August and September Have the Two Largest Worldwide Digital-Mode Contests

Each September since 1987, the CQ World Wide RTTY DX Contest has been held as a 48-hour competition. Points are awarded for working both domestic and DX contacts, and it has been the world’s largest RTTY contest in recent years, with 3,656 entries in the 2020 event. I have been entering this RTTY contest seriously in the past decade, and it is one of the highlights of the contest year for me.

The summer 2017 introduction of FT8 as a mode in a beta release of the WSJT-X digital software had an immediate impact in the world of amateur radio contesting, when it was used by many entrants in the July 2017 CQWW VHF Contest. In the next two years, the more contest-oriented FT4 mode was also available in WSJT-X. In August 2019, the inaugural WW Digi Contest was held as a 24-hour event with completely unique scoring and multiplier rules.

Any station capable of doing FT4/FT8 is also capable of entering the RTTY contests. And any AFSK RTTY station is well-suited for doing the WW Digi contest. Figure 1 shows a Venn diagram illustrating the overlap between participants in the 2020 edition of these two contests. About 40% of the WW Digi entrants also did CQWW RTTY, and a little less than 20% of CQWW RTTY entrants entered the WW Digi contest.

The WW Digi rule details are quite different from the CQWW RTTY rules, and my strategies in the RTTY contest () have not yielded high rankings in the WW Digi contest. This month’s column will show the results of my deep dive into the differences between the two contests, while also mentioning some commonalities.