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RRTC 2015

Just a small contesting event that I like to play in. With the ITU zone as the exchange, it kinda feels like a ‘light’ version of last week’s IARU contest minus the DX and minus the HQ stations. With the focus on the Russian field day style competitors. The contest starts a little too late and stops too early to work them on 40. I could have worked them in the last hour if it weren’t for terrible QRN. See the image: a curtain of thunderstorms between me and UA.

rrtc2015-1
Lightning QRN anyone? July 18, 2015 – 14.30 UTC
www.lightningmaps.org

Here’s something that becomes very popular when you work M/S stations, what I call the ‘interlock waiting game’. That’s the few seconds you have to wait for the M/S station to give you the report because another radio is transmitting and the one that has to answer you needs to wait for the message to be sent by that other radio. That’s what you get when you do a full blown M/M with a single TX signal at the time. And I hate having to wait. P33W scores very bad in that department. There are others but that one always does it. A few seconds of idling time when running seems like forever and in a big contest it’s long enough for a rude operator to just jump in the gap and start sending CQ. From WPX CW on I just CQ again and wipe the call if the answer doesn’t come in due time and I suspect that the station is playing the interlock waiting game with me.

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