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Re: [RTTY] FSK is bad?

To: RTTY Reflector <rtty@contesting.com>
Subject: Re: [RTTY] FSK is bad?
From: Kok Chen <rtty@w7ay.net>
Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2016 14:51:25 -0700
List-post: <rtty@contesting.com">mailto:rtty@contesting.com>
> On Oct 25, 2016, at 2:22 PM, Thom <ki8w@ki8w.com> wrote:
> 
> and exactly how do I change that shaping?

With FSK, you are at the mercy of the rig manufacturer.  Some rigs use the 
"FSK" facility in the synthesizer chips, so even the rig manufacturer has no 
control of it, the chip manufacturer does.  And the "FSK" requirements from the 
chip consumers are different from ours (we are a tiny market for the chip 
manufacturers).

With AFSK, it depends on the software modem designer.  Among popular modems, 
2Tone and fldigi are currently the only two I know that individually waveshapes 
the Mark and Space signals before combining them for transmission.  

The AFSK modulators that use a bandpass filter to limit the keyclicks from a 
composite Mark/Space signal will inevitably be wider than the signals from 
2Tone and fldigi.  See here to get an idea of how wide the transmit filters 
need to be so that the receiver's demodulator at the other end is not impacted:

http://www.w7ay.net/site/Technical/RTTY%20Transmit%20Filters/index.html

By the way, since all filters are in a cascade (RTTY generator -> transmit 
filter -> receive filter -> demodulator), the above also applies to how narrow 
you can make a superhet's receive crystal filter before you start to impact 
error rates.

FSK keyclicks are no different from CW keyclicks.  They are (a) not useful for 
decoding, (b) they interfere unnecessarily with nearby stations, and (c) they 
eat up transmit power needlessly.  If your PA is limited by RMS power instead 
of PEP power, and given the same amount of average transmit power, a well 
filtered AFSK signal will deliver more useful signal power into the 
demodulator's filters at the receiving end.

73
Chen, W7AY

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