WQ6X Wings a nearly non-Existent VOLTA RTTY Weekend

 This Blog post opens on a sad note.

Accumulating Space-WX readings over the last several weeks, it would seem that the high-SFI party is now more-or-less over.  Not only have the SFI numbers seemed frozen at ~156, after a week of On/Off geomagnetic storms, the SFI has taken a dive down ~126.  If that all sounds like a carefully created excuse for what turned out to be a horrible radiosport weekend - IT IS!!

There were 3 events on last weekend's agenda

1. [X] - The Russian CQ-M DX Contest
2. [X] - The Italian VOLTA RTTY Contest
3. [X] - The Canadian Prairies QSO Party (CPQP)

For CPQP, the handful of callsigns barely hearable in Ramona, and virtually no band spots for
Canadian station, that GiG was a DuD!  Stations in the Midwest and East coast had a much better time of, whereas the horrible storms conditions made that all but impossible on the West coast.

The CQ-M certainly offered possibilities, except that 10 & 15 meters never happened to the
USA, much less to EU.  The hoped-for 40-meter opening to EU was another listen-only one-way propagation event at the Ramona location.

Last (and most important) was the VOLTA RTTY contest. The same dismal upper band
conditions existed, altho the 20-meter RTTY "corridor" produced a handful of QSOs.  Moving
down to 40-meters @01:35z, WQ6X kept a run frequency active for over 90-minutes, interspersed
with a brief appearance on 80-meters.  

Eventually, when there were no new stations on 40-meters (and 20 was too "long"), it was time
for a break to come back at 09:30z to hopefully a band full of Asian stations.  In fact, only 7N2UQC made it into the 40-meter log, with an S-9 signal no less.  What happened to other Asian stations - there were none to be heard.

Thanks to the Reverse Beacon Network (RBN), it was clear that the WQ6X signal WAS making
a presence.  The fact there were so few replies says more about poor participation from operators
in the areas that could hear my signal.

One of the drawbacks of a 24-hour contest ending at 12:00z is that there are no next-day "DO overs".  Considering that 80+% of the QSOs were made on 40-meters, the contest became an SOSB-40 log submission.  According to 3830 Scores, WQ6X was the only entry in the SOSB-40 category.

With "plenty of time on my hands" on Sunday, it was time to create an internet-based software
manual for the upcoming-release of the WQ6X DX Beacon Tracker Windoze software APP. 
([CLICK HERE] to find out more).

DiD YOU work the 2025 VOLTA RTTY Contest?

Is WQ6X in YOUR LoG?