[CVCC] WU4G - ARRL RTTY Roundup

[Ronnie Bolton]

My first ever RTTY contest!  Now that I have a very RTTY friendly radio, I
decided to give this a try and now I'm hooked.  Yes Bruce, you told me this
a long time ago but I just never seemed to figure it all out.  

With a very part time effort I ended up with 191 Q's, 46 sections, 13
countries for 10,974 points.  I made 192 Qs but had to delete one as it was
an FT8 that had an incorrect exchange.   IMHO FT8 was not a good fit in this
contest for me.  Running MMTTY, N1MM controls the radio but with FT8, WSJT-X
wants to control the radio, so in order to switch to FT8, I had to change
the settings in N1MM to quit talking to the radio, shut N1MM down, start
WSJT-X and then start N1MM again.  Switching back to RTTY I had to do the
same thing all over again; too much trouble in my opinion.  The second time
I did it, N1MM didn't want to bring up it's RTTY window to see the decode.
After checking settings, saving them over and over again, and reopening
N1MM, after about 6 restarts it finally showed up.  I probably spent almost
10 minutes messing with it.   After that I never went back to FT8.  The
second issue I had with FT8 was that it appeared that many of those using it
were not in the contest; that's the reason for my removal of a contact with
a PY.  It was difficult to accurately determine who wasn't in the contest.
Some used CQ RU but very few did. Lastly, I found RTTY more enjoyable
because if you wanted to say something else to someone, you could, just like
in a phone or cw contest.  FT8 is so cold.  I plan to send a note to our
ARRL contest committee rep giving my opinion of this FT8 trial in this
contest.  I don't see where it hurt the contest any, but I felt it was more
trouble that it was worth and would not use it again in this one unless some
changes are made to improve the experience.

 

Other scores?

Don't forget to submit as Central Virginia Contest Club!  

73

Ronnie

WU4G