ARRL RTTY Roundup Helps Start New Year Of Contesting; Will There Be More Records In 2011?

By Jamie Dupree NS3T radio-sport.net
Posted January 3, 2011

If you search the record book for the ARRL RTTY Roundup, it doesn't take long to realize how much the sport of RTTY contesting has grown in recent years, as there are dozens of individual marks from just the last few years of that test.
And as the RTTY Roundup arrives this weekend, there's no reason to think that contesters won't find a way to repeat that type of success in 2011.
Among the records set in 2010, a new Low Power mark in the Multi-Single category by Team N0NI in Iowa, as they finished with 210,500 points after log checks.
Not only did N0NI set the MS-LP record, but they also had the best overall score by a Multi-Op in the 2010 RTTY Roundup, besting the top High Power Multi W0SD, which rang up almost 205,000 points.
The top overall category records look like this:

Single Op, High Power - P49X (W0YK) 387,004 - 2009
Single Op, Low Power - AA5AU 230,868 - 2006
Multi-Single, Low - N0NI 210,500 - 2010
Multi-Single, High - VP5NN 243,164 - 2003
The last record listed above in Multi-Single High Power only barely held on, as Team NR5M finished with 243,144 - just 20 points behind the VP5NN score.
The consolation was that NR5M now holds the W/VE mark for MS-HP, but it's yet another reminder that every single contact counts.
Other records that fell in 2010 included the Single Op High Power mark in Europe, as RD3AF set that new record with 209,616 points.
Also going down was the Multi-Single Low Power record in South America, which is now held by ZX2B.

P49X Looks For Six Straight RTTY RU Titles

After winning a fifth straight Single Op High Power victory last year, Ed Muns W0YK will be the favorite to repeat in that class again in 2011 from P49X in Aruba.
Muns fell short of breaking the record that he set in 2009, when he finished with 387,004 points after log checks.
"It would be nice if we had the propagation of CQWW RTTY in late September, but I'm not holding my breath," Muns told radio-sport.net just before leaving for Aruba.
As for strategy, Muns said he will likely go "SO3R with the third radio perched on 10m most of the time."
"Going through my 2006-2010 logs, I found 3340 unique US/VE call signs, which illustrates why we say RTTY Round-Up is a 24-hour rate-fest"
One reminder about this contest is that while it lasts for 30 hours, stations can only operate 24 hours in all, which means choosing a good chunk of six hours to take off at the right time.
As for the growth in this contest, the number of logs submitted for the ARRL RTTY Roundup went up again in 2010, as the ARRL reported receiving 1,623 entries.
That beat the previous record set a year earlier in the 2009 contest of 1,564, an increase of almost 4%.
The ARRL RTTY Roundup starts at 1800z January 8 and ends at 2400z January 9. For more on the rules, go to the ARRL web site.

After seeing his 14 year winning streak snapped in 2009, Don Hill AA5AU came back in 2010 to win the Single Op Low Power crown again.
Hill, who still owns the world record for that category, which he set back in 2006, has been doing some antenna work over the last few months which you can see in the photo above.
"On October 9, 2010, I completed the installation of my new 3 element SteppIR yagi with the 30/40 meter dipole loop," Hill wrote on his web page at aa5au.com.
It's been a rough last five years or so for the Louisiana contester, as he has dealt with multiple hurricanes that knocked down a tower and ravaged his ham radio antennas.