Defending 1st Place

This weekend that guy and I went out to K1TTT's station in Massachusetts to help operate during the CQ RTTY contest. If anyone is into contesting you would know who K1TTT is and understand that now I am on my way to being kinda well known! Well that is if I continue doing contests.

So about his amazing station and lovely antenna farm. He has several operating positions set up in his station, each for a different band. Each position is equipped with a Yaesu 1000, or Kenwood TS 2000, both very cute radios (more about that on an upcoming post) amps, antenna rotators, etc. Basically you name it, the station had it.

I had never ever done RTTY before so I was overwhelmed with the thought of using RTTY for the first time in a contest to help defend their 1st place win from last year. I quickly learned I had nothing to worry about because it is pretty easy to opporate, and easy to learn especially when you have hams that are great at explaining it.

Once I got a crash course on RTTY, I was put on 15m. It was pretty dead, only a few contacts per hour, but it was good to start slow. Then it was over to 10m which was even slower, then when I thought it couldn't get any slower I went over to 20m, where I was lucky if I got 1 contact per hour. I sat there for a few hours searching the whole band just for that one station that might be out there. Apparently some hams were quite impressed with my persistance and dedication (on dead bands) because I was given the opportunity to opporate on 80m in the middle of the night when the band was open and stations were calling at rapid speeds! It was insane.


At 2am it was time to get some zzzz's in, then back up and and got on 20m at 8am. Thatguy rocked a rate of 150 contacts / hour on 20m when the band opened up to Europe (around 6am) which I am sad I slept through, but way to go babe :-)


Where was I know??



Oh yes



The Antenna Farm.





I am not sure what bands these antennas were for, but he had 10 towers all around that size (70ish - 170ish feet tall).. yes folks--- t-e-n.

Oh how I would LOVE to have an antenna farm and a lovely shack like that. Yes it would be oh so lovely!!

On a completely different topic this was the scenery just outside of his house. How beautiful.




And yes there are really moose that live near K1TTT's. Sadly we didn't see any. That's ok I probably would have screamed because well they weigh like 12 times as much as me. Thanks hunny for driving REALLY slow the whole way down that lonngggg road so we could find this sign, turning around after we passed it, and then stopping in the middle of the road, getting out of the car where a large moose could have potentially come out and attacked you, and took a picture of the moosey sign. Yup that's love.



On our way out of Mass., I saw an Irish Pub. I spot me Guiness anywhere!


For more information on our contest results go here. That's where I become famous well known because my callsign KC2PNE is listed on the web for all other die hard hams to see.

Anyways I want to thank K1TTT for his generosity along with all the other hams for their patience while I learned RTTY. I hope to contest with all of you again sometime. It was an amazing opportunity to learn more about the wonderful world of ham radio that I will never forget!