[RTTY] Tuning Up or Down?

[Hill, Don]

Chen wrote:
>I found 1 kc up was clear, waited for the QTC to finish, and
>started calling HK0GU there.  Guess who answered!  If my
>center of gravity weren't so low, I would have fallen off my chair!

I did the same thing to VP9GE except I went down in
frequency on 20M. I had already worked him on 10 & 15,
it was late in the contest and needed multipliers.
Since he was working a station at 14099 I decided to
go down in frequency rather than up.

The technique of seeing a station in S&P mode and trying
to work him is not new, but for me, it raises questions
I've not been able to find a solid answers for.

We've discussed this somewhat on the reflector before.
But do the majority of stations, when in S&P mode, tune from
the top of the band to the bottom or from bottom to top?

I tune from top to bottom almost always.

So when I come across a station I want to work who is in
S&P mode, depending on where in the band they are, I normally
tune down .5 to 1 khz.  It seems to work about half the
time, so maybe about half of us tune up and half of us tune
down?  If the occurrence takes place very low in the sub-band,
I'm inclined to move up before calling.

I call this "fishing" for an S&P station.  It's a technique
I'd like to improve on, but I'm not sure if that's possible.
I suppose a 50% success rate is the best we can hope for?

73, Don AA5AU