This is one of a series of “Notes” I published on Facebook. Since Facebook has discontinued the Notes feature, I am publishing that series here on my blog.
If you ask anyone who knows me, they will probably tell you I’m not into digital modes. It’s not that I am anti-digital. I have tried several of the newer modes, but found them uninteresting. I left EME after having put nearly all my eggs in that basket for 18 years because the digital mode that replaced CW made it anything but fun or interesting to me personally. But, I recently began to experiment with RTTY for purposes of working DXpeditions on another mode. To my surprise, I’m finding it moderately fun. I would say RTTY is the only “mainstream” digital mode in DX and contesting. Perhaps that is because it was the original digital mode, aside from Morse code of course. The mode itself has been around and in use by amateurs for a very long time, originally using teletype machines – noisy, clacking mechanical behemoths that allowed the sending station to enter text on a typewriter style keyboard, and printed the text on paper at the receiving station. RTTY is short for Radio Teletype”. Today, RTTY is easily achieved using a computer and sound card. Nearly every major DXpedition operates RTTY in addition to SSB and CW. A few do a limited amount of PSK, but most don’t. Hence if you want to work the rare DX on digital, you’re probably going to want to be on RTTY. There are quite a few RTTY contests, including a few major ones.
On Friday afternoon, just prior to the start of the CQ WW WPX RTTY Contest (a big one!) I got the notion into my head that this might be a good opportunity to work a few more countries on the mode and get a little more experience with it. I assumed, this being a digital mode, that I would just be making a few contacts, picking and choosing those stations that would be a “new one” on RTTY or on a particular band. It was a perfectly good theory, but I should have known better!
I didn’t really know the format for exchanges in RTTY contesting. I knew the required exchange for this contest was signal report (always 599 in a contest) and serial number starting with 001 if it is your first QSO in the contest. What I didn’t know was whether to include callsigns in every transmission or omit them after the other station has correctly copied that information. I didn’t know whether the serial number should be repeated more than once. In some respects this is very different from CW or SSB contesting. In those modes, the operator is the decoder. You hear the information, you decide what was said and can easily assess your confidence in having heard it correctly or not based on signal strength, interference, and so on. With RTTY the software and/or hardware is doing the decoding. Even if you are monitoring the receive audio (annoying, since it is a high pitched warbling sound) you may not know for sure whether a burst of noise or signal flutter may have caused a number to decode incorrectly. It can be totally wrong! A common one I see time and time again under marginal conditions is “599” decoding as “TOO”. That’s not even close! Because of these uncertainties, I decided to wait until the start of the contest to program macros – short sequences to automate the sending of contest exchanges. I would see what others were doing first, then set up mine accordingly.
Hastily tuning around in the first few minutes of the contest and just listening (watching?) I was able to come up with some guidelines. As with contesting in other modes there are many variations, but I discovered the most common QSO format looks something like this, where DX1TST is the station calling CQ and the bold italic lines are sent by the answering station:
CQ DX1TST DX1TST
CQ DX1TST DX1TST
N1BUG N1BUG N1BUG
N1BUG 599 123 123 N1BUG
N1BUG 599 123 123 N1BUG
DX1TST 599 001 001 N1BUG
N1BUG TU DX1TST
These exchanges contain much which would be considered extraneous in a CW or SSB contest, but they help to assure confidence in the decoded information and to be sure the correct station is being copied since they all sound exactly alike. I set up my macros accordingly and proceeded to look for stations I wanted to work.
Tuning in a RTTY signal takes a bit of practice and must be done quite precisely since the two tones are only 170 Hz apart and the software expects them to be almost exactly in a certain place. The software I am using (WinWarbler) includes a tuning indicator which attempts to reproduce the RTTY scope pattern of days gone by. It is a pair of rotating ellipses at right angles to each other (like a plus sign) with one ellipse representing each of the two tones. The tones are called mark and space just in case you’re wondering. When a station is properly tuned one ellipse should be vertical, the other horizontal. Any tilt indicates mistuning, and if you are off by more than a small amount, one or both ellipses will shrink in length or completely disappear as that tone falls outside the receiver or decoder filter. By default, my tuning indicator rotated clockwise for a counterclockwise rotation of the tuning knob and vice versa. Oh boy! This hadn’t been more than a minor annoyance in DXing, since I had plenty of time to tune the station properly. But in contesting it slowed me down as I had to keep reminding myself which way to turn the knob. Probably this would have improved in time, but WinWarbler has an option to reverse the tuning indicator direction of rotation. Having it rotate the same way as the tuning knob helps tremendously! If I need the indicator to rotate clockwise, I turn the knob clockwise. My mind can handle that.
