I decided to jump in on the ARRL RTTY Roundup this year. My original plan was to get FLDIGI working and/or a combination of logging software with 2tone embedded, but I quickly ran out of time. I’m still very new to RTTY and while I’ve done a good amount of listening, I haven’t made a single contact yet. That’s a goal for this year.
With RTTY out of the question, I fell back on FT8/FT4. Over the course of 24 hours (which I did NOT work all of) I managed to do fairly well based on my expectations.
220 total QSOs.
44 states (including Alaska)
3 provinces
8 DXCC entities
That’s not too bad for one guy with limited time and a station that stays well under 100 watts. I was very excited to get some DX in there. South America as well as Ukraine and Romania! I still get excited when I make a contact that far out. Hitting Alaska is also always a thrill.
I don’t have any cool pictures of me sitting in my office and occasionally yelling “I got $state!” which was met with “Woo hoo!” from my wife or kids depending on how exciting they thought it was.
I had a great time playing radio and hunting for all the contacts I could grab. Maybe I will try some more this year.
