Each amateur radio New Year in RTTY contesting starts with famous ARRL(American Radio Relay League) Round-up Contest. Following my participation in some last years I took part on this contest during Jan. 2nd/3rd 2010. Expectations about better radio wave propagation awaked with 2009 Nov./Dec. raising sun activity unfortunatelly were not right proved. But twelve hours operation brought some interesting contacts and finally my best summary result in latest 4 years.

The contacts with 3V8SS (Tunisia) on two bands (3,5 / 14 MHz), CN8KD (Morocco) and OD5NJ (Lebanon)on 7 MHz, E21YDP (Thailand) on 14 MHz were not so far located. Real suprise were contacts with WP2B (US Virgin Islands) in heavy EU pile-up, VK7GN (Australia - Tasmania Isl.) comming on my CQ and ZL1BYZ (New Zealand), all of course on 14 MHz band.

Sunday morning was "dry" time no much harvester, with 21 MHz for me totally closed. At noon started better and more contacts on 14 MHz band direction to USA. I worked 33 US stations, including KT0DX (Colorado), which means for me 42nd US state for WAS award.

Calling CQ on 14 MHz band on 3.1.2010(12:13 UTC) I got very clear signal of Martin VK7GN located on northern part of Tasmania Island belonging to Australia. The contact was done on first try. This my only contact to this part of Australia and I hope that some next shall be comming in next years of raising sun activity.

Working WP2B was not my first contact with this beatifully caribbean island I had already working Palmer (WP2/K4FO), Andrei (KP2/NP3D) and Dima (NP2/AK2P) in CQ World Wide RTTY Contest 2007. Searching for exact WP2B location I found that all three mentioned contacts in 2007 year were done from site called Radio Reef and (suprise) Bradford WP2B is owner of this contesting facility on the island. Déja vu pure.

Contest Results