At first I was very slow. I was reminded of my first steps in CW and SSB contesting years ago. As a rookie, you’re going to be somewhat tentative for a while. I had to stop and think about what key to hit or macro to click every time. Even though I was looking at a band map that contained spots and choosing the stations I wanted to work, I was tuning to them manually. I found myself using the mouse exclusively to position the cursor in the proper fields for entering log information, click on macros, and press the ‘Log’ button at the end of a QSO. This RTTY contesting was turning out to be a lot of work! At some point I realized that pressing <Ctrl>+<L> on the keyboard to log a QSO would save me some mouse work and was quite a bit more efficient. That might have been obvious under normal circumstances, but I was still rather nervous and uncertain about this whole RTTY contesting thing. Some time later I realized that WinWarbler has a contest mode which, when selected, positions the cursor where needed most of the time, unless you somehow get out of sync, such as having an unusual situation in the flow of a QSO. Also, it automatically increments the sent serial number for each QSO. Hotkeys were a much better way of sending macros, the only trick being to remember which key sends what without looking at the list every time. Yes, I got it wrong a few times and got all flustered trying to recover. Mistakes are part of learning something new. Things were beginning to speed up and this was a lot less like work if I let the software help. Eventually it dawned on me that I didn’t have to manually tune to the stations I saw spotted. All I had to do was click the station’s callsign in the band map and presto, my rig was tuned to the spotted frequency, the station’s callsign entered in the appropriate box for logging, etc. Wow!
With those revelations and a few hours of intermittent operating behind me, it happened: contest fever took over and I started clicking on every callsign in the band map instead of being choosy. Oh, great. I was slipping into a contest mindset without realizing it. I found that I could go from QSO to QSO very quickly now, with little or no thought. The only trouble was I knew the spotted stations on the band map were but a few of the stations available. If I wanted to work the others I was going to have to learn how to “tune the band”, finding stations myself. Even with the tuning indicator and knob now rotating in the same direction, it took a while to get comfortable with this process. Trust me. On a crowded band it is necessary to use narrow filters in the receiver to keep QRM down. But, narrow filters means that sometimes only one of the two tones is within the filter, and you probably don’t know which one. Hence you don’t know which way to tune. It is entirely possible to have the mark tone from one station in the filter, but not his space tone or vice versa. Yet you see two tones because you have one tone from an adjacent station in the filter. Honestly, I can’t say that I liked this operating strategy much on RTTY, but perhaps if I do it enough it will become less challenging. Overall, my skills were improving by leaps and bounds and I was finding plenty of stations to work.
On Sunday, propagation to Europe on the higher bands (20,15, and 10 meters) was very good with many signals being 30 or more dB over S9, some pegging the meter. Under these conditions I found that stations I called were responding with “N1BUG 599 1234” instead of the longer, more cautious message. I hastily set up a new macro to respond in kind “TU 599 321”. Under those conditions I suppose one can expect perfect decoding (called print in RTTY) almost every time, so the shorter exchange makes sense. At the other extreme, fluttery signals coming over the north pole from deep Asia can be quite difficult to get good print even when the signal strength is excellent. The software does have several different decoding algorithms to choose from, including one or two for fluttered signals. They help, but error rates are still high and more repeats are often required.
I never did feel comfortable enough to try “running” – that is, being the CQing station and letting people come to me. All my operating was search and pounce (find a CQing station and work them).
On Sunday afternoon it occurred to me that I had worked over 70 DXCC entities in this contest. Knowing that, I had an irresistible urge to see if I could work RTTY DXCC (100 entities) in a single weekend. Suddenly I was back to my original modus operandi for the most part – seeking stations that would give me a “new one” in DXCC terms. I ended up with 89. This is not just bad, it is downright ugly! Oh, not because I failed to reach 100 this time. It is ugly because I got close enough that next time RTTY DXCC in a weekend is likely to be my goal from the outset. Next time!? Oh boy. Another monster has escaped captivity. Sadly, no one has yet found a cure for this DX and contesting affliction, so I’m stuck with it.
I had fun messing with people who know me and my usual avoidance of digital modes. I got several “N1BUG?! 599 …” responses, which, while ambiguous, tended to come only from those I am acquainted with. “N1BUG ON DIGI!!!” was seen a couple of times, and “N1BUG ON DIGI, WOW!!!!!” once. There was no ambiguity of meaning there.
I made 333 QSOs in the contest. That’s not bad for a first attempt with quite limited operating time doing all search and pounce. There was a moment of panic five minutes from the end when it looked like I might end up with 332. An even number? No, no, no, no, no! I may have been trying something new and unexpected, but I was still me after all! I never said I was without idiosyncrasies. Fortunately I was able to find and work one more before it ended. Whew!
I am much more comfortable with the software and RTTY operating now. This will no doubt serve me well in day to day pursuit of DXpedition QSOs. Whatever your interest in ham radio, even if it is mostly public service, there is nothing like contesting to improve operator skill. Those of us who are prone to being highly competitive probably get the most out of it, but even casual contest operation does more than one might think.