[RTTY] Contacts vs Power and Skill in RTTY contests

[K5ROE Mike]

Of course you'd want to weight these numbers against the declining solar 
cycle values...


de K5ROE Mike


On 03/27/2017 01:00 PM, Tim Shoppa wrote:
> Just choosing my past 7 years in RTTY WPX, the power I ran, the number of
> contacts, and the score:
>
> 2012 - 100W - 334 Q's - 188K points
> 2013 - 400W - 689 Q's - 900K points
> 2014 - 400W - 973 Q's - 1300K points
> 2015 - 1500W - 1322 Q's - 2465K points
> 2016 - 1500W - 1508 Q's - 3003K points
> 2017 - 1500W - 1653 Q's - 3518K points
>
> My extrapolation is that a 4x increase in power results in about twice as
> many Q's. So a 15x increase in power (100W to 1500W) results in about 4
> times as many Q's.
>
> My antenna setup is nearly unchanged in the past decade so I can factor
> that out.
>
> Of course, my skills and enthusiasm and operating hours for RTTY contesting
> also grew over the past 6 years too. RTTY decoder technology has also grown
> too. So while the improvement hasn't been entirely due to power, I think my
> enthusiasm and enjoyment and on-time increased as I increased power in a
> very strong relation too.
>
> The concept that several have expressed here and elsewhere, that there is
> no skill in RTTY contesting, is very wrong. Maybe it might be skill-free if
> you only work the strongest stations that have perfect print.
>
> I work all kinds of weak stations that call me, requiring running multiple
> decoders in parallel and using my judgement and experience to piece
> together their callsigns and exchanges. While also using my ears to judge
> which print was more likely to be correct than the others in the face of
> QRM and QRN.  It's a much more visual experience than CW or SSB contesting
> and incorporating an additional sense to the activity is actually very
> satisfying and engaging.
>
> Tim N3QE
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