Monday, October 20, 2025

WQ6X Wanders through another 5-contest radiosport weekend

It would seem that RTTY contests often occur in clusters, in early spring and then again in Autumn. 
This year, the 3rd weekend in October brought us the Japanese-based JARTS RTTY contest as a
48-hour backdrop and playing field for 2 state QSO parties, the Stew Perry SP-160 contest and the Worked All Germany (WAG) GoG, which as it turns out, I had little time for.  The decision was made
to run all the events using STN-1 at the WA6TQT superstation in Anza California.  

Because Anza is technically not RTTY-equipped, to make it all work, the RRC-1258 box (which controls the K3 radio on the other end) is itself com-port controlled by a RIG Expert PLUS rig
control unit.  It's all accomplished by way of a morass of cables hidden in a cubby hole on the operating desk.  Because the RX audio wanders its way through a Radio Shaft 16-channel
equalizer into a pair of Autek QF-1A analog audio filters, what I call "STEREO RTTY" comes
into play to enhance the character decoding process.

The original plan was to run the JARTS GiG @55-watts and rest at the QRP-level, until I noticed the Space-WX storms crawling all over the weekend.  Because the GiGs were all intertwined, it suddenly seemed way too complicated, leaving the decision to run everything @90-watts, returning the JARTS GiG to the 55-watt level.

Despite the Space-WX storms, the band condx. were most exceptional into Europe and W. Africa
on10 & 15 meters.  It may be signals between NY and the left coast may have been skipping over their intended locations.  Around 02:00z, it was finally time to give 160-meters a look.  Thanks to a pair of solar storms, the high noise-level on 160 was no surprise.  The decision to NoT run QRP
was certainly vindicated.  Calling CQ, only RBN receivers as far as Kansas could hear WQ6X
on 160-meters, and then not very loud. 

An hour into the SP-160 GiG, after doing a RTTY signal check on 40-meters, suddenly the switching network on the 160-meter Tri-Square failed to activate, creating a near-infinite SWR condition on that band, effectively ending WQ6X's Stew Perry contest run - time to finish the evening running RTTY.

While I thoroughly enjoyed the NYQP and ILQP GiGs, my only real beef is that both
events provided us with limited OP-time.  Ironically, while NYQP ran until 02:00z (7pm),
an opening to NY could not be expected by then, even using an 80-meter 4-Square array,
whereas on Sunday, despite an earlier QSO party ending, it was possible to put 5 80-meter
ILQP contacts into the log before it was over - GO Figure.

The JARTS RTTY contest ended @00:00z with 523 QSOs in 39 countries making it
to the WQ6X log kept locally at the run site in Concord (EB section).  While not a super
score by any means, it certainly surpasses anything I've ever done in this 48-hour RTTY
contest event.  ToTaL OP time for this event was close to 22-hours over the weekend.

DiD YOU work any of the above 5 radiosport events?

Is WQ6X in YOUR LoG?


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