Winning Streaks, Records and Large Score Reductions Mark 2008 ARRL RTTY Roundup

By Jamie Dupree NS3T  radio-sport.net 
Posted June 23, 2008

The headline of the 2008 ARRL RTTY Roundup is most certainly the 14th straight World Low Power win of Don Hill AA5AU, along with the third straight World High Power win by Ed Muns P49X (W0YK.)

But a closer look at this year's results also shows a number of records that were broken, and a lot of chances for competitors to score better by keeping a cleaner log.

As for score reductions in the ARRL RTTY Roundup this year, the average station lost about 6% of their claimed score after log checks, which is higher than the average in most CW and SSB tests.

While no one came close to beating P49X this year for the World High Power title, Muns saw his score reduction double from 2007, as he lost 6.35% of his claimed score to log checks.

Log checks hit Serge Rebrov M0SDX the hardest at G6PZ, as he lost 9.46% of his claimed score, knocking him from 6th down to 9th place overall in the high power ranks.

The best performance on log checks in the top ten came from Steve Moore AI9T, who snuck into 8th place, losing just 3.35% of his claimed score.

The low power numbers tell a bit different story, as Don Hill AA5AU did much better than the average top ten LP finisher, losing just 3.52% of his claimed score.

Hill didn't come close to his record setting performance in 2006, when he set the current LP record of 231k.

"The biggest reason for the lower score this year is because 15 meters was not open to the USA or EU at the start of the contest Saturday," Hill told radio-sport.net.

"Without 15 meters, the QSO and multiplier totals naturally drops. I didn't expect to break any records this year," Hill added.

In second place in low power was Teddy Jiminez HI3TEJ, who was lucky not to have anyone close behind him, as he lost an whopping 11.76% of his claimed score to log errors and penalties.

Third place Steve Franzen N9CK had the best LP mark, dropping only 3.49% of his score to log checks.

In the multi competition, world winner CT9M stayed in first despite dropping 6% of their claimed score. The cleanest log in the Multi Top Ten came from W0SD, which lost only 3.13% to log checks.

The only station in the top ten that dropped because of log errors was Team W4RM, which dropped from 5th to 6th with a 9.26% score reduction.

Here are the winners of each RTTY Roundup category for 2008, their percent score reduction, followed by the top ten average:

High Power - P49X - 6.35% - 6.2% average
Low Power - AA5AU - 3.52% - 5.98% avg
Multi Op - CT9M - 6.00% - 6.55% avg

The radio-sport.net numbers presented here are on total score reduction, as in how much of a difference there was between your claimed score and the final results after log checking.

That is different than the ARRL "error rate."

If you want to see how well you stacked up against others in the RTTY Roundup in terms of score reduction, check out the radio-sport.net review.