WQ6X Works a WEIRD W.W. RTTY Contest

 

Next to the ARRL RTTY Roundup (RU) contest the CQ W.W. RTTY GiG is one of the events that got me HOOKed on RTTY.  This event winds down September in a nice lazy way.  Because I don't expect to make any BiG score in this contest, I use the event to test run new equipment and/or contest software changes.

Last year I wrote a couple of BLOGs about the CQ W.W. RTTY contest.

• [X] - BLAST from the Past: CQ W.W. RTTY Contest
• [X] - WQ6X Runs a Raucous but Riske' CQ W.W. RTTY Contest

Like every September, the Maine QSO Party (MEQP) is always a backdrop, and always
a disappointment because few Maine stations actually play in their own QSO party event. 
Before I finally got a taste of propagation openings to New England, the MEQP was long over. 
Also disappointing this year, was POOR propagation to Asia of all places.  Skipping signals
"across the pond" yielded only a handful of QSOs - Bummer Dewd.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The GOAL of the CQ W.W. contests is to work as many ZONES as possible first, followed by as many countries we can work in those Zones.  In the W.W. RTTY contest, a THIRD multiplier is added in the form of USA states and Canadian provinces. While USA contacts are only worth 1-Point (and Canadians 2-Points), the states/provinces as multipliers makes it worthwhile to give North American stations a listen.

While the Solar Flux Index (SFI) has been hovering in the 80's this past week, the lower band propagation (80 & 40 meters) way overshadowed the upper bands.  10-meters was a no-show
and 15-meters was a barely-show at this receive-vortex QTH, altho other California stations
worked DOZENS of stations, even into Europe and Africa - lucky them.

LoTs of "local" CA stations came thru by way of what I will call "back flutter propagation". 
Later, when EU stations finally came thru on 20-meters via "polar flutter", I initially discounted
them as "local" stations (worth only 1-point, instead of 3-points for Europe) until the decoder displayed callsigns that were CLEARLY European.

Eventually after Europe faded from the decoder screen on Sunday, because E. Asia is either
sleeping or commuting to work, altho there was a propagation opening to Asia, the only available operators to work were those old timers who are retired and no longer commuting.

With RTTY I learned NoT to accidentally put the decoder screen in Pause mode, leaving it
unattended for hours.  Coming into the shack after doing a CQP presentation for the Amateur
Radio Club of Alameda (ARCA), according to the Task Mangler, something had taken over the CPU. 
Putting the decoder back into GREEN operation mode unleashed a seemingly infinite flood of hours-old previously decoded text.  N1MM wasn't responding and needed to be TERMINATED.  En route to that, it was noticed that MMTTY had acquired a several hundred MB memory footprint, which kept it locked in memory.  Also terminating MMTTY returned the CPU to its [relatively] quite mode.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Because this was my 1st CQ WW RTTY GiG from the Concord location in quite awhile,
we could easily say Miss Addams, that this was indeed another weekend of learning.

What about YOU?  DiD You Enjoy a Weekend of Learning?

DiD YOU run the CQ W.W. RTTY Contest this weekend?

Is WQ6X in YOUR LoG?