You have learned about contesting through the great articles that Scott, NE1RD has written.  You have learned about FT8 through articles from Hamilton, K1HMS and Fred, AB1OC.  Now its time to put it all together and operate in the ARRL RTTY Roundup coming up this coming weekend – January 5th – 6th.

This is the first year that the FT8 mode will be part of the ARRL RTTY Roundup.  The newest version of the WSJT-X software, version 2.0,  has been enhanced to support the contest exchange.  See Joe Taylor’s QST article for details on how it will work.

Fred, AB1OC and Anita, AB1QB will be hosting a multi-op entry using the N1FD callsign from their QTH. The contest starts at 18:00 UTC (1:00 pm EST) on Saturday and ends at 23:59 UTC (7 pm EST) on Sunday.  The first few hours of the contest overlap with ARRL Kids Day so the kids will have priority on our main station.  We may be able to operate in the RTTY Roundup using FT8 and our SteppIR Vertical.

If you are interested in signing up for a time slot, please contact Anita, AB1QB at [email protected]. Let her know what time you can be available to operate and how many hours you would like to operate.   Please respond no later than Thursday.  She will put together an operating schedule and send it out on Friday.

We hope to see you this weekend in the contest or hear you on the air!