WAEDC RTTY contest

My antennae - the picture is 2 years old, when I was using a triband trap dipole. The traps have gone, but the 380kV noise-generator is still here...

WAE DX Contest, RTTY
Call: F6IRF
Operator(s): F6IRF
Station: F6IRF
Class: Single Op HP
QTH: JN35
Operating Time (hrs): 36
Radios: SO2R

Band QSOs Pts QTCs Mults
-------------------------------
80: 256 256 0 4*50
40: 290 360 70 3*65
20: 335 595 260 2*75
15: 337 717 380 2*76
10: 60 60 0 2*29
-------------------------------
Total: 1278 1988 710 755 Total Score = 1,500,940

Station: My usual small domestic station
see http://f6irf.blogspot.com/2005/08/so2r-minimal-setup.html

The weekend conditions: better on saturday than on sunday, the 6 hours SSNe dropped to 0 for a couple hours...

Good weekend despite poor conditions.
To be honnest my primary objective was to consolidate my leader place for the DJ3NG's "top-ten trophy", nothing more...
( http://www.rtty-contest-scene.com/index1.html )
So I focused first on QSO's, forgetting abt QTC's on saturday. When I passed the 1000-Qmark sunday at 08:35z with 24h of airtime, it was clear that my primary objective was met... So I started to hunt the QTC'ers.
Once again noticed that as a EU-stn I would make very few QTC-points, if I did not actively/agresively search for the QTC'ers...very few spontaneous offers - except a few ones from Ukrainian stations, which I had to decline ;-)
But finaly the "non-strategy" payed; Far better score than last year, despite smaller antennas (was at F6HYE stn) with much more QSO's and mults,
and almost the same nr of QTC's at the end ! Once again the SO2R-bonus is obvious here, and QTC'ing only on sunday when the rate is getting low, may not be that crazy...
10 and 15m have been the good surprises of the weekend, especialy 15m better than 20 with this low SSN... 20m closed very early, especialy on sunday, and central and west-US signals strongly affected by auroral flutter.
I suffered from noisy condx (high statics level on 80, local-line QRN on high
bands), making QTC-sending my preferred choice (thanks to all who accepted to grab my QTC's).
Eqt-wise, some troubles with 2 N1MM serious crashes but fortunately without major damages, except 10QTC's and a few minutes lost (next time will put a recorder on a separate PC to recover lost QTC's).
Must also say that a few N1MM features need to be improved for this contest: QTC's on main radio only, no QSO/QTC distinction, no "section summary", saving of QTC's sometimes capricious, received NR's turned to 0, etc... Anyway, it did not work that bad for me, I shouldn't complain...
Thanks to the DARC for organizing, to all for the QSO's and see you from CN in CQWW-CW.

Full contest stats at
http://lists.contesting.com/archives//html/3830/2005-11/msg00899.html

This chart clearly shows the important role played by QTC's in the final score... I focused on QSO's on saturday and on QTC's on sunday.