[na-user] ritty with NA

[dap14@chrysler.com]

To: NA Users

We fully intend to have support for CQWW RTTY incorporated into NA for this
fall's event.  The difficulty with CQWW RTTY is that is has THREE simulataneous
multipliers - as opposed to the regular CQWW which has two, and most "normal"
contests which have one.  I'm doing this primarily due to K3MM's faithful
support of NA and his many comments and suggestions which have resulted in
improvements to the program.

The question of RITTY/BITTY support is another issue.  K6STI's decision to
abandon the ham RTTY market due to the actions of a European code hacker is
regrettable, although totally understandable.  Whoever that jerk is, he should
have his coax cut.

I had a second-hand report that K6STI would still sell RITTY/BITTY direct - no
WWW or e-mail business, direct mail only.  You might look up his address and
drop him a note to find out if this is true.  From my limited experience, and
that of my two RTTY experts (K3MM and K9TM), RITTY and a good sound card is the
best package you can get for amateur RTTY.

What about standalone TNCs?  Supporting these should not be a big deal - most of
the program structure used to support RITTY/BITTY would come into play - instead
of sending characters to or receiving characters from the RITTY/BITTY TSR, these
would go to and from a COM port.

However, I don't own any of the RTTY TNCs and am not going to run out and buy
some simply to do NA development.  If people want a particular RTTY TNC
supported by NA they will have to ship their unit to me for development.
(Please don't do this without agreement in advance.)  It might take a week or
two to get support for the first stnadalone TNC working, but after that I would
suspect that subsequent new TNCs could be added in a few days.  My friend K9TM
has purchased two HAL P-38 cards, and has been doing some software development
in his spare time that might find its way into NA.

Is anybody really interested in RTTY support in NA?  IMHO, the operating RTTY
using NA with K6STI's RITTY/BITTY program works very well.  Does anybody use NA
for RTTY contesting?  All the features to support RTTY added about 10K to the
program - space that might be better used in other ways?

73,

Dave/K8CC

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