WQ6X Works Wickedly Weak WAE & JIDX Contests

Radiosport-wise, this is one weekend I never quite know what to do with.  As we near the end
of another long radiosport year, the QSO parties are largely over, leaving a handful of ARRL GiGs
and of course, the CQ W.W. Cw Thaing.  

Over the last dozen years team-NX6T has earned nearly a dozen "ToP MoP" plaques.  Last year
the JIDX contest committee added the Multi-2 category, which has served as a "BriBe" to move the
"BiG" stations out of the Multi-Single category.  

THOUGHT: If the winner of the M/S category is "ToP MoP", would the winner 

of the Multi-2 category be a "ToP 2-MoP"?

Nestled around the Japanese JIDX GiG is the WAE RTTY contest.  The WAE has an interesting approach: we can work ANYONE worldwide, however, QTC traffic can only be transacted between stations on OTHER continents - no intra-continent traffic handling is allowed.  (Luckily, most contest logging software enforces this requirement,)

To create the most effective WAE RTTY operating, N1MM+ (w/12 definable function keys) easily automates the details, enabling the operator to focus on the contest overall.  The WAE RTTY GiG
is a FUN contest, accompanied by compounding frustration when the DX propagation is PooR - like this last weekend.  While there were no Space-WX storms, for the most part (throughout the weekend) signal levels seemed marginal, overall.

In RTTY contests, slow-fading creates the weird situation where a station's callsign will decode perfectly, while the rest disappears into JIBBERISH.  Everything sent by each custom-programmed FKEY is intended to MINIMIZE this problem.  

RTTY contests ALSO bring up two radiosport ethics situations which I detailed in PART 1
of the Blog series on The Role of Respect in Radiosport.

Friday evening's RTTY operating gave the recently rewired (AGAIN!) audio cabling its 1st-live
test-run.  Other than 8JK ladder-line RF in the shack creating some weird squawks in receive audio, RTTY copy itself ran splendidly.

Reading soapbox comments from other USA contesters confirms my experience  of intentional QRM on 40-meters after 08:30z.  For THIS contest event it came in the form of what I can only describe as "Swish Bubbling": bubbling noises swishing around the run frequency.  At 12:52z it materialized in the form of CRASHING Noises, not atmospherically-generated.   There was also some sort of pulse radar on 20-meters, which sounded like playing cards against bicycle spokes.  Eventually the radar showed up near 40-meters, just as obnoxious.

However the REAL QRM problem came from the myriad of Indonesian stations who can BARELY speak English, yet find it appropriate to move less than 1Kc below the run frequency and call "CQ JIDX".  Knowing that they won't understand any verbal edict to QSY, my quick solution was to ZERO-beat them and call my own CQ.  Running nearly 1500 watts (with antennas pointed RIGHT AT them), I can easily make their CQ-time unproductive - even WORTHLESS.  When they quickly move, I return to the original run frequency like nothing happened - taking advantage of having been previously SPOTTED by the spotting-nets.

On Ssb, it can be argued that they happened to be near the run frequency "by accident". 
With RTTY,  when I encounter "Perfect copy" QRM on a purposely-chosen oddball/obscure
run frequency, I know it didn't happen by accident; yet it occurs dozens of times in every RTTY contest.

My frustration with the WAE RTTY GiG is how easy it was to make QSOs, yet how nearly impossible it was to find stations outside North America willing/able who could/would copy my signals reliably enough to exchange QTC traffic.  Bottom-line: no QTC traffic was passed, reducing the ending score by nearly 50%.   This is of course why (w/o ruining the run-rate) we should DUMP QTC traffic as quickly as we accumulate it; and yes, easier said than done.  Oh wail, luckily it was only a simple "play-around-in" RTTY exercise.

I put the JIDX contest (as well as my body) to bed at 13:00z (5am) Sunday morning. 
With more-or-less 5 hours sleep it was time to pass my QTC traffic and finish off the WAE GiG..  Unfortunately, while WQ6X ran until the 23:59:59 end time, there were never any non-NA signals reliable enough to pass QTC traffic, so once again, WQ6X gets stuck with over 100+ undelivered
QTC messages.  While there were reasonably LOUD South American stations, the QSB (fading)
was so fierce that attempting to pass QTC's would have been a frustrating time-wasting experience.

The bottom-line here is that 2 more contests were added to the 2021 radiosport list taking us to 112  events for the year.  On the operational-end of things the recently revamped audio cabling was given
a thorough shakedown, identifying ground loops that need to be resolved after the contest weekend.  A brief test of a Mustang mobile-based stereo equalizer being considered for the WQ6X operation turned out to seriously FAIL expectations and has been banished back to the test bench in Alameda for further evaluation.

We were quite disappointed by the lack of JA participation in general and lack of JA stations calling CQ.  It turns out, several of the prominent JA stations (ex: JH4UYB) were busy playing the the WAE RTTY GiG and not their own country's DX contest.  HuH???  This was expressed by none other than JA8RWU himself:

Enjoyed a part-time effort. Condx was not good. Called all. They say not many JA, yep vy sri... Mni tnx for the QSOs. Cu next year! 73's Akira, JA8RWU

When it was all over, looking at the 3830 Scores posts revealed that NX6T 
allegedly secured 1st-place for the Multi-single category (our nemesis 
K3EST took the bait
and ran as a Multi-2 operation).  

While WQ6X placed at the bottom of the WAE heap, a log was of course submitted for the WAE contest, keeping the callsign on the [so-called] "mailing list" for 2022's WAE GiGs.

DiD YOU work the JIDX and/or WAE  contests?

Is NX6T or WQ6X in YOUR LoGs?