I volunteered to operate a digital station for my club this year.
Everybody is expecting PSK31 -- it seems to be ingrained into the Field
Day vocabulary now. ("Steve will be running our PSK station," for example.)
I'm not a big PSK31 operator -- it's just something I play around with
now and then -- and I certainly have never contested with it. Or, for
that matter, I've never even seen a PSK31 contest, so I have no idea how
they do it.
But I have put a lot of time and effort this week into getting Fldigi to
interface with the N3FJP software our club insists upon using. When I
started setting up the macros, though, the only digital experience I had
to draw on was RTTY contesting. So, I basically set them up as if I were
going to run a RTTY contest. My original plan was to, sort of like Tim,
run both modes, probably flipping from PSK to RTTY if PSK seemed to slow
down.
However, if some of us aren't on the air calling CQ, it's going to look
like there is no RTTY activity. So, I'm altering my plan a bit to call
CQ as much as possible on RTTY and just concentrate on the low-hanging
fruit on the PSK frequencies.
I'm with Tim. Let's get on the air, either from our home stations, or
your club's digital station, and show these folks what RTTY will do!
Look for me working as W4OLB.
73,
Steve K4DXV
On 6/21/2017 6:23 PM, Tim Goeppinger via RTTY wrote:
The US/VE Field Day is this weekend, and a lot of Field Day sites will be on
digital. Unfortunately, PSK31 seems to have taken over for the
digital mode of choice for FD since about 2000, and the rates are painstakingly
slow. I think the ops are about ready to make another bad stepand jump to
JT65 for FD. Nothing wrong with either PSK31 or JT65 on a regular day, but
for this contest it is terrible. PSK31 becomes a sesspoolwith signals all
clumped together, with many over-driven signals.
So, why not get some activity on RTTY this weekend? Lets show the new ops that RTTY is THE
digital contesting mode, and that it is fast.Even if you CQ and "search &
pounce" for 1 hour, it will help. All you need to do is give a 1D and your ARRL
section if you are home. Send 1D DXif you are outside north america.
When I operate the W6ZE digital station this weekend, I will be switching from
PSK31 to RTTY. Please help me show the other op what ispossible on RTTY.
Tnx & 73,
Tim N6GP
_______________________________________________
RTTY mailing list
RTTY@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/rtty
_______________________________________________
RTTY mailing list
RTTY@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/rtty
|