I’m normally a CW only operator, but as I was still in the 14 day travel quarantine on return from the UK I had little else to do and so decided to spend some time in the NAQP RTTY Contest to support the PVRC club score.
In total I spent 4:15 in the chair, plus some time the evening before configuring the IC-7610 and N1MM+, MMTTY and 2Tone for FSK RTTY ability.
My antennas are optimised for the CW sub-band, so the SWR was a little higher than I would otherwise have liked, but the system worked well. 100W of RTTY and nothing got hot, not even the radio.
At the start I wondered why no-one could hear me, then I realised the ‘invert FSK’ button was checked. Oops. That did the trick and I was in business, but I’d missed all the 10m signals that were audible…
After a couple of hours my mind was drifting too much and I went to do other things. Coming back in the evening when 40m was open made things a bit more interesting for another couple of hours. In the end I was hunting through the spots for new states, maximising my WAS score on RTTY with 44 states worked in total. I also found #50 for WAS Mixed. The other 49 states I had worked were on CW, so I still need Wyoming on CW for a full house.
Call: AD5XI Operator(s): AD5XI Station: AD5XI Class: Single Op LP QTH: Elkridge, MD Operating Time (hrs): 4:15 Summary: Band QSOs Mults ------------------- 80: 40: 14 12 20: 77 42 15: 13 6 10: ------------------- Total: 104 60 Total Score = 6,240 Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club