[RTTY] My first RTTY contest

[Michael Haack]

Michael,

Welcome and glad you had a good time out there.
See you in the next one.

73, Mike WB9B



On 2013-10-02 2:51 PM, Michael Rapp wrote:
> 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.)
>