RTTY

Beside the fact that 10 meters was 'stink-o', propagation was OK. As you would expect, the 15 opening was much shorter than the recent past, but did hang in there with QSO's all day long.
40 meters is almost a 24 hour band now, which is always a good thing. I found the low bands to be very quiet, which was nice.

Had a HUGE crew, but some were in/out and we had SIX 'newbies'. Some of them had not done any RTTY before, so there was a bit of slowing down and explaining things and a bit of hand holding. This is not a bad thing necessarily, but with 6 beginners in major contest, some allowances were made. I would not have any issue having each one of them back again.

Bands noisy first night, much better second night. Three 'newbie' ops with limited experience. One of the ops for the upcoming Heard Island DXpedition stopped by to see how RTTY is operated, so will at least be familiar with it while on the Island.

Like everyone, we would have liked 10 meters to be in better shape. At least the flux stayed at 120 with a low K value.
Just before the contest found that the top 40 meter yagi would not turn, although there was voltage at the base of the tower. Rotators for the 15 meter stack are still acting 'squirrely' and had to be rotated from out in the equipment shack, not locally.

Contest started off miserably. Software put the contact times all over the place. I know this is going to kill our score. For a SFI of 125, 10 was a big surprise. My first EU QSO Saturday morning was
with IW9FRA at 1153 UTC, and we consistently made Q's on 10 for the next 12+ hours. Had a nice, but short 10m LP opening to Asia Saturday AM, with some JA's and one BY in the log.

Idea was to have fun. John, K3TN, came to visit and joined us for a couple of hours of operating. Larry, K7SV and I 'putzed' around the rest of the time.
Had a K3 go 'belly up' with a 'voltage error' and refused to put out anything more than the 12 watts from the low power stage.  <sigh!> That was not a fun thing, so without fun, I quit for the night.

Limited time due to 'life'. Thanks for all the Q's. Merry Christmas everyone.

Need L-O-W-E-R antennas on the high bands.

Wow! What a weekend.

Found the bands extremely friendly, so everyone found a place to operate.
There seemed to be an almost limitless supply of new stations the whole weekend.

Had two operators who had never operated RTTY at all, and one other that had done so one a limited, casual basis. Two others had never operated from the Goat Farm before, so there was there was a bit of a 'learning curve' for several ops.

Skip, KC4QP and I were just playing around for a while. Thanks for the contacts.