NAQP RTTY – On Hold

It wasn’t but 4 days ago I was preparing for the summer edition of the NCJ NAQP RTTY contest. Unfortunately due to life priorities, I have to bow out of a full time effort and go to work. Not to worry, really. The great part of being involved in amateur radio. Even if you don’t get to put a full effort or any effort into a given contest, chances are good there will be another contest next weekend. If that is not enough, I have the rest of my life to participate in this contest, but for now I must take a step back this weekend and reevaluate my time.

It will be interesting to see how the band conditions are, with the SFI and SSN both on the rise recently activity should see an increase. Hopefully we can see another decrease in the A-Index, which currently stands at 8. The summer NAQP contest haven’t been my strongest contests. In the past it was directly related to the lack of solar activity, when comparing it to the winter NAQP contests in February.

It is possible I will put in a few hours when I get home from work at 22Z. With any luck I could catch activity on 20M into the early evening, moving to some activity on 40M and maybe even 80M. It’s possible I could put in about 8 hours, if I work straight through to 06Z. Not sure that is possible, but the opportunity might be there. At any rate the NAQP was the only contest I was considering an effort in this month.