-----Original Message-----
From: rtty-bounces@contesting.com [mailto:rtty-bounces@contesting.com] On
Behalf Of WS7I
Sent: Monday, February 14, 2011 9:26 PM
To: Peter Laws
Cc: RTTY contest group
Subject: Re: [RTTY] K or carriage return
>Well I will take a stab at this. Lots of difference of opinion. I was
>running in this contest low power >100 watts to a butternut, so antenna is
>less than optimum.
Don't sell the Butternut short! I used an HF6V and I ran frequencies a couple
of different times on 40 and 20 with 1000-1200 watts and nobody tried to move
in on me over a several hour time period. On 80m the antenna is next to
useless in a contest if it has a good ground system (mine has about 20 kHz of
usable bandwidth) and on 15 and 10m, the antenna is too close to the ground to
be an omnidirectional flamethrower.
>Kind of why not call CQ this way. WS7I CQ
>
>Much more efficient, only problem is ? Calling CQ at all is a waste of time,
>yet a station running does it >how much in a contest? I can assure you that
>Ed doesn't send much time CQing into the ether.
Which brings up about operating practice that can make a big difference. You
need to send something long enough so that people with narrow receive filters
can find you as they're tuning across the band (I use the receivers band scope
as well when S&Ping, but when stations are packed together like sardines, you
can miss a spot). And you need to stop sending long enough to hear replies and
to give the poor amplifier a rest. My AL-1500 runs a LOT hotter in RTTY than
it does during a CW or phone contest, for obvious reasons. My CQ macro started
as CQ WPX DE AB2ZY AB2ZY K. I dropped the "K" and the "DE" after a bit of
running. That took about 5 seconds to send and I listened for about 5 seconds
as well, more to keep the duty cycle around 50% than anything else. Is 5
seconds of silence too long? Is 5 seconds of CQing too long? I'd be curious
to know what people think is optimal.
Al
AB2ZY
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