A man can only take but so much and I have gone well beyond that. I have figured out where I stand in the ham radio community, I am not a contester but rather a DX chaser. The CQ WW RTTY DX Contest goes for 48-hours and it is quite an event. I, however, could not possibly go for the entire time.
Here are my results from this weekend's contest:
- Contacts: 240
- US States: 32
- Canadian Providences: 8
- DXCC Entities: 52
- Continents: 5
- CQ Zones: 17
- Total Multipliers: 109
- Claimed Score: 54064
I would like to mention a couple of notes that I wrote down during the event:
- I made six 10-meter contacts during the event. Three contacts with Argentina, one with the Galapagos Islands, one with Brazil, and one with Hungary. The Galapogos Islands were strongest on 10-meters with Brazil being the weakest.
- 6H1YYD's QSL Manager is EA5KB
- The operators working 20m generally stayed within the bandplan provided by the ARRL (I'm sure this is an international agreement).
- The operators working 40m generally operated EVERYWHERE! The DX window is 7.040MHz and the RTTY operating band is 7.080 through 7.125. I listened and I usually couldn't find anyone operating in the RTTY operating band but I could always find people from 7.025 through 7.060. That DX window was stretched wide open! The CW operators were displaced and took up space up in the RTTY operating area. Sorry guys (and gals).
- I noted that on the strongest RTTY signals there was an accompanying phantom signal. This phantom signal presented itself just lower (in frequency) of the actual signal and was wider than the traditional signal but could still be decoded. Not sure why this is.
That's all I got for this subject. I'm still recovering and I think I need to go stand outside and get some... air.