Contesting helps prepare us for demanding communication tasks such as might be encountered during a major disaster.

Why do I call contests training events? Simply put, all the skills built through contesting experience are valuable in emergency-communications (“Emcomm”) situations:

• Hearing, understanding and recording information quickly and accurately.
• Extracting information from weak signals or through interference and noise.
• Establishing and completing contacts with rapid efficiency.
• Finding work-arounds when the unexpected happens, rather than giving up.
• Knowing how to get the most out of your equipment and antennas.
• Understanding propagation and making those tough long-haul contacts.

Each contest has its own unique rules which define the challenge. There are specific starting and ending times, encompassing operating periods as short as four hours or as long as two days. Eligible stations (i.e. those with whom contacts count for contest credit) may be confined to a specific state or country or may include all hams worldwide.

There is a defined exchange, a set of information that must be sent, received and logged accurately. Exchanges can be as simple as three or four characters to a lengthy data set that simulates the message header in a formal radiogram.

Each contact adds points, and often there is a “multiplier” for each geographic area contacted. The sum of contact points times the sum of multipliers yields the final score. Participating operators usually submit their contest logs to the sponsoring organization in electronic form, which enables rigorous cross-checking for accuracy and facilitates timely publishing of the results.

Contests are not limited to the HF bands that are primarily the domain of many General-class and higher licensees.

There are VHF, UHF and even microwave contests, all available to holders of every class of license. If you think that the two-meter or 70-centimeter band is limited to supporting nearby and repeater contacts, you’re in for a surprise!

Communication over hundreds of miles and more is possible with suitable antennas and equipment. By participating in these competitions, you will learn what works best and how your station’s effectiveness can be improved.

You don’t have to be in it to win it; just take part, and have fun while you’re learning to enhance your and your station’s performance.

When former FCC Enforcement Bureau Chief Riley Hollingsworth addressed an audience of Hams at a major radio convention a few years ago, he advised them to watch and learn from contesters. “They’re the best operators in the world”, he said. Having participated with many top-notch contesters myself over the last four decades, I would have to agree. If my life depended on a message getting through quickly and accurately under difficult conditions, having world-class contesters at each end of the circuit would greatly enhance the likelihood that I would survive.

Of course, most of us aren’t world-class contesters. Yet we, too, can sharpen our operating skills by exercising them in organized competitions. With standardized rules and widely disseminated results, we can compare our performance with that of our peers and measure our improvement from one year to the next.

We can identify and correct weaknesses in our stations, evaluate the impact of equipment and antenna changes, and push ourselves to solve real-time communication problems as efficiently as possible.

All this builds and hones transferrable skills. It makes us better at what we do, which is getting the message through. Remember, when all else fails, Amateur Radio works, and properly trained, dedicated Hams make it happen. less

Or, if inclined, you can whet your competitive juices and try for a high score. Or all of the above, all in one session. Everyone is welcome, participants in CWTs include slow-speed, first-try-at-a-contest folks and some of the best contesters in the world. Many ops are routinely making 100-plus contacts in an hour, and the best of the best frequently make more than 120 contacts. This is real contesting and a real hoot.

You don't have to be an NCCC member to enjoy NS, and you don't have to be a CWops member to enjoy CWTs. Everyone is welcome. Join the fun—you'll thank me later.

The W6SX Prime Directive: The first rule of contesting is to have fun.

Contest Exuberantly
Hank, W6SX
P.S. The picture is me CWops Tests Manager, W6SX sporting the CWops hat I won by making the first-ever QRP CWT Hat Trick (win all three sessions). close

I was quickly informed that it is not that simple and there are critical things for an operator to do. While I remained skeptical, I felt obligated as a club member, especially a club member with a bad attitude about the RTTY mode for contesting, to try and get RTTY working for the Round-Up 4 months later. I operated the RTTY Round-Up, convinced I could prove this was a stupid way to contest. My plan was thwarted, though, when I actually enjoyed the contest. I remarked afterward, “What a hoot!!” Several months later when I received a plaque for SO HP Pacific Division, I was hooked. Even more exciting was that the NCCC did in fact win that first RTTY Round-Up club competition gavel.

My original reaction (this is boring; the computer does everything) is the fundamental distinction of RTTY as compared to CW and SSB. I’ve heard many people respond as I first did and then pass the time by watching football, reading a book, processing email, etc all while “working RTTY”. It occurred to me that this criticism of the mode might actually hold a big upside if I looked at it differently. Being relieved of using my brain for decoding CW, or listening to SSB, I could use that available mental capacity to hone other aspects of my contesting skill set.

For example, one of the quickest and best ways to learn SO2R technique and build expertise is to do so with the RTTY mode. I now had plenty of bandwidth to learn the timing and syncing of two radios. I could experiment with different ways of interleaving QSOs. And, virtually all the SO2R skill I developed was directly transferable to CW. With SO2R itself second nature, I now had the mental capacity to add back in my CW skills.

Similarly, I improved my using a second receiver in one radio to search and pounce on the same band that I was running on. It was much easier to develop the station and personal skill using the RTTY mode and then transfer it back to CW and SSB.

The second benefit I discovered was that the diversity of being able to contest in three modes added spark and interest to my favorite hobby. I’m well aware that my favorite mode is CW, but interleaving RTTY and occasionally some SSB kept the spark in the game for me.

