The SZ1A Team Kicks Off the Season with an Impressive RTTY Performance!
Contest Review by SV1DPI
When Plans Don’t Match Reality
Sometimes we plan things as best as we can, and everything goes wrong. Other times, we just start—and somehow achieve great success. It has happened to me before, when I casually decided to enter a BARTG 75 RTTY contest for fun and ended up first in the world.
To be more precise though, good things may need a bit of luck, but preparation matters most: experience, equipment, and antennas make all the difference. They help you focus on what really matters and leave the rest aside…
The Decision and Preparation
That’s exactly how this year’s CQ WW RTTY happened.
Coming out of the summer calm and “the people’s holidays,” we hadn’t checked the station in a while, so we didn’t really know what we’d find. Already during the summer, in one of our frequent conversations with Cliff SV1JG, we had agreed that we would take part in CQ WW RTTY, even if it was just the two of us.
That’s how much we wanted to operate!
A week or two before the contest, Sotiris SV1BDO and Nikos SV3SCW joined us, and Dimitris SV1CIB would also come for a few hours from Saturday until early Sunday.
First Obstacles and Fast-Track Repairs
In early September, things weren’t looking so rosy. Our main amplifier, an OM 2500A, went out of service. We immediately took action, and our member Mike SV1RK offered to “take a look.” Fortunately, the failure that shut the amp down turned out to be just a burned resistor!!!
Mike replaced it, and thanks to fast-track handling, Cliff brought it back with him for the contest. We reinstalled it in place and crossed our fingers that it wouldn’t have any more trouble…
Contest Start
Thankfully, everything went fine with the amplifier. However, arriving at the last minute, we didn’t have time to tune the 80-meter dipole for the RTTY segment. So, the first night we would have only (!) the vertical for 80 meters.
It’s true that the vertical is a better antenna for DX (we had the chance to compare them during the contest and confirmed that).
But the dipole is much stronger up to Germany (let’s say around 2000 km) and holds equal signals up to Great Britain (about 2500 km). Most of the stations we work on 80m are in Europe.
As such, the dipole often helps to “clean” our frequency before switching to the vertical at the right time.
Still, the full-size vertical works just fine.
Although we were only four operators, we decided to enter the M2 category, where two radios call CQ simultaneously on two different bands. To compete well in this category, in-band stations are usually required—something we had, but didn’t have enough operators for. So, we started the contest with great enthusiasm and four-hour shifts to keep morale high.
In Action: 20m and 40m in Full Swing
SV1DPI and SV1JG began the contest. To our pleasant surprise, 20m was open even late at night, and given that our station doesn’t have a good take-off angle toward America, we often miss good openings.
This time, however, signals were strong, and we worked the U.S. on both 20m and 40m!
If this were CQ WPX, we’d have stayed on it, but this was CQ WW, and here it’s countries on all bands that count. So at some point, we also went to 80m, and everything kept going smoothly!
Live Scores, Rhythm, and Coordination
The good score we had when we switched shifts lifted our spirits and motivated us to aim higher. It was reflected on the live scoreboard, where we were among the top positions!
So we decided to sacrifice the tsipouro and meze (!) to stay fresh for our next shifts. We also enabled DXLog’s feature that allows using the Mark V’s second receiver with a second keyboard. That way, in at least one of the two stations (the other uses an Icom IC-7600), we could reduce the lack of an in-band setup in a relatively simple way.
A big help came from the three decoders we ran:
- MMTTY (fast but not very accurate)
- 2Tone (excellent for weak signals)
- GRITTY (ideal for contesting, with a “callsign guessing” algorithm)
At the IC-7600 station, we also had a fourth decoder—the one built into the rig. This allowed us, most of the time, to both hear and confirm stations accurately on the first attempt.
The Final Result and the Visitors
With all that, we achieved an excellent score, which we hope will hold after log checking. Propagation was very good, the station performed flawlessly with almost zero issues, and everything went perfectly.
- Operators: SV1BDO, SV1CIB, SV3SCW, SV1DPI, SV1JG
- Support team: the essential crew—without whom we’d have achieved half as much—included mainly SV1CQK, SV1CQG, SV1TBW, SV1TIQ, and others…
Thanks to everyone who worked during the summer so the station would run perfectly. We had lots of visitors over the weekend and great company from SV1TIY, SV1FRQ, SV1UK, SV1DPU, SV1RLC, SV1HKH, SV1DPJ, SV1RRX, SV6TAC, SV1TLY, SWL Sotiris from Aigio, and others… lots of people! We might have reduced the tsipouro, but good company and food are always a must at SZ1A.
Wrap-Up and Contest Standings
We worked many Greek stations that showed remarkable patience most of the time, since skip conditions weren’t in our favor.
The station’s potential is of course even greater—this time, that’s how far the operators could last!
We’ll need a few more operators next time to do even better.
On the bright side, all operators were skilled and knew what they were doing (we welcome anyone who joins our team regardless of skill level—that’s our philosophy, to spread the spirit of contesting—so naturally not everyone is equally experienced).
On the Live Score, we finished 1st in Europe by the end of the contest, being online the whole time.
As always, our full statistics and operator photos (handsome guys, all of them!!!) can be found here:
👉 https://www.qsl.net/sz1a/sh5/2025/2025_cq-ww-rtty_sz1a/index.htm
In the RAW Scores (the preliminary results calculated by the organizers from all submitted logs), we stand 7th worldwide, 3rd in Europe, and 1st in Greece!
🎬 Bonus: Interview with Europe’s Top RTTY Contesters
And since we’re on the topic of RTTY… it’s worth watching the following video from the Q5 Worldwide Ham Radio channel, where Randy K5ZD hosts two outstanding European operators: Gabry IT9RGY and Przemek SQ9ORQ.
They talk about their participation in this year’s CQ WW RTTY Contest, their strategies, setups, preparation, and the passion it takes to reach the very top.
