2008 WAEDC RTTY Contest Results

Contests

Got the official results from the 2008 Worked All Europe RTTY contest which took place in November. They send a great amount of information with the results that show what was logged which was in error/rejected and why. I had a 1.48% reduction due to errors associated with logging a call or QTC. If I recall, I think it’s real hard to tell if a received QTC is in error or not as you only receive it once from the other station and don’t really have anything to compare it against.

The results show that K2DSL, with 412 QSOs, 187 QTCs, 288 multipliers reaching 172,512 points for the SINGLE-OP LOW division finished:
#11 in United States,
#2 in Call Area K2,
#36 in World Outside Europe and
#18 in North America.

With my understanding of QTCs now (didn’t know much about them when I did this contest), obviously it would have helped me immensely to send/receive them much more then I did which would have probably increased my score by 50-75% and could have gotten me #1 in my call area. Something to concentrate on for this contest next year.

It really is an impressive amount of work the contest managers need to go through in processing all this and it’s nice to get back such detailed info, so my hat is off to the WAE Contest Committee!

73,
K2DSL

More confirmed DXCCs

Contacts

Yesterday on LoTW I received a QSL confirmation for Saint Kitts and Nevis as well as my only contact on Malta. Both these contacts were in the past 3 days and already confirmed. St Kitts was with V4/G4FAL on CW and the Malta QSO with 9H1SP was made on RTTY and confirmed within about 1 hour. I already have a paper SQL out direct to 9H1SP as well.

My LoTW confirmed DXCC count is now at 98 of which 95 are confirmed on 20m.

73,
K2DSL

Barbados QSL and Triple Play Award

Contacts

In the mail today I got a QSL card from KC2Q in NJ  who was 8P9MD in Barbados. This is my first QSL for Barbados. Brings my QSL count to 96 via LoTW and 11 via paper QSL for a total of 107 DXCCs.

I’ve also started to seek out contacts I can add to this years ARRL Triple Play Award (TPA). You need 150 total Q’s made in 2009 confirmed via LoTW for each state in 3 modes – CW, phone and RTTY. I have most already in RTTY and many also confirmed via phone and now I’m working on the CW Q’s and the ones I stil need on RTTY and phone. There’s a great web page at http://www.obriensweb.com/sked where folks go to hook up for contacts. It’s amazing how friendly and helpful all the ops are in moving around and trying to accomodate everyone’s requests. What a great bunch of hams! Just this morning W5IF (Howard in Oklahoma) made a 20m CW and voice contact with me  – thanks Howard!

73,
K2DSL

Australia confirmed via LoTW

Contacts

Just saw that today my SSB contact with Australia was uploaded today by VK7ZE. That makes it a new LoTW confirmation for me and gets me to 96. I previously had a digital contact with a VK station that I had a QSL card as it was my first VK contact of any kind but this is my first on LoTW. I have also sent out a direct QSL card to VK7ZE and he probably doesn’t even have it yet. Just a few more and I can do a DXCC solely based on LoTW confirmations.

73,
K2DSL

PS0F DXpedition confirmed on LoTW

Contacts

After posting earlier today about a few new DXCCs confirmed via LoTW, I see that the PS0F DXpedition team to Fernando de Noronha has returned home and already uploaded their logs to LoTW! Thanks to W9VA and K9PPY for the new one. Their page on QRZ.com shows they made over 11,000 contacts over their week stay.

That brings my LoTW DXCC count to 95 and with paper QSLs to 106 confirmed.

73,
K2DSL

LoTW DXCC confirmations up to 94

Contacts

I already had a paper QSL confirmation for a contact with Israel, but one came in over the weekend via LoTW. The QSL was for a CW contact with 4Z1UF in the ARRL DX contest last month.

This morning I got 3 other QSL confirmations via LoTW. They were for J7Y in Dominica, 6Y8XF in Jamaica and TO5A in Martinique.  The Jamaica and Martinique QSLs are the first for me via LoTW or paper QSL, so thanks for those!

That puts me at 94 confirmed DXCCs via LoTW and 11 additional DXCC confirmations via QSL cards for a total of 105 confirmed DXCCs.

