After the CQ and ARRL bruhaha weekends, the 3rd contest weekend in December brings us the
OK-DX RTTY Contest from Friday afternoon to Saturday evening and the 9A (Croatian) Mixed-mode DX Contest, during which WQ6X ran CW-only (85-watts), while the RTTY GiG ran a cooler 69-Watts.
Bonus points accrued for OK and 9A stations in their corresponding contest events.
Unable to acquire local COM-port control of the RRC-1258 (internet interface box) to run RTTY,
the backup plan (using swapped soundcard patch cables, while keying the radio using VOX) accomplished the RTTY intent.
Starting late, after a few QSOs, the internet latency became a horribly notable problem.
Internet jitteriness got so bad that contest operations were suspended until after 1am (when
everyone has gone to bed). At 11:00z (3am) operations resumed with the Shorty-40 turned
to ~300-degres (relative to Ramona), enabling me to work the same bevy of JA RTY callsigns;
with everyone around me sleeping, internet bandwidth improved considerably.
After another sleep break, the 9A (Croatian) GiG was in full swing (at least it was on Cw, at any rate). It would seem that with an SFI of "only" 175 - 184, 15-meters was largely THE band to focus on.
10-meters was barely happening, while on 20, everyone seemed to be skipping over everyone
else, resulting in a seemingly dead band - at least in Ramona. Space-WX is always a factor.
Of coarse, the SFI skyrockets to 238 on Monday (doing us No GooD).
Joining up with the Amateur Radio Club of Alameda (ARCA) for our annual Christmas brunch
kept me out of the operator chair for several hours. Back in the chair at 21:20z took advantage
of upper band openings for a 1/2 hour, thanks to an improved internet. When the switch was made
to RTTY at 22:47, data-garble had been all but eliminated.
At 00:00z, with the RTTY contest over, it was off to W7AYT's Concord QTH to finish the remaining half of the (A Cw GiG - with hopefully a more productive internet connection. The Concord internet connection was pretty much business as usual: reasonably OK latency w/pulsing-cutouts every 90-seconds or so.
While most of my radiosport runs this year have been run with QRP power, signal levels this weekend were poor enough that it was clear running QRP in the (A contest would not have been productive.
It seems that many RTTY contests (such as the OK RTTY GiG) do NoT offer a QRP category.
As a compromise, the remote K3 was dialed down to 69 watts as an LP (Low Power) Entry,
while the 9A GiG ran 85-watts to be classified as Low Power.
Once 40-meters to EU faded into the noise, it was time for another sleep session.
Resuming at 11:00z, turning the Shorty-40 to 300-degrees encountered to increasingly
frequent contest weekend RaDaR intrusion in the Cw segment of 7-Mhz (40-meters) - this
time it was parked on 7.041, with 25khz of SPLATTER on either side, all but obliterating Cw communication.
In addition to faster internet, the radio setup in Concord has the advantage of the full-blown,
multi-faceted, continuously evolving Stereo Audio facility. ([CLICK HERE] to read about it.)
While my Alameda office sports a Radio Shaft 16-channel stereo equalizer, a 2nd pair of Autek
QF-1A filters have yet to be configured for the Alameda location. (The original pair of QF-1A
units were moved to the Concord QTH once the Stereo Audio approach was confirmed to be
effective for radiosport running.
When it was all over, it would seem that WQ6X, scored near the middle of the submissions
and managed to take 1st-place for California (CA) and the W6 call area - NoT bad for just
screwing around.
DiD YOU work the 9A or OK DX contests?
Is WQ6X in YOUR LoG?
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