P40L-P49Y Contest Summary Information

Comments:

I had high hopes of great conditions for this year’s Roundup. The solar indices Saturday morning put a damper on that. With A=9 and K=4, I began to worry. Further hope was that it would clear Sunday but the day started with A=32 and K=3. The A did “decrease” to 23 later on Sunday. Signals were muted here compared to similar years at this portion of the prior cycle.

Operationally, my QSO totals from 2012-2017 ranged from 3,500-3,800, so 3,150 this year was disappointing. Domestical mults ranged from 56 (48 US + 8 VE) to 60 (49 US + 11 VE) and I had 60 this year. But DX mults were down such that my 126 total this year is below the median of that 6-year period last cycle. DX participation seems down, anecdotally.

I’d like to think my operating skill continues to increase with practice, but now I’m not so sure! My best 60-minute rate was 220 QSOs/hour around the second clock hour, which is typical for when my peak rate occurs. But in 2018, I had a 242 60-minute peak rate. Of course, things other than operator skill contribute to these data so it’s hard to say whether I’m improving or regressing.

In general, my QSO and mult totals 12 hours in, when I take the major portion of the SO 6-hour off-time, was not far off that of the 6-year range mentioned above. The main difference in the final numbers was the Sunday data where previously rates were significantly higher.

The station performed great and felt solid, although there were a couple of issues. The Acom 2000 amplifier faulted out at the end of its 3-minute start-up cycle. Our property manager, P43A, has the same amplifier and had a similar problem in the past which was traced to an electrocuted gecko that had crawled in through the fan opening. Once that mess was cleaned up the unit has worked perfect. We have high hopes ours has an issue that can be also easily fixed.

Then, early Sunday morning, the KP-1500 faulted out saying the drive power exceeded 75 watts, but the K3 driving it was only set for 30 watts. I assumed I’d have to swap in another amplifier, but found that reducing the power to 15 watts eliminated the fault, although only 900 watts output was achieved. It only seems a problem on 10 meters and that was plenty of power for the band.

Beyond that, I had a couple of inside station issues that stumped me for a most of my planned preparation time. There were Bluetooth configuration problems with one of my keyboards and Logitech support knew less about their product than I do, but it took a few hours of phone support to realize that. Then, there was an obscure Baud rate setting in one P3 Band Scope that kept the K3 from connecting to its PC. That was another huge block of wasted time to finally figure out. The 10/15 rotor stuck in the middle of the contest but I was able to get it going by carefully rocking it back and forth from the rotor control box. There was some strong wind that was likely adding to the problem. I also forgot to bring my preferred headphones and some of the required cabling of one of the K3/P3 combos. Improvising was possible, but disconcerting and time consuming.

Saturday night we had a huge rainstorm that lasted over an hour, unusual for Aruba. The noise from the metal roof was deafening but RTTY doesn’t require precise hearing, so it didn’t affect me much in this contest.

A surprising number of stations worked me on all five bands, 59 in total, much higher than usual. I really appreciate that, especially since it seems participation continues to decrease, so more QSOs help us all. With the low rate on Sunday, I took to telling everyone I worked where my other radio was, if we hadn’t already worked on that other band. It was gratifying how many operators went there for a second QSO. Some where lightning-fast which displayed the superb functioning of their station. Thanks to all the ops whose calls are in the log. Although we do this contest thing individually, it wouldn’t be possible without everyone cooperating.

As always, thanks to Andy P49Y/AE6Y and John P40L/W6LD for my continued use of their station property. I’ve operated here over 50 times since 2005, mostly RTTY, some CW and very little SSB.

73,

Ed P49X (W0YK)

K3S/P3 (x3) with RigSelect for headphone audio steering/mixing
KPA-1500 and Alpha 86A (x2)
low-power BPFs, high-power BPFs, SixPak (x2), StackMatch (x2)
Green Heron rotor controllers (x3)
Networked ThinkPad X220s (x3, one for each radio), each with:
- WriteLog 12.86B
- MMTTY 1.70K (x2)
- 2Tone 21.03a encoder/decoders (x4)
- Mortty 2.0 with modified TinyFSK 1.1.0 sketch (shared on main & sub-RX)

Tower 1: 65’ with 2-element shorty-forty, 4-el 20m Yagi, 
80m Inverted-V, 2-el SteppIR at 35’ due north/south and double-L vertical
for 160m 

Tower 2: 55’ with single boom interlaced 5-el 15m and 6-el 10m Yagi 

Tower 3: 45’ with JK Mid-Tri tribander 

Beverages (x4): West US, East US, Europe, un-terminated Africa/VK/ZL
on K9AY switch

73,

Ed - P49X (W0YK)