[PaQSO] RTTY

[Jimk8mr at aol.com]

On a straight up or down vote on RTTY, I would vote no. 
 
Since I typically operate mobile from about 25 counties, do I get 25  votes?  
  :>)
 
 
 
 
RTTY/Digital does make sense in one context, however:
 
A separate change that IMHO would make PaQP a lot more interesting is  having 
multipliers by mode, i.e. two mults for working a county/section on both  CW 
and SSB.
 
Presently there is little incentive for a big station to work CW; he will  
get all counties (and sections) by sitting on SSB all day and having  people 
call in. There is no need for him to follow the CW mobiles as they  pass from 
county to county.  And this is what happens.  I seldom work  the top PA fixed 
stations, and if I do it's usually because I call  them.
 
OTOH in the OH and MI Parties, the serious guys, especially the multiops,  
pay a lot of attention to following the mobiles as they move around the state.  
The very serious, both in and out of state, will even ask me to QSY to the  
other mode (which I usually will do if I don't have a pileup going). 
 
Multipliers per mode keeps the interest up since there is double the pool  of 
multipliers to be chasing. You don't run low on new mults after the  first 
few hours.  And it has an advantage even for the single mode  guy:  if the 
serious guy has to occasionally leave his SSB run frequency to  chase some CW 
multipliers, there becomes an available SSB frequency for somebody  else to grab 
and use.
 
Back to RTTY/Digital: since somebody isn't about to suddenly become a  
proficient CW operator, if RTTY/Digital was permitted and counted as CW (at  least 
for the purpose of multipliers), a person not skilled in CW  could pick up some 
of the CW multipliers and thereby stay at  least somewhat competitive.  And 
if someone were to operate Digital  mobile...
 
 
73  -  Jim    K8MR  ( /m)
 
 
P.S.  Field Day has bonus points for demonstration qsos on SSTV.   Maybe PAQP 
could do likewise.  Extra points for exchanging pretty pictures  of the fall 
leaves!