ARRL RTTY Round-Up

[David Tanks]

  I had to work my tail off to stay ahead of Jeff! Butch, you did good

 for the limited time you had. Awaiting WS6X's report!

 I operated Single Operator, High Power, Assisted (didn't use it

 much). I could run 300 to 450 watts on all bands except 80, where

 I could only do about 150 before the amp would trip out on high

SWR (gotta get that fixed). Gotta love Contest Online Scoreboard!

Really motivates you to put in just a little more BIC to stay ahead

of the competition.

  In 10 hours and 51 minutes of operating time, I managed to make

407 Qs, working 51 States/Provinces, and 44 DX. In the last couple 

of hours of the contest I worked Hawaii on 10, then 2 Alaskan guys

on 15. Worked VK9DX Norfolk Island early Saturday afternoon on 

10. Using my TS-2000X in FSK mode, with the KPA-500 amp, into

the Mosley TA-33 beam at 20 feet stuck pointing at Europe, and 

a 36' tall Inverted L.

 Used N1MM as usual, with MMTTY and 2 instances of 2Tone going;

don't have much luck with getting GRTTY going, for some reason. 

Just learned after the contest that there is a new (new to me, anyway)

version of 2Tone: 25.10.b. I immediately downloaded and installed it.

Heard 2 JA stations: one with almost no signal, and the other could not

hear me. No VK except the VK9; no ZL. Did see a VU2 print but again he

could not hear me. Very unusual for me to work more stations on 80 than

on 20!!! 80 is usually my worst band. Some stations would not decode the 

first time I saw them, then their next transmission would be perfectly clear.

I saw several comments on the RTTY reflectors about that.

What can I do differently next year? Hmmmm......

David AD4TJ

[ws6x...@gmail.com]

From: 'David Tanks' via Valley Hams valle...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 6, 2026 5:09 PM

 

  I had to work my tail off to stay ahead of Jeff! Butch, you did good

 for the limited time you had. Awaiting WS6X's report!

 

 

Not much exciting to report here. Condx were mixed at this QTH, with some of the weirdest propagation on 40 M (Sunday morning, local) that I have ever experienced!

I’ll begin with a light-hearted tale of operator error. When I went to 80 M on Saturday evening (local), I seemed to be having an unusually difficult time working loud EU stations. After I logged the third EU, I remembered… Like most radios these days, the K4D stores many operating parameters on a per band basis. I didn’t think about the power setting when I switched to 80 M. Since I often use an amplifier on the low bands, I discovered the K4 power was set to 25 Watts!! Those three EU stations did a bunch of heavy lifting to get me in the log!

 

Single Operator, All Band, Unassisted, Low Power

13.5 hours operating time. 95% S&P; never could get any traction running on any band.

 

 

 

Equipment:

Elecraft K4D, microHAM microKEYER II

Software:

N1MM+, MMTTY (one instance, never have seen the need for more than one decoder)

Antennas:

80 & 40 - Inv-L, 20-15-10 - KIO Hexagonal beam at 52 feet.

 

Very tedious at times but still enjoy the chase!

 

Jim – WS6X