AA5AU Contest Notes – 2008 CQ WPX RTTY

I was really excited about this year’s WPX RTTY contest. As I’ve settled down from Katrina renovations, I’m able to spend more time at the radio. For weeks I was thinking hard about how to improve my score. My biggest downfall in this contest is trying to overcome the geographical disadvantage I have. Since we are at the low point in the sunspot cycle, I decided to make a strategy that included hitting the low bands hard both nights. My thinking was that 15 meters would be poor as it has been for the past year or so. Without 10 &15 meters, I’m unable to fully utilize both radios during the daytime hours. I would substitute 15 meters with 40 meters as long as there were stations to work on 40. I would not look at 10 at all unless a South American multiplier showed up there on Sunday. I also wanted to finish the contest early on Sunday, February 10th, which is the 10th anniversary of the day I met my wife. I wanted to spend some time with her. My plan was to end the contest at 1600Z.

I set some lofty goals this year, perhaps they weren’t lofty enough. I wanted to make 2000 contacts and 4000 QSO points to go along with at least 500 multipliers. That would give me a score of 2 million points. I’ve never topped 2 million points in WPX so I was going to work hard to make it this year. I visualized working 40 and 80 meters hard both nights with a 2 hours rest period somewhere between 0800-1000Z. That was the plan. This is what really happened…

I had to work all day Friday so there would be no rest before the contest started at 6 p.m. local time. I got home around 4 p.m. and BBQ’d chicken breasts on the outside grill. It was a beautiful southern Louisiana evening. It was dry and clear and not a cloud in the sky. It was perfect for a night of low band contesting. I had toyed with the idea of starting on 20 and 40, but I wanted to stick to my strategy so I started on 40 and 80. The low bands were in good shape when the contest started. Signals were good and there were plenty of them on both 40 and 80. My first hour rate was 88 and I thought that was OK but not great. The next hour was only 71 and the third hour was the same. The fourth hour was 69. At least I was consistent. I started thinking what I think about a lot in this contest – why can I not achieve the same rates in WPX RTTY as I do in the ARRL Roundup? It must be that there are a lot more USA stations in the Roundup. The WPX is more of a DX-type contest so I shouldn’t be surprised at the lower rates when running low power. I worked S54E and TM7Z on 80 meters while S&P. It’s tough to work EU on 80 from here. I knew the east coast guys were having a blast with these good conditions on 80 meters. In the fifth hour I had my highest rate of 97, then it dropped dramatically to 53, 56 and 49 in the next three hours. Shortly after 0800Z I took my first break. My plan of taking only a two hour break didn’t work. When the alarm went off I was dead asleep and my wife had to wake me. I was tired so decided to sleep another hour. My planned two hour break turned into 3 and half hours but it ended up being OK. There wasn’t much action on 40 or 80 when I restarted just after 1130Z. My first hour back only netted about 40 contacts.

The shack window faces the southeast. I normally open the blinds in the morning to keep track of when it’s starting to get light outside. Just as it starts to get light, I go to 20 meters (in high sunspot years I usually go to 20 earlier because it opens earlier). At 1215Z I went to 20 meters as I could see the sky lighten slightly from total darkness. There wasn’t a signal on the band. But I didn’t go back to 80. Instead I tuned and waited. Five minutes later it was like someone turned on a switch and 20 meters was instantly open to EU. Since the rate was not so great on the 40M radio, I did something I don’t normally do – I was S&P on both radios (20 and 40). I used packet spots to jump from EU multiplier to EU multiplier on 20 meters. Not much was going on 40 so I CQ’d down on 7031 kHz while packet hopping on 20. I was going for three pointers and new mults on 20 because it was too early for me to CQ. 20 meters was just OK as the K index had risen to 3; it wasn’t a great opening. I struggled with rate hours of 66, 57, 52 and 58. In the meantime, 40 was just not producing. I was worried. My plan might not work. I went to 15 at 1430Z to find European signals! Oh my… The rate increased to 80 starting at 1600Z as both 15 and 20 got better. In the next four hours I got into a decent rhythm and the rate stayed steady. I kept saying to myself that I needed to take a break after 1800Z, but the bands were just too good. It’s like surfing. You have to ride the wave when you get it. So that’s what I did.

