01/08/2007 | AB0RX K0BX and AB0RX operated at a team again in the RTTY Roundup. This year we operated as AB0RX instead of W0MA as we have in the past.

We started out on 20 meters beaming EU. Many EU stations were workable but the big surprise was hearing and working ZL2AMI 30 minutes into the contest off the back of the antenna (or possibly long path - only he knows). We then moved to 15 meters which was OK until a small pop was heard and then there was no RF output from the amplifier anymore. Fortunately, a second amplifier was available and was immediately put to use. Unfortunately the second amplifier had not been tested in a RTTY contest before and exhibited an internal arcing condition when driven to full output. This forced us to operate QRP for the remainder of the contest with only 500W PEP. We lost about 45 precious minutes of operating time tinkering with the equipment.

After the dust settled we had 1159 QSOs and 121 multipliers. This was about 15% less QSOs than last year, but four more multipliers. We missed North Dakota and LB, NU, NWT, and YT RAC sections. We worked about the same number of NA stations as last year but the number of EU and Asia stations worked was down significantly. Band conditions were worse than last year so that had more to do with it than DX enthusiasm for RTTY. Almost 60% of our QSOs came on 40 and 80 meters. We tried 10 meters a couple times but only netted 7 QSOs. The top rate was 98 QSOs/Hr on 80 meters from 4-5:00 UTC. -- AB0RX