CQ World Wide DX Contest - RTTY

What a pain in the arse!  

This weekend the "CQ World Wide DX Contest - RTTY" is going on.  Folks in the local group I am in brought it up and I took it that this was an easy contest to get involved with.  Once you get going maybe but to begin with it is a total pain in the ass.  I've done a lot of digital in the past week.  It was all FT-8 and I jused wsjtx to do it and that...THAT....is easy.  Or maybe the term should be intuitive.  RTTY, even with a lot of googling, took multiple attempts.  Different software, with a very specific conversation directive.  They cal CQ, you respond with your callsign, they respond with a report in a specific format, and you respond in kind.  There is a lot of wiggle room on some of that, but there is a specific format all of this needs to end up in so that when you upload it to the contest log site, they accept it.  

My first attempt I spent probably 30 mins to an hour just trying to figure out how to find a contact.  I got frustrated and went back to FT-8 and SSB voice.  The next morning I watched a few videos and on one of them the guy walked through how to do it for a similar context.  It was enough to fill in some major gaps.  So I gave it another shot.  This time I made a bunch of contacts except that when I went to upload the logs I was missing information and I had already quit out of the app so I couldn't go back through the log to get the missing information.

And that led to the most recent attempt.  This time I did not quit out and was able to successfully (well..I'll find out if I get credit for the contacts) uploaded the logs.  

Anyways, I just wanted to vent a bit about this.  I'm in the rookie category on this context meaning I've been a Ham for less than 3 years.  Definitely fits.  Next year I will be better at this..if I remember how to do all of this.  I'm going to have to document the setup and procedure so I don't forget.  

Lots of Contacts

I spent the week out of town but was eager to get back and play.  Not including the RTTY contest contacts, I've racked up about 90 contacts all over the world this weekend and I still plan on more tomorrow.  Most of these are FT-8 which is the easiest mode for me to currently use despite my radio not being a modern digital radio with all the fancy bells and whistles.  The EFHW antenna I have up is working really well.  It could probably use a bit more trimming but with the tuner I get good enough SWR even across 40, 30, 20, 17, 15, 12, and 10.   For the heck of it I tried 80m but as expected, I did not get anything. It was a good day for the bands.  Lots of activity and some great contacts all the way up to 10m.  

I have been using a ATU-10 automatic tuner that I picked up.  The design for this is available out there and you can buy kits or buy the parts and build it yourself or you can pay for commercial pre-built versions.  The issue with these is the quality of the parts and build.  You can find them on various places for around $100 or you can find them on places like aliexpress for like $30 which is what I did.  I knew i was taking a gamble but it seems to be working except for one thing that I noticed.  On 2 of the bands i worked this weekend, 30 and 17 I believe, it would start reseting on its own during transmissions.  A quick google pointed to an issue with some cheaper versions of the tuner that maybe skimped on things.   The good news is that it is an easy fix.  Solder a capacitor across the connections of the tune button will solve RF from messing with the tuner.  I'm going to do this modification and will let you know if that fixes the issue.  $30 + the cost of a capacitor (I can get a bunch of them on Amazon for like $6) is a lot cheaper than $100. 

Extra

Final note.  I had a 4 hour flight out to Ohio this week. I spent the flight studying for my Amateur Extra exam.  When I landed I scheduled a test for late that night which gave me a few more hours to study.  This along with the studying I had done over the previous couple weeks allowed me to pass my test Monday night.  So I guess the next thing I need to study is Morse Code because why not?  

Anyways, have a good one!  

73