WQ6X Weidles thru another QRP BARTG HF RTTY Contest

One of the CooL things about the British Amateur Radio Teleprinter Group (BARTG) contest is its 02:00z start (7Pm PDT), instead of the usual 00:00z beginning of most European-based radiosport contests.  Unfortunately, thanks to moving sheets of geomagnetic noise, 10 & 15 meters were already over for the day.  By the time I arrived in Concord (05:35z), 20-meters was barely functional (RTTY-wise).  While 40-meters was more-or-less open, the RTTY participation was sparse, even more-so
on 80-meters.

The decision was to re-evaluate the recently introduced ad-HOC RTY system which uses a RigExpert PLUS CAT-control unit to key the PTT of the onsite Yaesu FT-2000 transceiver which in turn keys the footswitch jack on the rear of the Elecraft K3/0-Mini control head.

Stereo-RTTY audio is intercepted from the 8-Codec drivers installed by the RigExpert installation.  Receive audio is fed thru a pair of analog Autek QF-1A filters enabling the operator to PEAK each RTTY tone separately, which subtlety improves MMTTY's decoding algorithms, reducing the number of repeats on the receive end.

Unfortunately, this was the weekend of frequent/annoying internet dropouts, requiring repeats on even the strongest of signals (Bummer Dewd).  For calling a lengthy CQ (w/o dropouts). the F1-CQ key RTTY tones were recorded into the radio's DVK (voice keyer) #1.  Pressing/holding Key-1 puts the transceiver in repeat mode, which can be interrupted by pressing F1, followed by the [ESC] Key.

Reflecting back on just this last weekend alone, I was amazed at the myriads of things that can create operator disruption, at nearly any moment during a radiosport contest event.  Included in this list are:

• - Internet Dropouts
• - Internet Stuttering
• - Remote radio Blatantly disconnecting
• - Poor internet latency on the remote end.
• - Space-WX storms littered throughout the weekend
• - Swarms of FT-8 stations moving in on the run frequency.
• - N1MM software going into random loops and then recovering
• - Other digital QRM, sounding like R2-D2, a data cranker or cake-mixing sound.
• - Stations who move up slowly on my run frequency, requiring me to move up, ad infinitum.

There were even moments when virtually all of the above situations were occurring simultaneously.

Nevertheless, a reasonable contest effort was obtained.  

One of my MAIN operating goals was to significantly surpass last year's 2nd-Place for North America.  It would seem that goal was not only accomplished, quite early in the weekend.

DiD YOU work the BARTG RTTY Contest?

Is WQ6X in YOUR LoG?