Thirdly, I have enjoyed the technical challenges of both the hardware and software associated with RTTY contesting. Because we rely on technology for decoding the RTTY bit stream, I am always seeking to understand and implement better ways to decode with lower error rates. The more I learn, the more I realize that there is much, much more to reliably decoding RTTY signals. It has been fascinating to see a RTTY signal print perfectly well on my screen when I could hear no trace of the signal in my headphone, nor see any glimpse of it on a high quality bandscope. The technology was truly pulling the signal out of noise.

When first learning to setup for RTTY operation, it seemed like a veritable blizzard of details. There were unfamiliar terms to digest and, like many things, there was a range of complexity possible to make it seem overwhelming at first. After a while I realized that it was almost as simple as CW. For transmit I use homebrew FSK/PTT keying cables that use exactly the same level-shifter, open-collector NPN transistor (and base resistor) as is used for CW and PTT keying. Just like CW, there are commercial interfaces of varying complexity, all the way up to the multi-featured microHAM boxes.

For receive, there is the additional connection of routing the receiver audio to the RTTY modem, typically implemented in a PC software program that uses the soundcard. This connection is often as simple as a standard Radio Shack stereo phone plug cable between the receiver and soundcard.

The third piece is the RTTY modem itself which performs the dual function of decoding the receive audio to print the received character stream and encoding the transmitted characters into the Baudot bit stream that is transmitted. Two of the best RTTY modems available are well-supported freeware programs that are widely used (MMTTY and 2Tone).

Three of the most popular contest loggers (WriteLog, N1MM Logger and Win-Test) all allow MMTTY and/or 2Tone to integrate seamlessly to provide as excellent a user experience as in CW and SSB with these loggers. I advocate sticking with the logger you are familiar with for CW and SSB when you get started with RTTY. Why make it more difficult by also coming up to speed on a new logger?

The RTTY contesting world is blessed with an outstanding website with detailed tutorials for beginner and expert alike. Nearly everyone involved with this mode is a heavy user of www.rttycontesting.com, authored by Don Hill, AA5AU, RTTY contester extraordinaire.

So, what about you? Does it sound intriguing to try something new in contesting? Perhaps leverage your experience with RTTY back into CW or SSB? Can you broaden your thinking to get beyond the common belief that “RTTY is boring”?    less

I’m still able to do SO2R, but the filtering requirements are greater and there is still cross band interference, especially near the 2nd harmonic of the transmit frequency. At my station on Prince Edward Island (PEI), I have a 100+’ separation on most bands and I don’t hear any interference from the 2nd radio, but filtering is still required to obtain that result.

The left hand photo shows my SO2R setup in PEI. The right hand photo is of my LA station. I personally prefer the PEI setup with one radio on each side of the computer’s main monitor and keyboard because I can use both hands to tune radios.

In LA, I have to use my right hand to tune both radios, but the way the desk is laid out, that was the best way to set up my station. I use the right radio as the run radio most of the time as the left radio is slightly closer and easier to tune. A third option is to stack the radios. I don’t care for that configuration because I find it more comfortable having my arm flat on the desk as I tune.

Your SO2R switching device needs to switch the CW key (keyer/computer keying,) mic, footswitch and headphones between the two radios, making sure you can only transmit on one radio at a time.

I use the W5XD Multi-keyer (Photo to the right) as my SO2R switch box. Since I use Writelog as my SO2R contest logging software and the program was written by W5XD, the hardware and software are well integrated.

One feature that I use constantly is using the computer keyboard to toggle the headphones from mono on one radio to stereo with one radio in each ear. I assign this function to the “,” key on the keyboard. That way I can listen to what I want to without removing my hands from the keyboard to flip a switch.

One more device needed, shown to the left of the W5XD switch in the photo above is a mic splitter box. This is a simple homebrew project that takes the stereo audio output from your computer, splits it for the left and right radios and isolates the computer from the radio using 1:1 audio transformers.

On the filtering side, you first need a band decoder between each radio and filter. The band decoder takes the band defining information (the binary coded data (BCD)) from the radio and outputs a voltage on one of six lines (one line for each contest band.) That voltage pulls in the appropriate relay(s) in the filtering system.

I use Top Ten Devices band decoders. Be aware that some band decoders/filters use source currents and some use sinking currents to draw in the relays. If your devices don’t use the same scheme, you will need a voltage inverter to keep everything working together.

I use both low power band pass filters between the radio and the amp and high power filters between the amp and antennas. My understanding is that using more than one set of filters has a cumulative effect on the isolation between bands and reduction of noise and hash.

The commercial band pass filters I've reviewed are rated at 250 watts or less with a 1:1 SWR, so you can't use them after the amp. The W3NQN low pass filters are rated at 2500 watts. Depending on the coax used, stubs can withstand even greater power or higher SWR situations.

At my station in PEI, my low power band pass filters are made by Dunestar (see photo above). Because of the separation between antennas, in PEI my only high power filters are 20 meter and 40 meter high power W3NQN low pass filters from Array Solutions (photo right)

At the home QTH, I use Array Solutions low power W3NQN filters for my band pass filters. I use coax stubs as my high power filters. I have an additional 40 meter stub with a coaxial cable ¼ wavelength long between the main stubs and the 40 meter antenna. That is because I have the most interference between 20m and 40m.    less