Had a great time in the CQ World Wide RTTY Contest. I entered on a single band — 15 meters. The hero of the effort was my 15 meter two-element Moxon beam that I built from plans published in QST a few years ago. You can see the original post here and the page with video here. Entering a single band allowed me to get some sleep in the evenings when the band was dead. Even so, I put in a solid 25 hours over the 48 hour period of the contest.
My total score was 171,109 points from 515 QSOs with 74 countries and 28 CQ Zones. This is easily one of my best efforts. My best CW score never broke 400 and my previous best RTTY score just topped 400. The effort also added two new countries — United Arab Emirates and Indonesia to my total country count (now 220) and added 15 countries to my RTTY count (now 112). Next task is to send out all the QSL cards… Of course, I use Logbook of the World but want the cards for the CQ DX RTTY Award.
Prior to the contest I did some work on the push-up mast mounting system. Used fence post mounts on the deck, worked like a champ. See the photos below. Currently contemplating a tri-band beam that can be easily assembled and disassembled for these contests. Maybe that will be in place next year.
Nice going Jim! I haven’t done a lot of RTTY contesting but I enjoy it when I do. It sure is fun – almost as much fun to me as CW. I pulled together an interface and made 111 QSOs which was pretty good for me. Sorry I missed you on 15m but I made most of my Qs there.
Looking forward to JOTA! 73
Thanks for your note, Frank. I’ve also done a lot of CW contesting and only recently got into RTTY. I actually prefer RTTY. I can even do a bit of SO2V without my head caving in from trying to catch the CW calls!
JOTA should be good this year. The station registration process is well ahead of last year. Which either means that we’ll have more stations on the air or that they are just not waiting until the last minute to register. Have fun!
73, Jim, K5ND