It is my practice to review skimmer data after each and every contest, RTTY
contests included. This time around I came across some very interesting
observation.
First, a bit of background. Thru a long exchange of emails with Alex, I now
know that the skimmer algo, both CW and RTTY, assumes that the proper call sign
for me operating in Canada is VE3/N2WQ. Well, in fact, this is not true; in the
case of US hams in Canada, and in no other circumstances, the proper call sign
is N2WQ/VE3 and this is what I have been using all along. The implication of
using N2WQ/VE3 is that I get fewer spots.
So, during NAQP this past weekend I decided to experiment. I alternated my CQ
message to send both N2WQ/VE3 and VE3/N2WQ so that I can compare the impact on
the number of spots. To my dismay, I got a significant number of spots for
N2W/V3E. Sooo, my thinking is that this consistent across skimmers and
continents error is not random. However, as I don't have any clue how decoding
and error correction work, I don't know what conclusions can be drawn from this
observation. For example, does it mean that I have a TX problem? Or is this an
expected outcome from failure in the built-in RTTY error correction (is there
one?)? Or it means nothing and I should ignore it as a totally random oddity?
My setup is N1MM Classic running MMTTY to transmit (have a few 2Tone RX
windows) and feeding into MK2R+ box and then Icom 756PIII. FSK all the time.
Rudy N2WQ
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