2021 CQ WPX RTTY Contest AK1W
CQ WPX RTTY Contest - 2021
Call: AK1W
Operator(s): K5ZD
Station: AK1W
Class: SOAB HP
Operating Time (hrs): 30
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
80: 479
40: 878
20: 1137
15: 257
10: 0
Total: 2751 Prefixes = 975 Total Score = 8,171,475
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest ClubComments:
I was looking forward to this contest, but had not planned on doing a full effort. Friday night was fun and I went to be when it stopped being fun. Didn’t set my alarm, but work up around 1115z so decided to get back on. Bands sounded terrible until I got to 20m around 1145z (my sunrise). Band was already hopping.
Some time later 15m opened to Europe and I was able to do some dual CQing. Was watching the scoreboard and was keeping up with the big dogs. Was even ahead of AA3B, which provided some motivation.
I didn’t see how I was ever going to get 36 hours of operation, so didn’t pay much attention to off times.
40m opened to Europe very early with good signals. Managed to get a few JA QSOs on 20 after dark. The band seemed to close to Japan and then open again. Always good multipliers to be had.
When I laid down to take a nap Saturday evening, I vaguely remembered that WPX RTTY still uses the 30 hour limit for single ops. Uh oh! I got up and checked the rules. That changed things because I already had 20 hours of operating time in the log and still 20 hours of the contest to go.
I decided to start a bit later and do what I could with Europe on Sunday morning. Bands were not as good. 15m didn’t really open so it was all 20 meters. The band was packed. I lost my frequency when I chased some mults and struggled to get a new one. That was a bad hour and I could see AA3B chasing me down.
It was weird to have to take most of Sunday as off time. I went out for a 4 mile run, had lunch, watched some TV. Came back one at 2200z to do my last 90 minutes. I was late to 40m and could not get a good frequency. Rates were not good. Then I saw AA3B pass me with 90 minutes left in the contest. It looks like his extra time spent on 40m paid off.
Congratulations to Bud AA3B on the win. He did a great job. It was a very exciting contest to have such close competition the whole way through. Especially with the variations in off time strategy making the distance between scores ebb and flow. I probably would have quit if not for the race on the live scoreboard keeping me engaged!
This was a new personal best for me in this contest. RTTY operating practices keep improving. I can’t wait until with the higher bands open!
I used WriteLog as my logging software. 2Tone as the primary decoder and MMTTY as the clone was a great combo. Amazing how often one would decode perfectly and the other had nothing but garbage. This was my first real contest using dual decoders and it paid big dividends. Also nice when both decoders copied the same thing so had a higher confidence it was right. Even so, I expect a few busted calls and numbers when the log checking gets done.
Station
K3 + AL-1200 K3 + AL-1500 160m: 1/4-wave GP, shunt fed tower 80m: 4 square, dipole 40m: 40-2CD @110′ 20m: 205CA @100′ 15m: 155ca @66′ 10m: 6-ele @90′ TH7DXX @ 40′ WriteLog software, MK2R+ SO2R box
Rates:
QSO/Pref by hour and band Hour 80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total Cumm OffTime D1-0000Z 32/28 43/41 --+-- --+-- --+-- 75/69 75/69 D1-0100Z 56/38 66/51 - - - 122/89 197/158 D1-0200Z 64/32 46/33 - - - 110/65 307/223 D1-0300Z 66/32 37/24 - - - 103/56 410/279 D1-0400Z 42/21 58/27 - - - 100/48 510/327 D1-0500Z 49/24 55/33 - - - 104/57 614/384 D1-0600Z 40/14 37/19 - - - 77/33 691/417 D1-0700Z 7/2 3/2 - - - 10/4 701/421 51 D1-0800Z --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- 0/0 701/421 60 D1-0900Z - - - - - 0/0 701/421 60 D1-1000Z - - - - - 0/0 701/421 60 D1-1100Z 7/5 14/4 22/13 - - 43/22 744/443 20 D1-1200Z - 29/7 92/39 - - 121/46 865/489 D1-1300Z - 28/10 79/25 12/4 - 119/39 984/528 D1-1400Z - - 76/17 68/16 - 144/33 1128/561 D1-1500Z - - 78/23 59/9 - 137/32 1265/593 D1-1600Z --+-- --+-- 77/14 38/10 --+-- 115/24 1380/617 D1-1700Z - - 70/27 15/7 - 85/34 1465/651 D1-1800Z - - 53/12 15/5 - 68/17 1533/668 2 D1-1900Z - - 5/4 - - 5/4 1538/672 60 D1-2000Z - 22/5 41/6 28/8 - 91/19 1629/691 D1-2100Z - 72/10 23/6 - - 95/16 1724/707 D1-2200Z - 43/8 41/19 - - 84/27 1808/734 D1-2300Z - 44/6 51/15 - - 95/21 1903/755 D2-0000Z 14/3 41/8 29/7 --+-- --+-- 84/18 1987/773 D2-0100Z 8/1 8/1 - - - 16/2 2003/775 43 D2-0200Z - - - - - 0/0 2003/775 60 D2-0300Z - - - - - 0/0 2003/775 60 D2-0400Z 27/4 43/11 - - - 70/15 2073/790 8 D2-0500Z 42/6 42/10 - - - 84/16 2157/806 D2-0600Z 11/3 41/7 - - - 52/10 2209/816 14 D2-0700Z - - - - - 0/0 2209/816 60 D2-0800Z --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- 0/0 2209/816 60 D2-0900Z - - - - - 0/0 2209/816 60 D2-1000Z - - - - - 0/0 2209/816 60 D2-1100Z - 6/4 15/6 - - 21/10 2230/826 48 D2-1200Z - 16/2 70/27 - - 86/29 2316/855 D2-1300Z - 3/1 70/29 - - 73/30 2389/885 D2-1400Z - 8/2 53/16 4/2 - 65/20 2454/905 D2-1500Z - 13/4 38/9 6/3 - 57/16 2511/921 D2-1600Z --+-- 1/1 71/15 9/3 --+-- 81/19 2592/940 D2-1700Z - 1/0 19/4 1/0 - 21/4 2613/944 41 D2-1800Z - - - - - 0/0 2613/944 60 D2-1900Z - - - - - 0/0 2613/944 60 D2-2000Z - 8/0 18/7 2/1 - 28/8 2641/952 40 D2-2100Z - 3/3 - - - 3/3 2644/955 56 D2-2200Z 1/1 23/4 36/7 - - 60/12 2704/967 9 D2-2300Z 13/0 24/5 10/3 - - 47/8 2751/975 25 Total: 479/214 878/343 1137/350 257/68 0/0