Another weekend, another contest as the NAQP RTTY takes center stage. This weekend it’s 10 hours (out of 12 hours) for a single operator to make as many contacts as possible within the USA and Canada. All bands, except 160M are available for use with the 50 states and 13 territories and provinces as multipliers (per band).

I have been looking over last year’s results, where I only participated for 3:43, but made 72 QSOs and had 41 mults. I also took studied the NCCC scoring grid from last year to help me decide on a goal for this contest. Thankfully I will be able to work all 10 hours, so being able to run a 30 or 40 rate could be possible. I would think early on 40-60 rate would be possible.

I am still deciding on my 2 hours of off time, which I will probably take during the final two hours of the contest since I must go to work on Monday. This means my contest would end at 0400 and not 0600. Then again I had good success on 40/80M during the WPX RTTY Contest, so I am expecting good things during those 2-3 hours I am on those bands.

As for my goal I based my decision on the number of operators in the NCCC who logged over 300 QSOs last year. I am going to set 350 QSOs and 125 mults as my goals for this contest. The mults are really dependent on the conditions of 15M (and 10M to some degree). If 15M is open, then I will start the contest here running to establish a good base on which to work.

20M will continue to my “money band” and expect very good things here as well. I will hope to find a good run frequency to help pad my score. Of course if I cannot log some of those “hard to find” multipliers (VY1, VE8, DE, WV, NV) then I will search and pounce in order to grab those mults.

40/80M work will be divided up the last few hours. This is where the mult number could hurt me, as 125 means logging many of the mults on 15/20M before settling in on 40/80M when the sun sets. Depending on how the day goes I might sacrifice an hour of sunlight for an additional hour of darkness in order to work 40/80M

If I can achieve my QSO and mult number I should have a final score of 43,750, which is quite respectable. If numbers are good and I can sustain a good run rate, then I might sacrifice a few mults for more QSOs. We will have to wait and see how it all plays out. Regardless I am looking forward to the NAQP. One nice thing about this contest is everyone plays at 100w. This gives the “lil pistols” a chance. Although in Oakley, I am sure my 100w will be overshadowed by N6RO.