[RTTY] 2004 RTTY Roundup -lets stir the pot again!

[Marty Tippin]

It's pointless to argue this SO2R thing for long, but...

I believe that there is a significant advantage held by a good SO2R 
operator, particularly in RTTY contests and to a much lesser degree in CW 
and phone contests.

The pacing of a RTTY contest and the exchanges involved allows for most of 
the good SO2R operators to actually RUN on two frequencies at the same time 
- simply use the lock-out control in WriteLog and you'll never transmit two 
signals at the same time. And it's easy to adjust your messages so that the 
CQ is about the same length as the exchange. All you have to do is get into 
the rhythm of calling CQ on one radio while listening to an incoming 
exchange on the other - takes a little practice but isn't that hard to master.

To me, the ability to seamlessly run two frequencies at the same time, even 
if only one signal is on the air at a time, is what makes it impossible for 
the one-radio guys to compete with SO2R.

Perhaps a band change rule for single ops would level the playing field a 
bit - maybe something like 12 band changes per hour - that's way more than 
the average single op would need, but few enough to make the SO2R guys 
either demand their own category or be more sly in how they do their operating.

-NW0L


At 12:35 PM 1/9/2004, wx4tm at tm-moore.com wrote:
>Suggestion:  how's about an article on how easily the SO2R ops blow away
>the competition.. Look at a couple of years worth of contest scores and
>compare the highest SO2R scores to the highest SO1R scores (in high and
>low power categories) to show that the best SO2R scores average 1/4th to
>1/3rd higher than the best SO1R scores; that SO2R provides a greater
>advantage than by moving up to the High Power category (compare SO1R
>high power to SO2R low power scores which shows that SO2R LP wins over
>SO1R HP almost every time); and, why contest committees, led by the
>ARRL, continue to refuse to acknowledge the SO2R advantage, including
>published admissions by top SO2R ops that it is a fantastic, though
>somewhat complicated and costly advantage to obtain.