I put in a part time effort (5 hours out of 10) in the North American QSO Party RTTY contest for July. I made 120 contacts, one was Hawaii. I was on Team Aardvarks-1, we had enough people to field 2 teams this time around with people from the SPARC club. Hopefully interest continues to grow. I had a lot of QSB(fading signals) in the beginning but it got better after dark. I went until 1am and then threw in the towel, it goes til 2am. Last year I got 139 contacts over 9 hours, much better rate this year.

I entered as mixed mode CW & SSB but most of my 300 contacts were on CW. I tried to do some SSB but it seemed like every station had a pileup going and I wasn’t getting through. This contest involves a bonus for contacting the HQ station of each country’s radio association, I ended up contacting 49 of them. Luxembourg’s was the most difficult with so many people calling at once. I made a contact in Japan and one in Kazakhstan which is the first time I’d contacted them in a contest. Also made a couple contacts in far east Russia. This was a fun one, looking forward to…