73,
K2DSL

NA RTTY Sprint, Idaho and Wisconsin QSO Parties

Contacts, Contests

Friday night I was able to participate in my first NA RTTY Sprint contest. In a sprint, after you make a QSO, you take over the frequency for the next QSO. After the next QSO, you need to relinquish the current frequency and QSY to another frequency. I watched for a couple mins to see how the sequences went and jumped in. It’s a 4 hour contest and I was able to make 98 Q’s. Here’s the score summary:

        Band    QSOs     Pts  Sec
         3.5      57      57   16
           7      41      41   17
       Total      98      98   33
            Score : 3,234

Saturday was the Idaho QSO Party which goes from Sat afternoon through Sun afternoon for 24 total hours. I could only find and make contact with 5 different stations for 6 total contacts. I wanted to get an Idaho QSO confirmed on CW and phone for the Triple Play. At least one phone contact has been confirmed but nothing yet on the only CW contact I could find and make. I’ll keep my fingers crossed on that one. Here’s the score summary for the Idaho QSO Party:

        Band  Mode  QSOs    Pts  Sec
          14  CW       1      2    1
          14  RTTY     1      2    1
          14  USB      4      4    4
       Total  Both     6      8    6

            Score : 48

Sunday afternoon through the evening, the Wisconsin QSO Party ran for 7 hours.  Much easier to make contacts there. About halfway through the contest I was shooting for a Q with half the 72 counties in Wisconsin and about 10 mins before the end, I checked off county number 36.  Here’s the score summary for the Wisconsin QSO Party:

        Band  Mode  QSOs     Pts  Sec
         3.5  CW      18      36    5
         3.5  LSB      8       8    3
           7  CW      22      44   18
           7  LSB     19      19   10
       Total  Both    67     107   36

            Score : 3,852

73,
K2DSL

The first K2DSL is found

Misc

I received an email from N2QT (Mark), a fellow contester, who was looking at a very old (January 1958 !!) CQ magazine issue and recognized a familiar call sign. Mark scanned the relevant pages from the magazine and sent it along to me to view. The article is about young women who are licensed amateurs. I think it is ok to quote the relevant content here:

K2DSL, Merceda Pilla, of Trenton N.J. is 16 years old and a senior at Cathedral High School. “Bunny,” as she is known over the air, got her Novice license in July ’53, a few weeks before her 12th birthday. With the help of her brother K2ART and encouragement from W2ZI, Bunny earner her General before the year was over. She in turn helped her dad get his ticket, K2JID. K2DSL uses a Harvey Wells transmitter and a BC-248Q receiver. She spends 99% of her time on cw, mostly on 80. She loves traffic handling and operating for CD. She holds two PSC for work during floods and other certificates include RCC, NJN, RACES and DVRA. An honor student and president of her student council, Bunny also enjoys horseback riding, ice skating, dancing, piano and teaching.

The article also includes a picture of Merceda. I did a quick search on QRZ and there’s only one Merceda listed and it looks like W6FCW in California is the same person and the date of births seem to coincide. There’s no email on QRZ so I will send out a letter via postal mail and include a copy of the article that N2QT so graciously spotted and passed along.

73,
K2DSL

Costa Rica confirmed via LoTW

Contacts

Noticed this morning that TI5N (TI5KD) has uploaded his log to LoTW which gave me my first LoTW confirmed QSL for Costa Rica. That gives me 90 confirmed DXCCs via LoTW.  I already had a confirmed QSL for Costa Rica via paper QSL also from TI5N. I don’t know if those will get uploaded to LoTW too since those QSOs are not yet confirmed via LoTW.

Any LoTW confirmations for this past weekends ARRL DX SSB contest are coming in VERY slowly.  Of the 209 Q’s, only 21 are currently confirmed. That’s 10% and well below the average I’m used to seeing for contest Q’s.

73,
K2DSL

El Salvador Confirmed DXCC

Contacts

Checked this morning and YS4M has confirmed our contact. That was the only QSO so far with El Salvador and it is confirmed via LoTW. That puts me at 89 confirmed DXCCs via LoTW.

I’ve noticed that the LoTW confirmations for this past weekends ARRL DX SSB contest are coming in very, very slow compared to other contests. The RTTY guys are tops with uploading (both quick and percentage of ops)  followed by the CW folks. The SSB/Phone contacts seem to have the lowest percentage uploaded with the DX stations being much less likely then US/Canadian stations. At least that is what I am seeing so far. Maybe a bunch of the DX ops for this past contest were travelling to their locations and the logs will get uploaded once they are home and rested. I hope so anyway.

In related DXCC news, on our local clubs 10m net last night, W2ML (Steve) who is an avid DXer, involved with the North Jersey DX Association, involved with the ARRL and of course a board member of our local BARA club since I’ve had my license, is now a DXCC card checker. Congratulations to Steve!! It’s of course also great for us local folks to have this available to us. So we have a local DXCC QSL card checker with W2ML and our local club provides us free sending of QSL cards to the ARRL when we hand them to our outgoing QSL manager K2UFM (Warren) who gladly takes them ever time I hand him a bunch. I guess the only thing left is for them to personally come to my house, write up the QSL cards for me, deliver them to the ARRL, get incoming QSLs back from the ARRL, come back and deliver them to me and log them as received. I’m sure lucky to have a great bunch of guys that put so much time in for all of us!!!

73,
K2DSL