I love FT8/FT4 for contesting, mainly because it is super easy to setup multiple stations for some serious contest work.? For last year's field day I had four radios setup doing FT8/4, all with dedicated computers and I was able to VNC/NoMachine into them and control them all from the one screen in the comfort of my home (some stations were outside, some on solar).? GridTracker is a great help too, to see what's coming in on all the stations and in some cases to be able to direct the station to make the call.
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FT8/4 is an easy thing to contest, especially in a multi-station setup.? There are some good FT8 focused contacts and VA is one of the few states that allows it in their QSO Party and on the WARC bands as well (default exchange, default frequencies, indistinguishable from normal traffic).? I wish more would do this, controversial opinion I know.?
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I haven't gotten into RTTY yet, though I need to.? I don't know CW, but I've had some luck hunting SOTAs and Parks with it using FLDIGI to decode and a K1EL Winkeyer to encode/send via FLDIGI.
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Ryan
KI6BTY
Ryan Huggins