Hour by hour kept passing and I kept thinking I needed to take a break, but I didn’t. Sometime after 2000Z I left 15 meters to go back to 40. Signals were picking up there so I kept going even though the rate was not so great. Finally at 2400Z I took a break for dinner. I had 1335 contacts and 458 mults. I had to rethink my strategy and I was pretty tired. I slept an hour and ate dinner. When I came back to the shack at 0200Z there was something terribly wrong with both 40 and 80 meters. Signals were warbled on both bands. It was hard copying even the strongest stations. I knew I was wasting my time so I quit after only an hour and took another break. I tried to sleep but couldn’t. I went back to the radio and the low bands were better but the rate was slow and multipliers were hard to come by. Had I not committed to spending Sunday with Shay, I probably would have quit and went to bed. But I continued on until 0645Z.

I restarted on 40 and 80 again at 1146Z. I looked at my totals; 1521 Q’s and only 475 mults. I was disappointed with the multiplier total so I decided I would hunt mults the rest of the way out. There were a few new ones on 40 that morning and when I went to 20 meters at 1215Z the band had just opened and just like Saturday it was like someone flipped a switch. It went from zero signals to a crowded band in a hurry and I was able to click on multipliers on the bandmap and pick up multiplier after multiplier on 20 while CQ’ing on the lower end of 40. 20 meters was better Sunday morning. In the first hour back I worked 17 new multipliers, then 19, 12, 11 and 12 the last hour to end up with 546. My rate was only about 30/hr while I hunted multipliers but when I topped the 2 million point total I was really happy. I ended the contest at 1700Z.

Looking back at the numbers, I would have done things much different had I wanted to maximize the score. But Sunday with Shay was too important in comparison to the contest. Even had I not wasted time on the low bands Saturday night, I still would not have come close to Jose N1BAA who operated from his home QTH as KS1Y. He absolutely obliterated the USA record and congratulations to him for an outstanding effort. He didn’t even know he had smashed the record until I sent him a congratulatory E-mail after seeing his score posted on the 3830 reflector on Monday. I was really proud of him. And he did it from his home QTH which means more in my eyes. Way to go Jose!

Sunday with Shay was very nice. I was tired from the contest but we had a great day together. Ending the contest early to be with her was well worth it. After all, it was my best ever WPX RTTY and I’m proud of my effort.

2008 CQWW WPX RTTY Contest Claimed Score

Call: AA5AU
Operator(s): AA5AU
Station: AA5AU

Class: SOAB LP
QTH: LA
Operating Time (hrs): 30
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
Band QSOs Pts
—————–
80: 395 1012
40: 475 1378
20: 591 1139
15: 210 364
10: 0 0
—————–
Total: 1671 3893 Prefixes = 546 Total Score = 2,125,578

Station A:
Icom IC-756 PRO III transceiver w/Icom CT-14 CI-V interface
Ameritron AL-80B amplifier running 120-130 watts
JPS NIR-12 Dual DSP audio filter
Dell 2.66 GHz Pentium 4 running WriteLog for Windows under Windows XP Pro
WriteLog for Windows version 10.65C
MMTTY Plug-in for WriteLog in the main Rttyrite window
HAL DXP-38 in a cloned Rttyrite window for receive only
Icom PS-60 power supply
RigRunner DC power distribution panel

Station B:
Kenwood TS-870 transceiver
Ameritron AL-80B amplifier running 120-130 watts
JPS NIR-12 Dual DSP audio filter
Dell 1.66 GHz Inspiron I6400 T2300 running WriteLog for Windows under Windows Media Center Edition
WriteLog for Windows version 10.65C
MICROHAM micro Keyer
MMTTY Plug-in for WriteLog in the main Rttyrite window
HAL DXP-38 in a cloned Rttyrite window for receive only
Astron PR-40 power supply
RigRunner DC power distribution panel

Antennas:
Cushcraft A3S triband yagi at 66′ controlled by an M2 2800 positioner and RC2800P-A controller
Cushcraft rotable D40 dipole at 72′
Cushcraft A3S triband yagi @ 45′ controlled by a Yaesu G-800S rotator
80 meter inverted vee with apex at 60′
Butternut HF2V 40/80 meter vertical ground-mounted in a swamp with eight 40′ radials