CQ WPX RTTY 2024

23 Feb, 2024

From February 10^th-11^th (UTC Time) 2024, I had the awesome opportunity to participate in the CQ WPX RTTY contest operating with the WV4P team.

CQ WPX RTTY is an annual amateur radio contest using the Radioteletype digital mode, where the goal is to make contact with as many individual stations as you can using the mode, while also trying to get as many callsign prefixes in your log as possible. The more prefixes you get, the higher your score can go! For instance, our callsign was WV4P - so anyone missing WV4 in their log could come "work us" for a multiplier.

Throughout the contest, our team had two goals: beat the highest-scoring North American team from last year (K9CT), and try and achieve the North American world record for highest score. While the log check hasn't happened at the time of writing this post, the score rumors posted to 3830scores.com seems to have placed us at achieving both!

I had a fantastic time operating this contest. Usually, operators find RTTY boring due to the monotonous tones and the computerized exchanges, but I actually find it quite nice. I'm able to get a good rate of contacts going without it feeling like a huge slog, and while not hurting my throat trying to yell from doing single-sideband phone contacts.

I still need to get my morse code chops up and running again, and start trying to do more contesting there. I think I might find that even more engaging than RTTY, but my head-copy speed is just not quite there yet.

I'm proud of all of the members of the WV4P team that made this happen - it was a group effort and we couldn't have done it without all of them. Special shout-outs to Ron, WV4P, and Trina, NR4L, who spent the most time operating to keep both stations running the entire 48 hours. I don't think I have the energy even as a youth to operate for that long!

I'm glad I got the opportunity to participate in this contest, and I can't wait till my next opportunity to contest like this again!

The above table shows WV4P's QSOs (or contacts) per amateur band, as reported to 3830scores.