3830 Soapbox Comments
ARRL RTTY Roundup
Call: AC0C
Operator(s): AC0C
Station: AC0C
Class: Single Op HP
QTH: Kansas
Operating Time (hrs): 24
Summary:
Band QSOs
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80: 134
40: 427
20: 389
15: 72
10: 0
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Total: 1022 State/Prov = 54 Countries = 37 Total Score = 93,002
Club: Kansas City DX Club
Comments:
My 2nd year participating and a lot of fun. Equipment was FT-2000 with the NS
roofing filter, Alpha 76pa, home-brew interface with N1MM/MMTTY. Antenna is a
all attic arrangement that covers 160m-6m through a series of mostly monoband
yagis of various types.
No significant hardware problems this year except for a bit of RF getting into
my variable speed amp fan board which I had to fix via a firmware mod (no
digging inside the amp while in run mode!). The Alpha performed otherwise very
soundly.
Antenna work was ongoing right up until Friday with Murphy making a serious
visit on Thursday. Fortunately the problems were revealed in Thursday's
warm-up session and we were able to keep the gremlins away for the entire
contest. A huge difference from last year which was plagued with antenna, amp
and tuner issues.
20/15/10m band conditions were tough. 20m was good on Saturday domestically -
but there was relatively few DX vs. my expectation - with about 10 less
countries than last year despite improved antennas.
80m was good for a couple of nice runs on Saturday. The band was pretty quiet
until around midnight. A new RX loop did not prove to be an advantage on 80m -
a big contrast to the 160m SP where the loop was a huge success.
40m was solid on Saturday and excellent on Sunday with the bulk of the DX
worked on 40m. There seemed to be a huge amount of new participants that came
in on Sunday afternoon allowing for quite a few strong and sustained runs. The
new antenna proved a strong performer on 40m although the F/B ratio has never
met model forecasts - I am considering making that a phased feed type prior to
WPX...
20m was disappointing and 15m not very well populated. Signals seemed better
on Saturday than Sunday on 15m. On 20m, it seemed like I ran out of guys to
work on the band. And when scanning for S&P contacts, N1MM would show me as
having worked both sides of each QSO I looked at. Probably indicates more
antenna work is needed here...
Thanks to everyone who worked me and hope to see a big turnout on next month's
WPX.
73/jeff/ac0c
www.ac0c.com
