Off With a Bang

As promised, KL2R is starting 2018 with great gusto. Several contests have helped the count, but so has the International Grid Chase and a quest for Worked All States on 80 meters, which will also give us 5BWAS. That means we're reasonably active shooting grey line to DX in the morning and evening. Europe, JA, VK, and North/South America are proving to be very workable on FT-8, when openings can be very brief (minutes), but long enough for the new mode. As of this date, we have 40 LoTW QSLs on 80 WAS, and 21 DXCC. A highlight was working Francesco IK0XBX after trying for about three weeks.

This brings me to WPX RTTY last weekend, which was a big blast. Saturday was busy in the shack. Dan KL1JP stopped by late morning and proceeded to spend several hours running on 20 meters, picking up on an early opening that really didn't abate until mid-afternoon. At that time John AL7ID, Paul KL4ET, and Pete KL4IT arrived for a demonstration and tutorial. It was a good time to give the latter two an intro to the shack, as we switched to 40 and 80 meters and the rates slowed down. Pete is a newbie to contesting, but Paul had some experience with WL7F/KL4SD SK running low power. In the end, 900 QSOs and 907k points was more than double the previous best from KL2R.

KL1JP in the middle of a six-hour 20m run for WPX RTTY.

NAQP RTTY from February

NAQP RTTY proved to be interesting.  I started off solo, and then Dan KL1JP stopped by to make it more fun as a multi-op contest (although we only used one radio).  Ten meters was a complete bust, and for some reason 15m never opened the way it usually does.  It's odd to see twice as many QSOs on 40 as on 15.  Twenty turned out to be the band we focused upon, mostly running, and not enough S&P time on the other bands for some better multiplier counts.

Many Canadian provinces were lacking, but VY0ERC called all the way from Ellesmere Island for a nice surprise.  Also, Andy VE9DX was able to reach out to us on 20 and 40m.  He is running 50 watts on  RTTY.  It is always a pleasure to work him!  Europeans and JAs called mightily at times, which is always very frustrating when trying to eek out a few new sections and states in a pileup

The boys at WL7CXP, about 40 miles west of KL2R, made a great effort and beat us handily with more multipliers on 15 and several on 80.  Here's what WL7F had to say about it, echoing several sentiments Dan and I had:

Well another RTTY Multi contest using the Skinny Dick’s club call WL7CXP.  This time we had Wes (WL7F), Carl (WL7BDO), and Paul (KL4ET) in the shack working the contest.  We started the contest out on 20M with KE1DS the fist contact from WA and ended the contest with W4MPB on 40M.

15M did not seem to open all day long really and did not hear a single signal on 10M throughout the day. This contest it seemed 20M was the go to band  for contacts which is a slight change from previous ones where 15M was the go-to band. The pace was a bit slower also which leads to good training time and time to hone skills on other aspects of operating. 40M was a good band for getting more multipliers and usually it is not as good so the solar cycle is definitely shifting. A few 80M stations from NVand CA made the log.

Paul worked VY0ERC, a weather station up in NU Canada, and Carl hauled in Japan even though someone came on the frequency and sent No JA. People really need to read rules and understand them. Guantanamo Bay was also on, but the pileup was too big. They were heard on 20 and 40 meters here.

Some of the statistics from WL7CXP:

Band   QSOs Sec

     3.5       3   2

7        73  28

     14      192  46

     21       52  52

 Total       320 100

Score: 32,320