[Elecraft] ARRL RTTY Roundup

[Tom Hammond]

Hi tom:

>My first contest action with K3 #29 was the RU last weekend
>
>managed to be on the air for a couple of houres on 20 meters
>
>With a 50 feet long wire worked 18 countries and 12 US States
>from HB9-land
>
>Pretty frustrated that i could copy a lot of stations deep in
>the qrm/noise in RTTY but they didnt hear me.. must be a darn
>good receiver.. hi
>
>Next thing to do: put up a decent antenna.
>
>Hp to wk u in the next rtty test.

Congratulations on  being active in the RTTY RU.

There were a number of stations I called but could not work either.
I think much of the problem was they THEY were being called by many
others as well and my signal was not the strongest of the bunch.  I
did not stick around many time to make multiple calls to a station,
if I did not work him on the 3rd call, I moved on. I suspect that if
I had been more tenacious at calling, eventually he'd have heard me
and I'd have worked him... <G>

Ed, W0YK, was operating SO2R (two K3's) from P49X... from his QSO
total, I suspect he may well have WON the entire contest...! I heard
no QSO totals anywhere even close to Ed's 2500 Q's... at least so far.

I operated without any external logging support, using only the K3's
CW-to-RTTY conversion features and its internal RTTY decoding. Working
stations was NO PROBLEM AT ALL... tuning them in using the K3's dual
passband RTTY tuning option was as easy as anything and then having
the exchange pre-programmed into a couple memories allowed me to just
punch the button and go... when someone asked for a 'fill' I just
sent it with the CW paddles and completed the contact.

My 'effort' was something less than 'sterling' but I did knock out
20 or so Q's in a very short amount of time. Lots of fun.

73,

Tom Hammond   N0SS