On Mar 1, 2009, at 9:07 AM, Tom Osborne wrote:
> 1. Please put a 'CQ' or 'NA' or whatever on the end of your CQ.
> People
> tune across your signal and hear 'W1ABC K'. We don't know if you are
> calling someone, ending a CQ, or just finishing up working someone.
> A 'CQ'
> on the end takes care of that.
This has always been a problem, but one that can be fixed in the
software modems without the need for "behavioral modification" of the
newbie contest ops.
You just need to get your favorite software author to include a "tape
loop" and a "replay" function (that replays at a high speed, to catch
up with real time) to their program.
It won't work of course if you are constantly moving the VFO knob
instead of allowing the DSP to do that work for you. The software
also needs to be frequency agile.
An "RTTY Skimmer" will solve the problem completely, of course (until
some RTTY contest manager puts a stop to it :-).
> 2. I know some people don't like to do it, but put the callsign of
> the
> station you are working at the end of the macro. LOTS of times
> someone came
> back to me when they were CQ'ing, but were covered up at the start
> by people
> still calling them, and I had no idea who they were coming back to.
> All I
> get is $%!()^&)Joe CO k. Then they had to wait and send the
> exchange again
> so I could see who they were working.
That is very good recommendation. In addition to QRM, there is a
second place where this is useful -- when you are receiving with
slowish AGC. I don't know how many people have observed this, but
quite often I have seen the first few characters from a strong station
get garbled due to mis-detection of the first start bit. After a
couple of garbled characters, the rest of the exchange will print
perfectly.
> 3. I have been seeing a lot of bragging about 1 new rig where you
> can get
> 30 cycles next to another station and not be bothered by them.
> But, you do
> bother us.
I think I know which rig you are talking about since it is one of the
transceivers that I own.
If it is this particular model, the situation that you have witnessed
is compounded by the problem that this rig is known to [[ currently ]]
put out an abnormally wide spectrum of RTTY keyclicks, created by
glitches in the FSK envelope. I have measured it myself under
controlled conditions. It will improve over time, but you have to
live with it for now.
In the meantime, I have myself avoided transmitting through this rig
(so has another long time RTTY contester) -- you just need to persuade
the others to refrain from using this rig on RTTY until the problem is
fixed. There was an earlier firmware release by the manufacturer that
only patched the symptom, but not the cause -- so it didn't fix all
cases.
73
Chen, W7AY
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