P40L-P49Y Contest Summary Information

Well, this weekend was certainly better than the last two RTTY contests here (Sep 25 WW RTTY and Jan 26 RTTY Roundup). Conditions seemed more competitive with NA and EU locations. Still, I didn’t break 10M points, after exceeding 10M points in FOURTEEN prior WPX RTTY contests! Not sure if it’s me or lower activity or what?

Friday evening was adequate, but not outstanding. 80M was good but 40M just wasn’t as strong as it could be. On Saturday, the high bands were, again, good but not outstanding. They’ve been much “hotter” at times past. However, all 5 bands were very balanced with 15M being the highlight all weekend.

In four prior WPX RTTY events, I’ve had a 200+ QSO hour within the first 4 hours, but 178 was my best this year. High QSO rates are a function of enough, but not too much, incoming rate and the operator’s service rate efficiency. A third factor, of course, is the behavior of QSO partners. Except for a frustrating and time-consuming Windows 11 LAN security issue during the prep week, the station was solid with no issues before or during the contest weekend. Everything was stable and there were no breakdowns.

I set up my usual SO3R configuration with 6 decoders on each radio (4 on VFO-A and 2 on VFO-B). Left radio is 80M/10M, Right is 40M/15M and Far Right is 20M. With the versatile audio steering ability of RigSelect PRO, my ears could be presented with the appropriate audio streams from the 6 receivers, sometimes mixed in an ear. Thus, Packet-pouncing on mults was possible on any of the 3 bands (6 receivers) while still maintaining a basic 2BSIQ run scenario on two of the bands. Little good it did, though, since my prefix total was lower than 10+ SOHP entries with the same or lower QSO totals. I am clearly deficient in multiplier accumulation in almost every contest.

The simple Fan Dipoles for 80M/40M continues to be a key mitigating measure for the interstation RFI, despite being inferior to the regular 80M vertical and 40M Yagi on transmit. I use the Beverage receiving system exclusively on these bands, so it’s just the transmit signal that suffers when I must use the low Fan Dipole to avoid RFI across the entire 2x harmonic band (40M into 20, 80M into 40M). We deploy a manual switching system of two SixPaks and two StackMatches for an adequate user interface, but I imagine a better solution would be based on the MOAS or similar system.

I hope everyone had as good a weekend as I did, regardless of any local problems that were addressed. It is gratifying to work through the obstacles and operate the contest.

Thanks to all participants and station owners Andy AE6Y/P49Y and John W6LD/P40L.

73,

Ed P49X (W0YK)

  
Station detail (on a small suburban lot):

K3S/P3 (x3) with RigSelect PRO 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 Win10 ThinkPad X220s (x3, one for each radio), each with: 
- WriteLog 12.86B - MMTTY 1.70K (x2) 
- 2Tone 25.02b 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