I am new to both RTTY and contesting and I guess I may have misunderstood the times of the contest. It said that it started Saturday at 00.00 UTC which was 6:00PM here. And the rules also said it ends Sunday at 23:59 UTC. But the period of operation it says 48 hours and single operator stations could operate 30 of the 48 hours with minimum off times of 60 minutes. So as expected, friday and friday night into Saturday, the bands were full of what I assumed were stations practicing and getting everything set up for the contest. I too was able to test mysetup with N1MM+ and the 7300 with virtual com port emulator for FSK. I setup a practice log in N1MM and started making contacts. Because of all the activity giving proper exchanges and some even saying practice, I thought I got the times wrong as it looked like the contest was already started. I continued up to about 35 QSO's leading to the start time at 00:00 UTC and then I closed that practice log and started a new one . I operated as Single OP, ALL, High Power. So I made about 5 QSO's and then I answered a cCQ and he sent back Worked B4. Well yes we did work during what I thought was practice but evidently he counted that QSO. I also set my Serial number back to start at 001. I noticed that about 15 minutes into the contest, some stations were already in the 1000's serials. Thats when I figured their practice sessions were not actually practice, and their score per contestonlinescore.com was already in the 10,000 + range and I didnt understand how they got there in just 15 minutes, and these were all in SO-ALL HP Digi class. So obviously I must have missed something so I imported my practice log into current log just so I would keep from trying to work DUPES. If the contest starts at 00.00 UTC and ends 23:59.59 hours later, then how can an operator work 30 of 48 hours, multi op can work the full 48 hours. It was obvious then that I started some 6 hours later than I could have. So thats why i heard so many stations two days prior to the contest start time. When could I have actually begun the contest? The next one I want to be able to make the most of my allowed time.