[RTTY] Spirit of RTTY(ers) was: Comments from 3XY8A

[Ekki neu]

Wonderful comments from Francois,
he really did a great job. This, even though I didn't get him, hi hi... it
was nice watching him.

George,
you write of the spirit of RTTY continuing. I am with you, fully agree.
Seldom I have met more friendly and helpful people. Nevertheless I have to
add a "but"... coming from the experience of the last days.

My concerns target two points:
- DX ops, how not to do it
- just plain chat qsos.

DX ops
Watching VK9ML doing RTTY from Mellish Reef is a stark contrast (to say the
least) to what Francois did from 3XY. Although the VK9ML people were nice
enough to ask here if RTTY makes sense for them etc., we probably didn't go
far enough and didn't give them more advice. He does about one qso per 2
minutes, that's rediculous. At least thats what I saw the last three
evenings around 2000z on 20m.

I know that working on the dx side can be (is) difficult, stressful etc.,
the solar conditions were the worst since months, I don't know what stations
he has, what his experience is... so he has my sympathies... nevertheless, a
lot of things could be improved.

- First, the exchange... two time the callers call in the beginning, then
his call twice... followed by "599--", whats the use? The whole world knows
_his_ call sign. The two dashes after the 599 dont add any information, no
redundancy, so why?
- Giving people multiple opportunities to come back to his report is nice,
but five times?
- Then, if the called stn doesn't answer, just picking a new one might work
sometimes, it would be better to just call "qrz up de vk9ml" or similiar.

Not the fault of VK9ML - but the behaviour of many (mostly EU) stations
trying to work VK9ML were just disgraceful, the "Police" made more qrm as
the occasional caller on the dx freq. The spirit of RTTY?

My proposal would be that we come up with a "DX-Stations guide for RTTY" and
put it on some prominent web site (Don?), maybe a journal will print it.
There we could include all our experiences we have gathered over the years.
Where to call in the RTTY segment, how wide the listening window should be,
how does an optimal exchange look, how the flow of control (who calls, who
is called etc.) should look under various circumstances.
Maybe then some more DXpeditions will include RTTY and follow these
guidelines.

VK9ML people, if you read here, don't get me wrong, I highly appreciate your
efforts in RTTY and you made many ops happy...


Another thing - just the plain nice RTTY chat qso.
As I am currently traveling in a vacation (IT9, Sicily) I spent some hours
each day on RTTY, calling CQ. I did about a hundred qsos the last days. What
really got me and annoys me big time is that 95% of these QSOs are just from
pre-recorded macros. Nothing personal, no coming back to a specific
question, just hitting some buttons, thats it. That's the spirit of RTTY?
Trying to talk to an coke vending machine is more enjoyable.

Ok, so many of these people probably don't speak (write) english or any
other more common language, macros are their only way to do an exchange. But
what are the common abbreviations in ham radio good for? A slowly (hand
typed) "73 gl gd dx" means more to me than to learn that s/he has 64MB and a
CraterBlasterAweInspiring256MegaBucks soundcard.

Others may think that slow typing is bad and not wanted... but hey, this is
not a contest. I had a few wonderful QSOs the last days (those were the
other 5%) where people sometimes typed one char per 5 seconds - and thats
just fine. We had a nice chat, exchanged real information, got to know each
other and had fun.
That's the spirit... let's keep it up.

73, and thanks for reading my 2 eurocents worth...
Ekki, currently IT9/DF4OR

P.S.:
I have to admit that my above ramblings are born out of frustration, not
being at home to work A25, 3X and VK9M on RTTY for my DXCC... and not
getting them from my mobile station either... ;-) UE