[SMCARA] Today's RTTY Contest

[Tom Shelton]

Today brings us the North American QSO Party – RTTY...  Time to dust off the SignaLink, TNC, or other RTTY producing device.

The current solar conditions show the sunspot number at 79 with a solar flare index of 105. The geomag field is Very Quiet with an signal noise level of S0 to S1. Its raining and cold outside. In short, it’s a great day to be inside and taking advantage of the number of RTTY contacts you can make. Whether you are just using the contest to add to your WAS-RTTY/Digi endorsement, or you want to try to make more than a few contacts – the opportunity for either is there.

One cool thing about this contest is that the maximum operating power is 100 watts, which makes many of our stations (including mine) competitive.  Full rules here: http://www.ncjweb.com/naqprules.pdf

Contest starts at 1:00 PM and continues until 1:00 AM (1800 UTC February 23 to 0559 UTC February 24, 2013) - work no more than 10 of the 12 hours.

Exchange: You’ll send your name and state – Hint: if you’ve got a long name there is a chance that it can be scrambled during your transmission – There is not a requirement to use your actual name, so nicknames or alias are allowed.  So if your name is Robertino, sending Bob or Jim would be acceptable.  You must use the same name throughout the contest.

Stations outside of the US and Canada will just send their operating name.

Bands: 80, 40, 20, 15, 10 meters

Scoring:  1 point per station worked per band.  Multipliers: US States/Canadian Provinces per band.  Non-US/Canadians may be worked for QSO credit, but do not count as multipliers.

It is considered good form (but not required) to submit your log.  GenLog, an easy to use (and free) contest logger can be downloaded here: http://www.qsl.net/w3km/

As always, I’m available if you need some help.



Tom Shelton, AB3IC
(240) 434-3811

Always be yourself...
Unless you can be a Unicorn...
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