[RTTY] NS RTTY Sprint

[Tim Shoppa]

Ken K6MR writes:

> I?m not sure what the breakdown of working/retired folks is on the
> morning/afternoon CWTs, but except for a few that have noted they operate
> from work (VE9AA in his car, for example) I?d bet most are retired. So that
> limits an already small group. I know two of our most active stations are
> work constrained during the day.  As I noted in a previous post, VE2FK
> asked publically about a daytime CWT-style RTTY session and no one
> responded. If we wanted to have a standard contest style session, that
> would definitely be the way to go. Something completely separate from NS,
> sort of like what they did with the Tuesday night Fone Fray.
>

Ken, as a Thursday night RTTY sprint regular, I think the
half-hour-dupes-allowed-with-QSY-rule works out very nicely. You might
remember I was worried about some rules complications from QSY rule at the
start but those worries never ever materialized in real life.

While I love going for the jump ball and being denied just to come up again
on a different frequency a few seconds later, other contesters feel very
differently about the sprint format.

I do remember trying my first NCJ NA CW sprints and just wanting to bash my
radio in after losing a couple jump balls, it does take a special kind of
gumption to jump in the deep end like that. But a few months of Thursday
night CW sprints got me into that groove, and now I yearn for the QSY and
jump ball.

I think a half-hour non-sprint RTTY session on a weekday night would be OK,
like Phone Fray. I try to support Phone Fray but Tuesday night with the
kids is one where I can't always duck away (will change over summer break I
hope.)

Weekday daytimes, would be tough for me because I'd usually be at work.
When I have to take a day off for doctors appointments I try to do it on
Wednesdays, or when I have to work overnight I try to arrange it so I get
to be at home during the day on Wednesday, so I get on for CWOps daytime
sessions a couple times a year.

Is there/was there a RTTY club like CWOps? When I was a kid back in the
80's making my own homebrew TU for a Model 32, I knew that there were RTTY
newsletters presumably snail-mailed but I never was quite in that league.
It wouldn't surprise me if they had some regular activities at least a
little like CWOps mini-CWT back then.

Tim N3QE