P40L-P49Y Contest Summary Information

Comments:

This was a fun 24 hours contesting with not nearly the number and severity of issues I encountered in the September CQ WW RTTY Contest. Thanks to all participants, serious or otherwise, because it makes it great for everyone. I appreciate all callers, many of whom worked me on multiple bands despite not having per-band mults. 38 of you are in the log on all 5 bands.

I started on 15 and 20 which was, of course, a mistake. I should have been on 10 instead of 20 which was very muted. At 19 UTC, I moved the 20-meter radio to 10 and its rate increased 250% (see CBS data below). In good years, I enjoy 200+ rates in the first four hours of RU. This year, I finished the first 4 hours with just 761 QSOs, discouraging. It looked like I was headed for one of the worst results of my 18 years doing this contest from Aruba. It seemed I might have the lowest total QSOs ever, excluding the first couple of years. Certainly, it looked as though it would be below 3,000 as it has been since 2018. So, after the dismal start, I set 3,000 as a stretch goal, pretty sure I wouldn’t reach it, but it kept me motivated. At the end, I barely made it, to 3,016.

One high point was logging all 49 US mults by the 4th hour. As typical, my VE mults are lacking. My mult totals are mediocre because it’s hard (for me) to tune for mults on the second receivers while running rate on two radios, occasionally dealing with inevitable operational glitches. I can interleave S&P QSOs well enough in the two runs, but finding the mults to work is the issue. Packet is ideal for that task.

It seemed that participation was lower than prior years, based on a lower incoming rate of callers and historic QSO totals from this QTH. Of course, various band conditions were very different than the last several years, notably with a fully-functional 10 meters.

My records of the past 18 years of Roundup from here indicate a downward trend despite cycle variation. 20 meters was down, perhaps because 10 and 15 attracted so much activity. My plan to work 20 for a while, perhaps never going to 10 on Saturday, was clearly ill-conceived. Opposite of what worked in recent years.

Hope everyone enjoyed the weekend. See everyone on a few weeks for CQ WPX RTTY.

K3S/P3/KPod, Alpha 91B and Alpha 86
FilterMax low power bandpass filters, SixPak, two StackMatches, Green Heron rotor controllers

3 Networked ThinkPad X220s, BT mice and keyboards, 19” 4:3 displays
WriteLog 12.69B, 2xMMTTY 1.70K, 4x2Tone 16.02a encoder/decoders,
Mortty 2.0 with modified TinyFSK 1.1.0 for each radio/PC

Tower 1: 80’ with 2-element shorty-forty, 5-el 20m Yagi, 80m Inverted-V, 
2-el SteppIR at 35’ due north and double-L vertical for 160m
Tower 2: 55’ with single boom interlaced 5-el 15m and 5-el 10m Yagi
Tower 3: 45’ with JK Mid-Tri tribander
Beverages (4): West US, East US, Europe, un-terminated Africa/VK/ZL
with versatile K9AY switch

73,

Ed - P49X (W0YK)