SPDX RTTY: The DX contest that coulda been.

I'm going to start right off with the moral to this story: HEAT and RTTY don't mix.

The 3rd weekend in April finds a plethora of West Coast (and beyond) hams congregating in Visalia for the NCDXF International DX convention.

From the W6 point of view, there is no contest that weekend that is more important than the Visalia GiG;
not even the Polish SP-DX RTTY contest.

Unfortunately, client obligations kept me in the bay area away from Visalia. As such, I decided to take advantage of the low-demand for NX6T's station #1 and run the RTTY contest remote whenever I could liberate some free time. On the weekend's agenda was the SP-DX RTTY contest and the
UK-EI CW contest and the Nebraska QSO Party; in that order - a perfect combination for some satisfying remote radiosport activity.

The weekend before, I successfully ran several contests at high power. RTTY runs smoothly, driving the ACOM-2000a amp between 550 and 700 watts.

While the Space WX sucked, I figured running high power would overcome
that deficiency somewhat.

With everything prepared Friday evening,
I caught some sleep ready to go at 14:00z.
The first 75 minutes produced 35 QSOs;
not great, but an encouraging start.
After that, client commitments kept me off the
air until 21:40z.

While the amp had been in STBY mode during those few hours, unfortunately the filament heat from the pair of 3CX-800's coupled with the warm temperature on the mountain that day overheated
and shutdown STN-1's remote access computer; immediately
after making just 3 QSOs.

I naively believed that Por Que' Pig would protect us; in fact he did - the amp never DieD ONCE that weekend. However Mr. Pig has no jurisdiction over the Toshiba computer functions. That job SHOULD have been handled by our eternal protector Mr. Bill.
Evidently he wasn't up to the responsibility.




Por Que' Pig



MR. Bill










In one respect, that should be the END of this BLOG entry. However, the purpose of the WQ6X Contest Blog is to report just the FAX, ma'am; from which I can then share with you some
conclusions drawn from participating in each event.

What is important about this remote run attempt is to be mindful of the many different factors (on both sides of the remote connection) which must all synchronize with near-perfect non-latency; Whew! Over the months, the internet connects @ NX6T have evolved dramatically; finding me musing over how I managed to make remote access work over 18 months ago (a LONG time ago in this world - virtually ancient history).

My plans to point the antenna E-NE and put U.K. and Nebraska QSOs in the log never materialized. The bummer about this is that in recent years Nebraska section has become increasingly scarce.
For years I/We took Nebraska for granted. I was set to solve that problem, once and for all. OOOPS!

Saturday afternoon, this is the last thing I saw.



N1MM's Last View of the SP-DX RTTY GiG

Never the less, I keep my OWN counsel and ALWAYS submit a log.
I have received awards for 2 & 3 QSO log submissions; 39 QSOs is 13x that, so who nose.  Unfortunately, in the process of doing that, I was so "rattled" by the abrupt ending that I
submitted the 2016 log without thinking; requiring an immediate replacement with this
year's 2017 Log.

I ALSO submitted the score to 3830Scores.Com.
[Click Here] to view my submission.

Did YOU play in the SP-DX RTTY Contest?

Is WQ6X one of the RARE QSOs in YOUR Log?