There were 2 smaller contests this past weekend – Russian Radio RTTY contest & the Tennessee QSO Party
The Russian Radio RTTY contest started Fri 8pm ET (Sat 00:00 GMT) and ran for 24 hours. I made a total of 134 contacts and accumulated 40000 points. I went to bed overnight and missed the final couple hours because of a family obligation. I started out forcing myself to use N1MM and MMTTY that is integrated but I still am not comfortable with that combo. The MMTTY portion is just so clunky compared to DM780 and so less productive. About halfway through I switched back to using DM780 and duplicate entry into N1MM. I need to find a better way. I’d like to just use DM780 but the log export stinks for importing into N1MM which I need to do to calculate the proper score and generate the Cabrillo log. I can see the N1MM/MMTTY combo working well if calling CQ, but searching out stations and ‘tuning’ in the digital window is just so unproductive. It isn’t selecting and pulling in the signal, though DM780 still provides a better UI, but having to wait and see if I already logged the station is worse. DM780 buffers while MMTTY is only showing what is selected at that moment.
As for contacts, I got the same New Zealand station as I did during the SARTG contest. I also got a bunch in Wales and western Canada had a bunch.
On Sunday the Tennessee QSO Party took place. Outside of Tennessee you can only log Tennessee stations and need to note their county. 20m wasn’t getting me anything so I popped up to 40m and made most of my contacts. During the time of the contest I had dinner and then our monthly club meeting so I missed 3 prime hours of the 9 hours it lasted. When I got back from the meeting it was still going on with a few more contacts made on 40m and 80m. 20m was active by the time I got home but didn’t hear any TN stations calling CQ.
The QSO parties are fun and the folks seem so appreciative when you make contact with them. Even though this was a small “contest”, N1MM is great for phone. If I can only feel the same for RTTY contests. One of the contacts I made after I got back from the club meeting recognized my call from the RTTY contest. It is a small community of folks. Even heard a couple of familiar stations calling CQ but they weren’t in TN so only TN stations can come back to them. Not sure how effective that is – maybe I’ll emal one of them.
Fun small contests this past weekend. I’m up to just under 1000 total contacts in my log. I should do some quick analysis this week on the log entries so far and see what it shows. Next weekend is a big VHF contest if the weather permits and if not, another QSO party in Arkansas.
73, K2DSL