46 and counting…

I’d been looking forward to this event because I was hoping I might get on the bands for a few hours for the first time since a 20m CW QSO with K9OM on the 15th of August, over 5 weeks ago.

In three sessions I made approximately 60 contacts spread over the 40, 20 and 15m bands. Conditions seems pretty good overall (sunspot number up at 57) and I was particularly surprised to find how late into the Saturday evening 15m remained open down to Central and South America. Very different to earlier in the year when I was hearing very little on 15m much after 5pm local time (16:00 UTC)…although I’m prepared to accept that my antenna will always be a limiting factor. However, same antenna then and now so things certainly seem to have improved with Argentina, Brazil, Aruba, Galapagos Islands, Kuwait and the Dominican Republic all worked on 15m on Sunday evening.

Although no new countries were worked during the contest, in spite of my best efforts to get through a minor pile-up trying to work a Chinese station (yes, I still need China despite having already worked most of the surrounding countries), I did work two new US states towards my WAS award, New Mexico in the form of WA5ZUP and Wyoming in the form of WY7SS. That is now 45 of the 50 states worked with just Louisiana, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska and Utah still needed.

It was nice to get on the bands again and nice to hear so many strong RTTY signals (on 15m in particular). I’ll be hoping it’s not another 5 weeks before the next time and not too long to the next new one!

Dean Amateur Radio contest, DX, RTTY, WAS

I enjoy digimodes, also known as digital or data modes. Although I only use RTTY and PSK, the term ‘digimodes’ also encompasses such things as Amtor, Pactor, G-TOR, PactorII, Clover, Olivia, Packet, Hellschreiber, MT63, Throb and MFSK16. There are others!

Some of these data modes have been around for a long time, RTTY being one such mode. Others, such as PSK31 are newer and have only recently gained in popularity. And therein lies the dilemma. PSK31 is now so popular that the parts of the band where this activity is found, especially on 20m around 14.070MHz, are becoming very crowded. RTTY on the other hand is, on the face of it, much less popular, attributed in part to it being seen as somehow more difficult to setup and use than PSK modes.

My problem then is this: As much as I enjoy RTTY there can at times be little or no activity heard on the bands between contests (major RTTY contests do, thank goodness, still bring out many of the RTTY enthusiasts). PSK31 on the other hand is pretty much always to be found on 20m if nowhere else. The problem is that I don’t find it anywhere near as much fun now as I did a few years ago when I first discovered PSK (in September 2005) and when I worked a lot of nice DX using the mode.

I do keep saying to myself I should invest more time in PSK31 DXing and get back to enjoying it as much as I used to. Maybe now is the right time to finally commit to that. I can then use RTTY as and when the activity pops up on the bands.

Dean Amateur Radio PSK31, RTTY