This weekend I entered the Worked All Europe RTTY Contest. This was my first time to try out QTCs. I’m glad that I did this in RTTY rather than CW. The N1MM set up for QTCs works very well. The online instructions are superb and K8UT has an online video that takes you through the process. This is an excellent way to prepare for the contest.
My overall score was 138,510 point with 325 QSOs, 189 QTCs, and 270 multipliers. For this contest I set up my 15 meter Moxon and hand rotated it to the area of choice. Mostly it was pointed to Europe. The day prior to the contest I had the Moxon in the air and managed to work a new RTTY country — ZD7VC on St. Helena. He was also on during the WAE contest but I couldn’t get through the pile up.
I also managed to work a new RTTY country during the contest — T88ON, Palau. Very weak signal and fortunately no one else seemed to hear him at the time.
I will note that N1MM crashed once during the contest. I had just entered a QTC, pressed the enter button, and boom, everything was gone. Restarted just fine with no further problems but lost that QTC.
Fun contest and I look forward to working the next one. Thank you DARC for organizing it.
Hi Jim, I was on the air this weekend too at the WAE RTTY. For me it was the first time doing QTC’s too. The video is at: http://tinyurl.com/nl4fhg4
Great fun, although I did make some beginner errors. To click the entries you have to skip the ones that come in hosed. Of course I did try to fix them on the spot and then messed up the whole QTC-session.
Again we didn’t meet on the air, unfortunately. But……. I did spot your call when I exchange QTC’s with a station! So we’re getting closer 😉
73, Jim
Hi Jim,
We are getting closer to making that QSO — fun to hear that one of your QTCs had my call in it. On the hosed entries, I just clicked and let the system tel me that were no good, that way I didn’t get out of sync. Then the buttons would turn red on the entries that needed to be repeated. It worked.
I did have one moment when I tried to send my first QTC (as opposed to the few that I’d already received). After I sent them the station came back and said “your’re too weak, let me send mine”. No worries. That worked fine.
Good write up on WAE RTTY and Echolink on your blog. Take care and 73, Jim, K5ND
Jim,
This was my first stab at WAE and QTC. I did start Send/Receive QTC until Sunday sometime. I found K8UT’s online video which made it simple. I missed a lot of points. Next time……………..
I see we had a Q on 15m…..thanks.
73,
Randy, AA8R
Thanks for the Q, Randy. Once I got the hand of the QTCs they were fun.
73, Jim, K5ND