[RTTY] What does it take to finish in the top 10?

[Al Kozakiewicz]

I'm curious about the operating techniques part of RTTY contesting.

Forget, for a moment, about the DX contests where the station QTH and antennas can be a major contributor to score. The just ended NAQP is kind of a great leveler - low power, $20,000 antenna systems are not a tremendous advantage and there aren't too many rare multipliers.  I looked at Don AA5AU's QTH on Google satellite and it doesn't look like a world class contest station.  A decent tower on a suburban lot - well within the resource limitations of many hams.

I put an honest 9 h0our effort in.  It would have been 10 except that it snowed here for the first time this winter and my planned 2 hour break for dinner out with my wife turned into 3.  But, in my case, I doubt the extra hour would have made a huge difference.  I had a total of 429 QSO's and my best one hour rate was 69.

I did learn this time to be more aggressive in switching from run to S&P when the running QSO rate slowed down.

But what I really want to know is how many of the contesters who score north of 500 QSO's are running SO2R?  When I consolidate my 2 QTH's this year, I will build SO2R capability, but I need to know how much is dependent on my ability and operating techniques and not station capabilities?

Al
AB2ZY