BARTG RTTY Sprint
Call: K6YT
Operator(s): W0YK
Station: W0YK
Class: SO Expert HP
QTH: CA
Operating Time (hrs): 8
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
80: 0
40: 0
20: 0
15: 295
10: 124
------------
Total: 419 Mults = 56 Continents = 6 Total Score = 140,784
Club: Loma Prieta Contest Club
Comments:
Thanks for the QSOs .... and, enduring my many QLF moments. BARTG RTTY Sprint
is a great warmup for CQ WPX RTTY and I had several things I wanted to test.
Too many things, really, and it showed. ;>)
For one, I wanted to scrutinize the new 2Tone decoder and see what all the
apparent excitement was about. To do so, meant abandoning thousands of
learning curve hours with WriteLog and getting familiar enough with N1MM Logger
to feel confident enough to use it in WPX RTTY with 2Tone added to my normal
array of MMTTY decoder windows and a DXP38. It's humbling to start over from
scratch and build up all the same functionality that had accumulated over the
years with WriteLog. I got mostly there, stopping short of running SO2V on
each radio. I opted for the simpler configuration of a MMTTY FSK window, DXP38
receive window and a 2Tone receive window on each PC/radio.
As for N1MM Logger, it was a mixed bag. There are a lot of things that are
very good about this software. The two areas I got snarled up in a lot were
the ESM and callsign stacking. I'm still sorting out my specific tactics, but
I was also quite "surprised" more times than I had patience for. Certain
inevitable realities of the QSO sequence caused ESM to get into some awkward
states. As to call stacking, it took most of the day to get my TU/NOW message
dialed in to work properly. Most everyone subjected to my attempt to skip QSO
phases patiently stood by while I futzed around to get back on board. The
basic problem was one of repeating the report to the first station while the
next stations's callsign was already in the Entry window. Its still not clear
why that was happening but many iterations of the message later, it started
working properly. With that distraction, I never figured out how I want to
manage the stack to avoid unwanted calls from being dumped into the Entry
window. I'm not convinced the combination of ESM and call stacking, at least
with the current implementation, is robust enough to withstand the many
unintended snarls that are inevitable in an actual contest.
Underlying all this uncertainty and turmoil, one of my PCs is an old 400MHz P2
that is severely underpowered for all this. And it showed dramatically as I
had 2-3 second delays between hitting a key and having any transmission
commence.
A few seconds seems like forever when it is delaying a QSO sequence. Thank
goodness everyone was patient with me. I've had a shiny new Windows 7 box to
replace it sitting around for a year now and the incentive to do so was raised
significantly today!
The results were interesting after the few hours of running today. Based on
this experience, I wouldn't want to be without any of these three decoders.
Most of the time all three decoded very well and similarly. But about once
every 30-40 QSOs, only one of them would copy clearly while the other two got
nothing. I wouldn't go so far as to say 2Tone is the superior decoder, but I
saw enough to want it in my arsenal. There were about equal number of cases
where MMTTY copied perfectly while the other two didn't even get a piece of it.
Same for the DXP38. 2Tone is solid and ready for prime-time along with the
other two.
I ran a 500Hz 8-pole crystal filter and 400Hz DSP filter in both radios,
without the K3 Dual-Tone Filter. All three decoders did well, although I was
ready to dial in tighter filtering had the QRM gotten bad. With heavy QRM, it
is sometimes better to sacrifice the moderate bandwidth that suits the decoders
best, in order to knock down enough of the unwanted QRM from pumping the AGC and
interfering with the IF DSP.
Another big experiment was to see if the tighter DSP waveshaping (Beta DSP
firmware) on my transmitted FSK signal would degrade the copy of my signal.
Empirically, the narrower, lower energy, signal didn't seem to make copy
difficult on the other end. It was readily apparent, though, that neighboring
stations felt more comfortable moving in closer to me since I wasn't causing
them as much problem. I guess that's the "reward" for attempting to transmit a
cleaner signal. ;>)
A more telling test will be WPX RTTY with its many more signals and stronger
signal levels, plus the challenge of the low bands. Narrower transmit
bandwidth, richer decoding alternatives and 2x SO2V all within a new (to me)
user interface environment may be too much change to deal with in one step.
Otherwise, though, it wouldn't be as interesting, eh?
Ed W0YK
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