WQ6X Wangles another Weird Triple-contest Weekend

The Spring solstice weekend found me bouncing between the radiosport setup @W7AYT's QTH
in Concord and working with clients @ my office in Alameda.  Looking at the WA7BNM contest calendar found 3 events worthy of playing around in:

1. [X] - The BARTG HF RTTY Contest
2. [X] - The Russian DX Contest
3. [X] - The Virginia QSO Party - VQP

I like the BARTG GiG because it begins and ends at 02:00z (7pm Friday/Sunday evenings)
and runs a full 48 hours, offering 2 to 3 access periods for each frequency band.  On weekends
like this one (with its accompanying horrible Space-WX), having multiple opportunities on each
band can make up for lost propagation opportunities due to short-term jumps in the solar K-Index.

Aside from intermittent system maintenance, I pretty much had free-roaming access to both stations (STN-1 & STN-2) in Fallbrook.  This access would turnout to be crucial later on Saturday evening.

A "New" computer was destined for Station #2, however that would not happen until Saturday afternoon.  Unfortunately the rotor controls for both the C-31 & Shorty-40/Stepp-IR yagi's can
only be run from Station-2; I've had to accept their default position for over a week.  

With the Shorty-40 defaulted to 30-degrees, that fixed the Stepp-IR to 300/120 degrees
(BI-Directionally).  On Friday/Saturday the only thing missing was direct-access to Asia/South America on 40-meters, altho a handful of stations from those areas came thru anyway. 
Being a 48-hour contest, luckily there are multiple opportunities for each band (Space-WX
permitting of course).

Schedule-wise, while the Russian DX and VAQP events began @12:00z, my work schedule kept
me off the air until mid-Saturday afternoon.  Then, shortly after I got started, a number of things occurred during the contest weekend.:

• On Saturday afternoon, a LOUD AA9L was heard calling "CQ BARTG" on one of my favorite RTTY frequencies: 14108.08.  Calling him elicited no response, he kept calling
  in a loop and not hearing anyone.  I mentioned this on Facebook: "He's either lost his internet connection after using auto-repeat, or, he's passed out DRUNK on the keyboard..... OR..... He's DEAD! This is why I NEVER use auto repeat (Ctrl-R) when using the internet. If the connection dies, there is no way I can stop it. I sent him an e-mail asking about this".  His reply to me was that he started up the CQ call and got called away from the operator chair - "I'll never do THAT again" he replied back.  I just thot that he didn't like me - Heheheh.
  
   
• AT 07:38 while tuning the low-end of 40-CW looking for a RUN frequency to continue
  the Russian DX contest, with the Shorty-40 pointed to Asia, I came across the following reasonably strong CW call on 7007.2: ZM2VPR/Z JCG1800B/D.  This call would be repeated until a JA station called in and they exchanged some sort of numeric information.  For WQ6X, the 1st chosen Run Frequency was 7009.09; with the
  goal of being "2nd-in-line" for JA contacts.
  
  

By 11:30pm (06:30z) there were no new RTTY stations to work, making it time to switch to the Russian DX contest running CW.  Setting up a log in N1MM, left me with the discovery that the CW cabling mechanism had been accidentally kicked loose during the Station #2 upgrade.  No problem, I'll switch to Station-2 and run DXLOG; except being a new drive the COM port settings had not been installed.  A last minute call to KI6RRN brought in late-nite IT tech support.  The 1st CW QSO made it into the log @ 07:06z.  After some jerky S&P, for the next 4 hours I ran frequencies:

• 7009.09 - 07:46z - 10:12z
• 7007.07 - 10:15z - 10:37z
• 7006.06 - 10:39z - 11:45z
• 7007.07 - 11:49z - 12:00z
  

The frequency changes were to move away from illegal Indonesian Ssb activity that
kept encroaching on the run frequency (Ssb should be above 7.050, NoT below 7.025).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At 12:00z the Russian 128 QSO CW GiG was over and Part 2 of the VQP started up again. 
Unfortunately, the VQP in-state participation was so POOR, only one station could be heard
and worked.  We can't blame poor propagation - other east coast stations came thru "loud and clear".  My beef with most QSO parties is the lack of in-state participation.  They send us e-mails
to join them, and then, they don't participate.  HuH?

For the remainder of Sunday we were left with the remainder of the BARTG RTTY GiG.  At 16:15z I was back in run mode
on 20 meters.  

Moving to 14111.11 at 16:22z, I was
met by some IDIOT who chose to play BURSTS of RTTY on top of my CQ's.  

With some clever tuning and timing, QSOs continued to be made.  Instead of jamming ME, this station should have been making QSOs and winning 1st-place certificates
for his/her self.

Because WM6Y made it onsite to fix the Station-1 CW cable, I had to schedule
my afternoon OP-time accordingly.

 

By 02:00z, it was all over.  Just screwing around throughout the weekend, over 400 QSOs made it to the log, giving the antennas and the KPA-1500 amplifiers a good workout.  I was instructed to keep the amp temperature under 70-c degrees during the weekend.  A check with Elecraft informed us that thanks to the unique heatsink design, the KPA-1500 can run RTTY easily at 90-c, altho I will never [knowingly] take it that high.

As a side note, because working Asia was an important aspect of BOTH contests, an hourly check was made of the Russian military beacons on ~7.039.  While the "K" beacon has been active the last few weeks, it was again AWOL during this contest period.  I wonder what this is REALLY all about.

After submitting the logs and 3830 Scores, it would seem that:

•  In BARTG WQ6X took 18th place overall, 13th place for USA and 2nd place for the Left Coast.
• For the Russian DX CW contest SOSB-40 entry, WQ6X took 18th place overall and 1st place for USA - GO Figure.

Did YOU work the BARTG RTTY and Russian DX Contests?

Is WQ6X in YOUR Log?