[RTTY] 150,000 RTTY Contacts

[Don Hill AA5AU]

After imported my Roundup contacts into my general logging program today, I noticed I have now logged over 150,000 contacts on RTTY.
I can still remember my first RTTY contact in January 1983. I was using a homebrew TU (Terminal Unit for you new guys and gals) and
a Heathkit H-89 computer running the CP/M operating system and homebrew software. The TU had two small red LEDs on the front panel -
one for MARK, the other for SPACE. I remember tuning that first RTTY station, seeing the two LEDs flashing back and forth and
watching intelligible print scroll across the screen of the Heathkit. It was like magic.

I soon discovered the BARTG RTTY Contest and the rest is history!

Later I would acquire my dad's H89 computer when he upgraded to a DOS machine. I would work the RTTY contests with one H89 and
manually log on the other H89 using a text editor. That was the start of using two PCs during RTTY contesting. It sort of stuck when
I went to SO2R for the first time in the 1993 ARRL RTTY Roundup using two DOS machines and RTTY by WF1B. One computer was a Tandy
desktop by Radio Shack and the other was a Toshiba laptop. Yes, a DOS laptop! I still have it and it still works. Back then the
computers were not networked, so I had to log certain bands on each computer. For example, I would log 15 & 40 meters on one
computer and 10, 20 & 80 meters on the other. This would allow me to operate the band combinations of 10 & 15, 15 & 20, 20 & 40 and
40 & 80 which is basically what I still do today. After the contest, I used Ray's (WF1B) MERGE program to merge the two BIN files
into one file before creating the final log. Man, that's was pretty slick back then!

73, Don AA5AU