[RTTY] Grouping Report in BARTG

[Don Hill AA5AU]

With conditions very poor on the high bands and rapid QSB, I saw a recurring theme when it came to copying weak stations. If they
sent a report like "599 001 001 1450 1450", I would most likely get either the number or the time but not both. However, when
working weak stations who sent "599 001 1450 001 1450" or "599 001-1450 001-1450", I was more likely to get the report right the
first time since the number and time were grouped together. By the time I copied or missed copy on one combined serial number/time
sequence, I would either get it or miss it the next time it was sent. So I started sending "599 001-1450 001-1450" and had less
requests for repeats. I normally don't use hyphens in my report, but decided to do it toward the end of the contest. It seemed to
work well.

I'm not trying to restart the "to use hyphen or not to use hyphen" thread, I'm just stating that grouping serial number and time
together worked much better this weekend and should probably be the way to do it in the future. BARTG HF contest has the longest
exchange of any RTTY contest we operate. Weird that I hadn't thought of or seen this before.

73, Don AA5AU
http://www.aa5au.com
http://www.rttycontesting.com