I didn’t think I’d have time on Saturday but things changed and I was able to get on the air on and off throughout the day. The Volta RTTY ham radio contest allows anyone to work anyone though there are 0 points associated with working someone with the same call area (K2/N2/W2 in my case). More points are awarded for DX contacts on a different continent. The score gets very large as the total is # QSOs x Points x Multipliers.

Got on around the start of the contest for a short time making 10 contacts before I needed to head out for a couple hours. One of the contacts was a booming JA station. JM1XCW always has an unbelievable signal.  I came back after noon and worked throughout the afternoon, on and off, between other errands/activities. The first contact when I got back on was with JA2XYO who also had a nice signal to the east coast. Most activity was on 20m with some activity on 15m. I only heard 1 station on 10m which was a station in Guadeloupe and it is already been confirmed on LoTW for a new 10m DXCC for me.

Other than the typical contacts, I had the 2 contacts with Japan from RTTY ops there I’ve made a few contacts with before. I also was surprised to see HZ1PS from Saudi Arabia again. I had made a contact with Peter just last week and he was coming in strong again. When I put out my call again, instead of getting the contest exchange, I received and sent the following:

HELLO MY FRIEND SO WE NOW WOVRK ON 20 MTRS    V73
JLADSL UR 599 342 342 2 21 21 K2DSL F
 HZ1PS TU 599 044 044 05 K2DSL TU AGAIN VY 73 DE DAVID 
RRRR L QSL  VY 73 AND GD DX

As you can see from the exchange, he was sending me serial # 342 and I was sending # 44. Even competing in a contest, Peter took the time to make a personal contact. Vy 73 Peter and thanks again!

I was S&Ping most of the time though I took short stints on 20m calling CQ from time to time, especially when I seemed to have worked anyone I could hear. I was on 20m checking 15m and 10m from time to time until 8:30pm (0030z) when 40m was where most of the activity was. I stayed on 40m most of the evening (when I was on and not doing other things) until 11pm (0300z) when I called it a night. I had a decent CQ run on 40m late in the evening.

I woke up around 6:30am local time with 90 mins left in the contest, but we were having pretty good thunderstorms passing through so I didn’t bother to hook up the radio.

Here’s the score summary showing how high the scoring in this contest gets:

 Band  QSOs   Pts  Mults
-------------------------
  40:   52    261    16
  20:  108   1538    38
  15:   17    208    13
  10:    1      6     1
-------------------------
Total:  178  2013    68

Total Score = 24,365,352

I’m off to Dayton this week for the first time so I might have a few posts about that coming up. I’m attending Contest University on Thursday and the Contest Dinner on Saturday night which will be two highlights for me. I’m sure I’ll be in awe of how big it is. Hopefully we’ll have good weather and I can meet a few folks that I have met on the air.

73 & good DX,
K2DSL