BARTG Sprint Contest, 25.-26. January 2003
HB9CZF - SOAB LP
Rig: K2 with 50W; Ant: 3el for 10, 15, and 20m; 41m LW for 40 and 80m.
RTTY: MMTTY Ver 1.63
These were my first RTTY QSOs as well as my first RTTY Contest. I arrived at my hut and the first thing I had to do was to put up the 160m dipol for the CQ 160m Contest. While I was climbing the tower and attaching the ends to two trees the central heating was warming up the shack. For the RTTY Contest I brought my K2, DIGI-1 interface and an "old" notebook running MMTTY version 1.63. Over christmas I already used my K2 and DIGI-1 interface for a couple of PSK31 QSOs and therefore, I knew it works. The contest already started and I scanned 15m but MMTTY could not decode any signal. Firstly I had to train my ears and listen for 2115 Hz tones which is very high compared to 700Hz CW. Secondly I figured out that the filters in my K2 were tuned for SSB and not RTTY. GRAM - a spectrum analyzer on my PC - helped to move the filters from SSB up to 2115/2285 Hz. This task was performed within a few minutes. Now back to MMTTY and suddenly all signals were decoded. James, W4LC, was my very first RTTY QSO and I typed the exchange directly from the keyboard.
As a preparation for the contest I found on the internet that in the short run I could use "plain" MMTTY or N1MM-Contest-Logger. Due to the fact that my PC is a 90MHz modell I had to abandon the idea of using N1MM and MMTTY was left over. Initially I was a bit confused with the many parameters I could set (wrongly). But with help of the manual I even figured out how to configure the function keys and how to run contest-QSO in Running- and S&P-mode. MMTTY even includes double-log checking.
In about 11 hours I worked 262 QSO and WAC was achieved after 2 hours.
Conclusions: I found another interesting contest mode: RTTY. I have to adjust the filters in my K2. Right now the smallest bandwidth is 1.6kHz. I always thought CW contests are very relaxing (tnx TRLog) but RTTY with 3 mouse-clicks per QSO is even better :-) For QSL-ing I'm still using the old way of paper-QSL-cards but in parallel I upload my log to eQSL.cc. I was really surprised how many RTTY-eQSL's I already received. The same weekend I participated in CQ 160m CW-Contest where I have not even got a hand full. RTTY-guys seem to be closer to fancy things like eQSL compared to 160m-gentleman.
How does everybody analyze their contest-log ? For CW I always use TRLog but what about RTTY? MMTTY can create Cabrillo- as well as ADIF-files. As a try I imported the ADIF-file to N1MM, rescored but the score I see there is wrong. Hmmm, in the end I did it manually and will leave final judgement to John, GW4SKA.
Claimed Score
Band Contacts DXCC JA,W,VE,VK
---- -------- ---- ----------
3.5 33
7 35
14 74
21 112
28 8
Total 262 45 18
Final Score : 262 * (45 + 18) * 6 = 99036
Rate Sheet
QSO/Pref by hour and band
QSO/Dx+Ca+Co by hour and band
Hour 80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total Cumm OffTime
D1-1400Z - - - 3/5 - 3/5 3/5 D1-1500Z - - 9/6 14/8 2/1 25/15 28/20 D1-1600Z --+-- --+-- 10/3 9/5 4/4 23/12 51/32 D1-1700Z - - - 23/4 - 23/4 74/36 D1-1800Z - - 11/1 7/3 - 18/4 92/40 D1-1900Z - 12/3 - - - 12/3 104/43 35 D1-2000Z - 6/1 - - - 6/1 110/44 43 D1-2100Z 27/7 - - - - 27/7 137/51 D1-2200Z 6/1 7/2 - - - 13/3 150/54 11 D1-2300Z - - - - - 0/0 150/54 60 D2-0000Z --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- 0/0 150/54 60 D2-0100Z - - - - - 0/0 150/54 60 D2-0200Z - - - - - 0/0 150/54 60 D2-0300Z - - - - - 0/0 150/54 60 D2-0400Z - - - - - 0/0 150/54 60 D2-0500Z - - - - - 0/0 150/54 60 D2-0600Z - - - - - 0/0 150/54 60 D2-0700Z - 10/2 - 8/3 - 18/5 168/59 18 D2-0800Z --+-- --+-- 16/1 12/4 --+-- 28/5 196/64 D2-0900Z - - 9/0 16/1 - 25/1 221/65 D2-1000Z - - 14/1 11/0 2/0 27/1 248/66 D2-1100Z - - 5/0 9/3 - 14/3 262/69
Total: 33/8 35/8 74/12 112/36 8/5
Country Distribution
80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total
4X 1 1
5B 1 1 1 3
A4 1 1
CT 1 1 2
CX 1 2 3
DL 2 1 3
EA 2 1 3
EA8 1 1
EA9 1 1
EU 1 1 2
F 1 1 2
FR 1 1
G 1 3 4
HA 1 1 2
HK 1 1
HL 1 1 2
I 1 2 3 1 7
JA 1 6 7
JY 1 1 1 3
K 9 38 3 50
KP4 1 1
LA 1 1
LU 1 1 2
LY 2 1 2 1 6
LZ 2 1 1 1 5
OH 1 2 1 4
OK 2 2 1 2 7
OM 1 1
PA 1 1
PY 3 1 4
SM 1 1 2
SP 4 4 8
SV 3 3 4 10
TA 1 1
UA 3 3 13 14 33
UA9 1 3 9 1 14
UN 2 3 5
UR 5 8 14 7 34
VE 2 1 3
VK 1 1 2
XE 2 2
YL 2 1 3 6
YO 3 2 1 6
YU 2 1 1 4
ZL 1 1
Continent List
80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total %
NA 0 0 9 43 4 56 21.4
EU 32 30 55 36 0 153 58.4
AF 0 0 0 2 1 3 1.1
SA 0 0 1 7 2 10 3.8
OC 0 0 2 1 0 3 1.1
AS 1 5 7 23 1 37 14.1