Sure, I remember that contest! :-) It pretty much fizzled because I had
looked for a "commercial sponsor" but was not having much success. Then
family "issues" reared their ugly head and I was off the air for several
years so the HSS fell into oblivion. I had talked to Ron K5DJ about it. He
took over the contest weekend but decided upon a different contest format.
Yesterday I decoded someone sending CQ HSS... and that put a smile on my
face... apparently someone else remembered it too!
This was the first time I have used two different decoders in a contest, the
normal MMTTY soundcard software and my old Kantronics KAM Plus TNC. It was
quite the circus act trying to get that KAM going on a laptop with only USB
ports available, but I finally won that battle.
I thought the KAM was a decent decoder "in its day", but having the two RX
windows open side by side, the MMTTY engine was clearly the winner when
signals would dive into the noise. My Icom Pro 3 also has the advantage of
the Twin Passband Filters and this helped both decoders when a signal was
too weak to copy normally. Turning on this filter creates a serious "noise"
issue which is irritating to listen to for an extended period of time, so I
only turn it on when necessary.
There were stations I called who could not copy me. I was running 300 Watts
which helped somewhat, but I think having the Twin Passband Filters in my
receiver might have been another part of the problem of a one-way
"connection". Other variables are the other station may have been running
1500 Watts and/or he did not have Twin Passband Filters in his rig. So it's
really difficult to draw a conclusion without more information.
I did not experience abnormal requests for repeats. But this is really
subjective as well. It's tough to quantify with only one "Test" and the less
than ideal propagation during the contest. I was keeping track... I asked
for 3 repeats, and I was asked for 4 repeats. My repeats were to verify I
got the serial number more than one time on my screen. These were mostly
European stations and they were during QSB conditions. I was impressed how
quickly the exchanges came across the screen when decoding normally.
My opinion is the RTTY contesting community should look toward moving to
this higher speed. As a SO1R operator, the first hour tested my skill to
punch the right keys, log the contact, and settle into the faster routine. I
can imagine the higher rates would even challenge the SO2R operators in the
beginning. Maybe some SO2R operators can comment on this?
73 de Bob - KØRC in MN
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kok Chen" <chen@mac.com>
To: "RTTY Reflector" <RTTY@contesting.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2010 12:00 PM
Subject: Re: [RTTY] BARTG 75 Sprint
> On Jun 13, 2010, at 6/13 6:52 AM, Don Hill AA5AU wrote:
>
>> That was a blast! I really enjoyed the 75 baud RTTY Sprint.
>
> Has everybody forgotten the High Speed Sprint (HSS) contest already?
>
> The same 75 baud, and similarly short contest. I have logs from 1997
> through 2000. And then the contest appeared to have fizzled out.
>
> My first contact in 2000 was with an AA5AU :-). Followed in the log
> by the usual suspects: WS7I, N8YYS, VE3WQ, W4JLS, W0ETC, and ta da...
> W6/G0AZT, and more familiar call signs.
>
> KK5OQ, K0RC, K3MM, K5DJ, W7TI (remember him?) and ta da... VE6RAJ were
> among calls my 1998 log.
>
> As I said, the usual suspects :-) :-).
>
> 73
> Chen, W7AY
>
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