a great contest and one I felt I had to do well in again since I won my first plaque for this contest last year. My weekend looked clear and though we received snow the day before, the weather was just fine over the weekend.
I got started right at 1800z (1pm) on 20m and S&P’ed the band. I then switched over to 15m and quickly scanned that band. For a good part of the day I remained mostly on 20m popping back to 15m just a couple of times before the sun set. Started working 40m at dusk flipping back to 20m which was still active. I was all S&P so far as there was enough activity and stations to move at a good pace. There wasn’t a lot of DX that I heard so the DX mults were low. Once evening hit, other then some quick checks of 20m, I bounced back and forth between 40m & 80m alternating between S&P and running. Both 40m and 80m weren’t bad, noise wise, which was nice for a change. On one check of 20m around 7pm local time there was a JA station booming in later then normal, but he wasn’t able to hear me. I ended up after the 1st 12 hours of the 24 hours you can be active with 459 Q’s vs 407 Q’s last year at the same time. Time for a 6 hour nap.
When I got started Sunday morning right at 1200z (7am), 80m was pretty busy and 40m was lighter so I S&Ped both bands. 15m had some nice DX and mults early in the morning. I was able to surpass last years 15m total quickly Sun morning. 20m starting to show some DX as well, but nothing too substantial. Had a nice run on 40m between 1500 & 1530z. I hit 600 Q’s @ 1600z. I hit 100 Q’s on 15m @ 1840z where last year I had 14 total 15m contacts. Matched my score from last year @ 701 Qs and 1906z. I reached 709 Q’s at 1925z matching last years logged total. At 2040z I finally worked VT for all US sections other then DC. Hit 800 Q’s at 2238z and finished with 848 total contacts. As the contest ended, I shut things down and headed out to my local ham radio clubs monthly meeting.
Though I didn’t log a DC station, I worked all states in a weekend. I did miss logging a bunch of Canadian territories. Even though I had 140 more contacts this year I worked only 2 additional multipliers then last year. I think a big reason for that was that there weren’t a lot of DX stations calling CQ and it’s rough for a 100w wire antenna guy to call CQ on 20m and be productive. A beam or amp would probably make a world of difference in that area.
Here’s the score summary from N1MM with my logs uploaded to LoTW, eQSL & QRZ:
Band QSOs Pts Sec Cty 3.5 209 209 8 1 7 247 247 8 5 14 283 283 36 19 21 109 109 4 12 Total 848 848 56 37 Score : 78,864
In last years RTTY Roundup, I was able to take 1st place Low Power in the Hudson division with a score of 63,336 so I’m hopeful the jump to 78,864 (before any deductions) is good enough to repeat.
73 & thanks for all the contacts!
K2DSL