The CQ WW RTTY DX Contest will be this upcoming weekend (29-30 Sep 2007). This will be the first contest I will be participating in since moving into the new shack. I'm not expecting a lot of good DX results at the moment due to the past experiences with the antenna I have up right now. Another problem is that I'm stuck using a Rig Blaster soundcard device for my RTTY instead of my modem. For those that have not tried a modem and think I'm nuts because the soundcard devices are the best thing YOU'RE WRONG! Soundcard devices are nice because they are generally software based and will allow you to do any kind of digital mode under the sun. The problem is with the significantly lower sensitivity. My modem successfully decodes RTTY and PSK31 at significantly lower levels than my soundcard device. That means that DX stations that might not have a stellar signal won't be decoded and the QSO won't be had. Hopefully I'll have my modem back up and running soon.

I'm also going to try to build a new 20m antenna for the contest. I'll write about that later in the week once I get all my part and pieces together.