Thursday, February 17, 2011

TJ9PF on 30m

I've thought about chasing DX on PSK31 or RTTY but until recently had not attempted any. Two events happened recently to start Me towards this evenings contact. First was the recent success with the CQ WW RTTY contest and second was playing with Ham Radio Delux which started Me thinking about DXCC entities I still need.
I also happened to receive the latest DX news from the ARRL and noticed several DXexpeditions now QRV! One of them was TJ9PF operating from Cameroon just north of Equatorial Guinea. Checking the Dx cluster tonight I seen them on 30m RTTY. Here was My chance but- oh,oh! They are operating split- never done split on this FT-950 although I operated split many times with the Kenwood Ts-850.
I have actually, hard as it is to believe, studied the manual to operate split so all I needed to do was remember how. Turns out using split on this radio is relatively easy. Using RTTY split is not much different than voice. TJ9PF was CQing, seemed lonely! Once I realized My TX split was transmitting to My dummy load, I corrected that and received a "QRZ?" I sent My call again and TJ9PF was in the log!! I 'm thinking this RTTY mode might be just the ticket to snag some more DXCC!!
73---Tim

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