This does not apply much to good old RTTY, where the participants consist of predominantly experienced older crowd. I will make one comment regarding RTTY though. Whereas it is faster to send 5NN instead of 599 in CW, in RTTY it is the other way around. Switching from numbers to letters (and back) in RTTY uses an extra character to be sent. And not like in CW, all characters are the same length.

Now to the new modes, like PSK, Feld Hell etc.

The most harmful thing I have seen is sending the exchange in response to a CQ before being acknowledged. The station you want to work may come back to someone else or not hear you at all. So you are sending a fairly long exchange over a possible response of the station you are calling to someone else. This creates QRM for everybody.Make sure that the CQing station comes back to you with his or her exchange first, and only after that send your exchange.

Make your transmissions as short as possible. Avoid unnecessary information. You may be participating for fun only, but there are also serious contesters there, whose goal is to win. Respect them. Olympic runners do not stop and say "hello" to each other. You should not do it either in a contest.

Check the contest rules, especially regarding to what is required in exchange. WA7BNM Contest Calendar is an excellent source of information. And it also tells you which contests are coming up. If the exchange details are not listed there, there is always a link to the actual contest rules. Even if you are familiar with the contest, it does not hurt to check. Sometimes rules change from year to year. For example, in Feld Hell Sprint, according to their website, the operator name is not a part of the exchange. And yet I saw many operators not only sending their name but also asking for mine as if it were required. In the same contest State/Province is required by the rules. I have seen sometimes the actual name of town and even county sent.

Send only what is required and in the sequence listed. Not all the contests require the RST report, for example. If the rules say four letter Grid Square is required, do not send all 6 like "DM68aw". This will help the receiving station log you faster. Everyone wins.

Do not send "please copy". It is a mutual waste of time. The other station is waiting for your exchange anyway. No extra points are given for being extra polite.

By the same token do not send the name of the exchange field. If for example QTH and Grid Square are required, do not send "QTH CO Grid DM68". Send only "CO DM68". The other station knows what is what in your the exchange.

How many times to send parts of the exchange? 599 only once of course, the rest depends on your signal, usually twice.

Do not spell out your state likeColorado. Standard two-letter abbreviation is enough. This is what the other station is expecting anyway, especially when using a contest-logging program.

Some programs can automatically pull the operator name out of a database. Do not greet everybody by his or her name. Again, a lot of wasted time and no extra points. If you want to specifically acknowledge a friend, this is a different story.

I have also seen some stations set up to automatically always repeat the received exchange. Avoid this. If anyone is not sure of something, they should ask to repeat.

Avoid 73, GL etc. Standard "TU (for thank you) TEST" in the end of the contact would do.

The last comment about CQing. Often more than one contest is going on at the same time. I suggest instead of "CQ TEST" or "TEST" send the name of the test. Like "CQ BARTG" or "BARTG". If someone does not know what the name of your contest stands for, they are not participating in it anyway.

The above advices by no means are meant to be comprehensive, but I believe following them will make our contesting time more enjoyable.

Good luck in the contests! Igor Zdorov "IZ" W0IZ