What a difference a few months makes. In February for the NAQP RTTY I was able to make 230 QSOs without too much trouble. For this month’s event I managed to get just 154 into the logbook. And that was a struggle. Of course in both contests I was running QRP, which is generally a tough road. And it appears that the sunspots have left us entirely at the moment.
All bands were down for me save for twenty where I worked 10 more Qs than in February (up to 88 this time). Fifteen meters is usually my go-to band but only 9 Qs this time. All this was on my verticals except for 80 meters where I put up a temporary inverted vee. That made a pretty big difference over my Butternut HF2V. I had been hoping that a higher radiation angle would bring in more Qs from closer stations. That proved correct. But I wasn’t able to top my 80 meter numbers from February.
We’ll see how everyone else does. I was able to win the QRP section in February. Don’t have much hope of that happening this month.
Thanks to everyone who worked hard to print my puny signal. W4GKM gets special recognition for working me on 15 through 80 meters.
