I decided to play some radio this weekend and entered the JARTS RTTY contest. A part time very casual entry. I am by no means an RTTY lover but any radio activity beats no activity and I remembered from last year that it was fun. RTTY people use LotW a lot which is good for my RTTY DXCC / WAS. Not that I work towards these but along the way we might get there.
Much to my surprise 15m produced good results to JA and the USA. Maybe the earlier pessimistic solar forecast was wrong? Let’s hope!
The JARTS exchange is the operator’s age. I think the average (RTTY) contester is way over 60 with roughly estimated 150 W QSO, 25 JA and the rest DX+EU for a total of approx. 300 QSO. Youngest age reported was 30, the oldest 89. The 99 numbers are for multi-op but I can’t exclude the occasional 99 year old RTTY operator.
Working this RTTY contest gave me lots of time to think about the upcoming CQ WW SSB. It’ll be SB20 HP. I hope that WX will cooperate and let me crank up the tower and that conditions are reasonable. As I type this it’s 18.30utc and while there are still US stations calling in with fair signals, I don’t know wether the band is already closing or that there is just not too many activity anymore?
That’s all for now. I’m going QRT and process the log. 73!