From their news page, VP6DX has already exceeded the previous RTTY
record held by N8S.
That is quite an accomplishment, considering that VP6DX only operated
RTTY (so far :-) on 3 bands. My N8S log show that I'd worked N8S RTTY
on 30m, 20m, 17m, 15m and 12m, so N8S must have worked at least 5 RTTY
bands (probably more), and thus have more band dupes than VP6DX does.
This, though, is probably not as good news for anyone who didn't work
RTTY on this DXpedition, since the next bunch of guys looking for
adventure would be less motivated to go to Ducie. It will probably be
awhile before Ducie pops up to the upper ranks of the "Most Needed"
list.
In the short time that I watched the VP6DX 20m pile yesterday, I
copied two stations who were transmitting inverted. Check your signal
in case you have not been getting through when your instincts tell you
that you should have. There was a husband and wife (I think) pair of
stations transmitting with 150 Hz shift, but they got through anyway
-- two signals with the exact signature popped up at the same place on
the waterfall with different callsigns, so I checked qrz.com :-)
Another interesting thing is that the news page also mentioned that
VP6DX is using the microKeyer II interface. The reason it is of
interest to us is this: if they are using FSK instead of AFSK, the
actual baud rate from a microKeyer will not be 45.45 baud but it will
instead be either 45.0 baud or 45.76 baud (depends on which one the
software decides is "closer").
This does not affect their capability to copy your signal (which
probably uses some software demodulator at 45.45 baud) but if you only
have a marginal copy of their signal, you might try changing your
software to decode using either 45.00 baud or 45.76 baud to see if you
copy any better. Try both, one will be even worse than a 45.45 baud
setting. Keep your transmission at 45.45 baud.
This small difference in baud rate only affects copy if the signal is
*very* marginal. But getting the baud rate to agree might let you
pull out that last character which makes the QSO possible.
Lots of people could not print P5/4L4FN when Ed switched to using 50
baud. The difference between 50 baud and 45.45 baud (1%) is of course
25 times greater than the 0.04 percent (1 out of 2700) in the
microKeyer case .
73
Chen, W7AY
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