[RTTY] My first RTTY contest

[Michael Rapp]

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]-=/*/