[3830] NA Sprint RTTY K9YC HP

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                    NA Sprint RTTY Contest - March

Call: K9YC
Operator(s): K9YC
Station: K9YC

Class: Single Op HP
QTH: CA
Operating Time (hrs): 4

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Op Time
---------------------
   80:   33      .8
   40:   57     1.6
   20:   51     1.6
---------------------
Total:  141    Mults = 34  Total Score = 4,794

Club: Northern California Contest Club

Team: NCCC #1

Comments:

This was a struggle for me. Never really could get in sync, kept getting 
beat when I called someone, found it difficult to get stations tuned in, 
lots of stations didn't print very well, and I needed lots fills. By the 
last hour, I was only calling CQ, QSYing from one VFO to the other, 
letting others make the doublets. If I hadn't been on a team, I would 
have bagged it by 5 pm.

One problem, of course, is practice. I haven't worked a RTTY Sprint for at
least a year, maybe longer, and I've been booked for other things 
when practices have been scheduled. And we all know that keeping #1 
happy is very important. :)

As to the contest itself, three very important things bothered me a lot.

1) Many stations do not acknowledge the Q with TU or QSL  If it were a CW or
SSB Sprint, we would not log that QSO. Why should we log it in a RTTY Sprint?

2) Many stations don't wait for that TU or QSL before calling.  Many high
profile contesters are guilty of this practice, some of them otherwise very
good operators. If it were a CW or SSB Sprint, we'd quickly send AS (or say
QRX) and get the acknowledgment or request for a fill, but that's a lot harder
to do with RTTY contesting software.

3) My rule in RTTY contesting is that I don't log anything I haven't seen
twice, yet most "big gun" Sprinters only send the exchange once. Especially
with the short time allowed for tuning in the other station, I often didn't
print parts of the exchange sent only once, so that caused me to need a lot of
fills. 

I also ran into several stations who didn't read the Sprint rules. Less
important, but a PITA, were a few guys who sent their entire exchange when
calling.

73, Jim K9YC


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