CQ Worldwide Begins For 2010 With CQ WW RTTY; EF8M Back To Defend Title & New World Record

By Jamie Dupree NS3T  radio-sport.net 
Posted September 19, 2010

It may not be as big as the CQ WW SSB and CW Contests, but the CQ WW RTTY test returns for 2010 with more expectations of growth, as participation and scores continue to increase in RTTY contesting in general.

The 2009 CQ WW RTTY had a 9 percent jump in the number of submitted logs to a record of 2,309. The average operating time for those entries was just over 12 hours.

On top in the single operator ranks last year was Valery Komarov RD3AF, who smashed the single operator record with his operation from EF8M in the Canary Islands, ending up with 8.85 million points.

That was easily the best score in the world, as MI0LLL finished second from the GI5K station with 4.98 million.

Komarov, who also won the CQ WW CW title in 2009, will be back in the Canary Islands this year for both CQ WW RTTY and CW, and will likely be the favorite to repeat as well.

Trying to challenge him will be Ed Muns W0YK, who will be back in Aruba this year doing a single operator effort from P49X.

"There may be a M2 from HC8 and I don't think either one of us can beat EA8 at this part of the cycle, but we'll obviously do our best!" Muns said.

In the United States, the single operator favorite may well be Dennis Egan W1UE, who forged the top score in 2009 with 2.58 million points.

Egan hopes that more operators decide to look for QSO's on bands other than 20 and 40 meters.

"I'm setting up to do SO3R with an eye to keeping a CQ presence, particularly on 10M, off and on all day," Egan told radio-sport.net.

"Propagation, especially on 15 meters, seems to be on the upswing as we have a few more sunspots," Egan added.

"I should be able to better last year's total of 266 Qs. Hopefully, more ops will be checking 10 meters this year so more Qs and a few more mults will be available there."

In Europe, more QSO's might mean another round of records, which in 2009 was marked by the GI5K (MI0LLL) operation that set a new Single Op High Power mark of just under 5 million points.

The Assisted mark also fell last year courtesy of Serge Rebrov UT5UDX, who ran G6PZ to 4.1 million points.

Still waiting to be updated is the European Single Op Low Power mark, which is still in the hands of RU3QW at 2.2 million, set back in 2002.

That number is on the mind of Felipe Lopes CT1ILT.

"I will be entering as SOAB LP as CR6K and try to break the EU Record on this one!"

More Record Scores Expected For 2010

Seven records were set in the 2009 CQ WW RTTY Contest, as there were new high scores for Single Op High Power (EF8M), Single Op Assisted (ZX2B/PY2MNL) and five World single band efforts as well.

But in the United States, some of the records for CQ WW RTTY are surprisingly old, like the Multi-Multi record, which is still held by W3LPL for an operation back in 1999.

The USA Single Operator High Power record is in the hands of Barry Kutner W2UP, who set that back in 2003; Kutner also holds the USA Single Op Low Power record, which is from 2002.

The USA SIngle Op Assisted mark was set in 2004 by Malcolm Davenport KI1G.

Davenport also owns the existing USA Multi-Two record, which was set back in 2002; the Multi-Single High Power record is also from 2002, from Team W2FU.

Those marks are also the existing North American records, again indicating that despite a big increase in participation in recent years, low sunspot numbers have kept some records from being easily erased from the record books.

What's the oldest World record still standing in this contest? That's the Multi-Single Low Power effort of Team P40RY, from back in 1998.

That updated information and more is all available at cqwwrtty.com.