CQ CLASSIC
Thirty-Four Years of the CQ World Wide RTTY DX Contest
Since this issue carries the results of the 2020 CQ World Wide RTTY DX Contest, we thought it would be fun to look back at the very first running of this radioteletype competition in 1987. (CQ had a RTTY column as far back as 1951, but we didn’t get the mode into our contest rotation until the late ‘80s, when personal computer were beginning to supplement big clunky teletype machines in the shacks of RTTY enthusiasts).
A little bit of comparison: The 1987 RTTY DX Contest had “nearly 300 logs” submitted from hams in 59 DX entities, but then-Contest Director Roy Gould, KT1N, predicted that “I am sure it is going to be the RTTY contest.” He was right. In 2020, there were 3,655 logs from 178 countries! In 1987, personal computers were just starting to make their way into ham shacks as communication devices, and the rules for the first contest permitted not only “traditional” Baudot RTTY, but also AMTOR, ASCII, and AX.25 (packet). Current contest rules permit only 45.45-baud Baudot.
With ten times as many participants in 2020 vs. 1987, you might expect the scores to be somewhat higher as well, and you wouldn’t be disappointed. The top single-op all-band (SOAB) score in 1987 was 306,075 points, earned by VE1ASJ with 489 QSOs and 103 multipliers. In 2020, we had two single-op all-band categories, assisted (a concept that didn’t even exist in 1987!) and unassisted. Current Contest Director Ed Muns, WOYK, reports that P3X in Cyprus took home the 2020 SOAB assisted category with 3,763,800 points, while SOAB unassisted honors went to W9KNN, operating ZF1A in the Cayman Islands remotely from his home in northern California (another alien concept in 1987!). Bill finished with 3,323 QSOs for 3,722,784 points, more than ten times the point total for VE1ASJ “back in the day.”
So without further ado, here are the 1987 CQWW RTTY DX Contest rules (from the April 1987 issue) and results (from the June 1988 issue).
Announcing: The First Annual CQ World-Wide RTTY DX Contest
While it may be hard to list each and every distinct special-interest group within
