Michael, welcome to RTTY contesting and the RTTY reflector. All of us here in
this group know exactly what you mean by "come to love
the sound of diddles". It's music to our ears.
I remember my first RTTY contact 30 years ago. I was immediately hooked; just
as you appear to be. Looking forward to seeing you in
RTTY contests for years to come.
73, Don AA5AU
www.aa5au.com
www.rttycontesting.com
-----Original Message-----
From: RTTY [mailto:rtty-bounces@contesting.com] On Behalf Of Michael Rapp
Sent: Wednesday, October 02, 2013 2:51 PM
To: rtty@contesting.com
Subject: [RTTY] My first RTTY contest
Hi all,
Having just finished up my first quasi-real contest effort, I felt like
reporting my reflections on it.
That was fun!
I'm a relatively new licensee (May of 2012) and have been spending my time
primarily sampling all the various activities in ham
radio. I tried a few SSB contests and while I enjoyed them somewhat, the
constant yelling into the mic really wasn't working for
me.
I stumbled into RTTY earlier this year and did some practice contacts during
the VOLTA contest back in May, but life intervened and
I had to take a break from ham radio over the summer and am just now getting
back into it.
I approached the CW WW RTTY contest solely as an opportunity to increase my DX
count; however, after only tuning the bands for a
short time, I found myself really enjoying the contest!
I'm not exactly sure what it was but I've come to love the sound of the didles
and the cadence of an efficient exchange. I like the
visual challenge of tuning the X-Y scope in MMTTY and pulling out call signs
from the phantom characters that populate a weak
exchange. Plus the catch-in-the-breath moment after you send you call..will
the runner come back to someone else or will he come
back to me (and have my call right)?
And I suppose not having to constantly speak into a mic helped, too.
I operated far longer than I ever intended and in fact lost track of time at
one point, which I suppose is a fairly good indicator
that I was having fun.
I ever got up the courage to run a bit during the last two hours of the contest
to get some practice doing that.
I honestly can't wait for the next RTTY contest and it looks like I don't have
long to wait..the NCJ NA RTTY Sprint is coming up
shortly. Looks like my next major step is to get more familiar with N1MM.
(And get some 80 meters capability, which I don't have
at the moment.)
--
/*/-=[Michael / KT5MR]-=/*/
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