Are you ready to rock and roll?

If not – you still have a bit of time to brush up on your RTTY skills. The most important digi mode event of the year is only two days away!

With 15,000 participants worldwide, this is a weekend of contesting fun like no other. The goal is simple: to get on air and make as many contacts as you can, with as many different DXCC countries and US/VE states.

New to RTTY? It’s all on YouTube – how to hook up your radio, how to set up your logging program, decoder, and how to actually make contacts.

Apart from the obvious – having fun and setting your own personal contest record, the goal is to make it to the “all time records” rank list.

https://cqwwrtty.com/records.htm

Select Oceania as a region, and Australia as a country to check Pacific and local record holders.

And if you pick an uncontested category this year, who knows – in a few months you may find yourself on the list too!

Tip? Go easy. CQWW is a long contest, don’t burn yourself. Taking an 8 hours break is fine, you will still make plenty of contacts. And whatever you do, go easy on the transmitter! More radios and amplifiers are killed during the last week of September than any other time of the year! RTTY signal is a shifting carrier, basically a ‘key down mode’. A rule of thumb: go half power, even if transmitter is rated 100% duty cycle.

Here is a great article about RTTY: https://www.qsl.net/on7dy/info/RTTY%20Basics.htm

With 10m band on fire, I intend to do my best there. If you decode VK9DX make sure to call back – every contact counts!

See you in the contest!