On Sunday the 9th of January, VK2IBE, VK2ALR and myself, VK2WS, competed in this year’s ARRL RTTY Roundup from the Robertson contesting site.
We used the Waverley club’s VK2W contesting callsign.
We spent Saturday fixing up two dipoles (well, one didn’t really require fixing at all, we just needed to select the correct (mislabelled) feedline and getting the MMTTY digital mode software plugin to work with the N1MM logging program.
Since this RTTY activity was a first time experiment for us, we aimed to work the contest during more ‘normal’ daylight hours and were targetting 0900 – 1500 local time. The contest runs for 30 hours, but we just wanted to see how we would go.
As it turns out our period of operations meant that 40m was not really working for DX. While there were a number of local nets happening on SSB as well as a WIA broadcast, there were no RTTY signals. We eventually switched to 15m (our other dipole antenna) and there we found some stations. Initially we got half a dozen QSOs with US stations (California, Oregon, Washington and one from Virginia) but after that it was only stations around the Pacific.
We got 19 QSOs in the log. All QSOs were on 15m. Having a 20m antenna might have been fruitful – perhaps next time.
We had fun working out and refining operational practices with the software and the mode. It was quite a learning experience.
The log is below:
FREQ MODE DATE TIME CALL EXCH CALL EXCH STATE
21101 RY 2022-01-08 2355 VK2W 599 2 K9YC 599 CA
21102 RY 2022-01-09 0006 VK2W 599 3 KA6BIM 599 OR
21105 RY 2022-01-09 0011 VK2W 599 4 K6XX 599 CA
21094 RY 2022-01-09 0044 VK2W 599 5 W1SRD 599 CA
21094 RY 2022-01-09 0048 VK2W 599 6 K7RU 599 WA
21098 RY 2022-01-09 0101 VK2W 599 7 W6BB 599 VA
21098 RY 2022-01-09 0104 VK2W 599 8 ZL3VZ 599 0006
21084 RY 2022-01-09 0137 VK2W 599 9 RA0FLP 599 0120
21085 RY 2022-01-09 0139 VK2W 599 10 ZL3P 599 0131
21096 RY 2022-01-09 0159 VK2W 599 11 JA1BJI 599 0128
21095 RY 2022-01-09 0239 VK2W 599 12 VJ4T 599 0033
21098 RY 2022-01-09 0244 VK2W 599 13 JA7ZP 599 0014
21098 RY 2022-01-09 0246 VK2W 599 14 KH6ZM 599 0441
21092 RY 2022-01-09 0256 VK2W 599 15 BD3CB 599 0073
21098 RY 2022-01-09 0302 VK2W 599 16 JA1WSK 599 0104
21095 RY 2022-01-09 0303 VK2W 599 17 VK4SN 599 0042
21091 RY 2022-01-09 0309 VK2W 599 18 VK4SE 599 0001
21092 RY 2022-01-09 0334 VK2W 599 19 JA1IAZ 599 0035
21092 RY 2022-01-09 0335 VK2W 599 20 VK7BO 599 0014
73 Fred VK2WS

Results
When the results were published in June 2022, and with VK2W entered in the multi operator, single transmitter, high power category, globally we came 8th. (Disclosure – there were just eight entries in this category 🙂 ).
Additionally, in our region of Oceania, we came 1st. (Disclosure – there was just one entry in this category and it was VK2W 🙂 ).
Still, we got in there and gave it our best shot.
73 Fred VK2WS