WAE RTTY 11 09 2025

[Jeff Rinehart]

Contesting can be "fickle" - especially contesting when Sunspots / Band Conditions are all over the place.  I thought I would do well to get on the air early in the mornings, shortly after sunrise but I was Wrong Again!

Operating a RTTY contest is always fun.  But like other forms of contesting it can be disheartening.  There were many many times when stations were transmitting their CQ  messages but couldn't hear my puny 100 watt signal - but it wasn't just me.  I heard many "little pistol" stations like mine calling and calling but being ignored.  

By the same token, most of the "big" contest powerhouse stations would answer me on my first call.  I don't know if it is because of the new "cheap" knock-off HF rigs connected to amplifiers or perhaps it may just be poor antennas.  But for whatever reason, many times I couldn't get a reply to my 100 watt signal so I had to learn to just - move on.  My HF rig is a 20 year old Icom 756 Pro3 but it still receives better than many of the newest rigs - first manufactured in 2004. 

I enjoyed the contest even though I could only operate about 12 hours of the 24 alotted.  I used 4 different profile decoders for receiving.  Decoder #1 was my primary receive window using standard MMTTY.  I also had 3 other decoders operating simultaneously showing their received decoded signals - two instances of 2-tone and one Gritty decoder.  Each decoder did quite well but there were many times when MMTTY was superseded by Gritty or one of the others. 

Give RTTY a try.  It is sometimes a bit of a challenge to get it all working, but if you can operate any of the sound card modes - you can operate RTTY.  Many of us "gray haired old timers" still use true FSK for transmitting.  Everyone uses AFSK for receiving.  If all that sounds "weird" but interesting, you are well on your way to working the RTTY mode.  Your transceiver probably already has a RTTY mode choice - even if it doesn't specify RTTY as a choice, it can be done in SSB mode if you can narrow your receive filter to 500 Hz. or less.

Countries Worked:

   

My congratulations to both David AD4TJ and Butch N5SMQ for figuring out how to send/receive QTC's for this contest.  Hope to see you in the next one.

Jeff W4PJW

Jeff Rinehart   W4PJW

https://www.qrz.com/db/W4PJW