Last weekend I entered the RTTY-contest part of the Greek Triathlon contest. Because we had some family visiting the house in the afternoon, I didn’t had much time for the whole contest. I looked in the schedule and find out the first part of the contest (0:00 – 7:59 UTC) is RTTY only. Because we’re only one hour later then UTC, I figured I could get up real early and make a few contacts. So Saturday morning I got up at 5 o’clock AM (4:00 UTC) and flipped on the radio. Then I struggled with N1MM again for a full hour to switch from SSB-macro’s to RTTY-macro’s. It took me a hour to figure out I had to type “RTTY” in the call log box :S.

After a few hours of search & pounce I collected 26 contacts. I didn’t participate in this contest before so I don’t have any comparison. But I had to search the bands with a magnifier to find stations. The result of a few minutes of giving CQ: 0 replies. So I quickly returned to S&P. Well, at least I earned 1 extra points in our regional divisional league (25 contacts represent 1 point).

Next weekend I’ll participate in the PACC-contest. I read in the contest calendar this is also the weekend of CQ WW RTTY contest! So maybe I switch forward en backward between these two. Because I really like to meet Jim, K5ND in the CQ WW RTTY 🙂

PACCWell, that was a very nice contest! I went from Schalkwijk (see previous post) to our new clubbuilding the NERA-building. There were a few club members so I joined them. Later on that evening I went home to pick up my own rig. The evening went by and I made a few (35) contacts. About 1:30 am I went home for some sleep. This morning I continued about 9:00 am. When the clock hit 13:00 hours I had made 60 QSO’s. I know I know, it’s nothing compaired to the big guns. But I don’t care. It was a very nice experience, it was my first PACC. I have many ideas how to do the contest next year.

For starter I want to have some kind of voice sampler (external) between my microfoon and my rig so I can record samples and play them by just pressing a button (cq contest cq contest). Because it wasn’t very nice to have to repeat it a few hundred times. That’s why I stopped CQ-ing after a while.

Anyone good tips for such a device?