[RTTY] Death of RTTY?

[Don Hill AA5AU]

I've read all the comments thus far.  It's an interesting discussion and hard
to discuss something many of us have not tried.

I tried PSK63 between my two radios.  I find it way too fast for contesting.
I didn't test is thoroughly and I forgot to try a few things.

As fast as it is, it's probably going to be too fast to tune.  And if you have to
be right on frequency as with PSK31, then it's not going to work for contesting.
It's simply too fast and most of us may not be fast enough to tune it even
though we will mainly just have to click our mouse on it.  Some of us still enjoy
turning the VFO on our radios.

On the other hand, RTTY being slower, it allows us to tune it in fast enough
to at least get some copy.  And heck, I can't tell you how many times someone
called me off frequency in a RTTY contest and MMTTY's AFC took too long
to tune it in but the HAL DXP-38 was still able to capture the call.

So it's stuff like that which is going to be important for any mode to surpass
RTTY (in contesting).  I understand there were over 800 logs turned in for CQ/RJ WW RTTY
last year which was a record.  And I heard in Dayton that the number of logs for
this year's ARRL RU will also be a record.  So RTTY's not going anywhere but
up right now.

Perhaps some day another digital mode will replace RTTY as the primo digital
contest mode.  But I seriously doubt it will be PSK63.  It's too fast. 

73, Don AA5AU

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "WA9ALS - John" <wa9als at starband.net>
To: <rtty at contesting.com>
Cc: <mortjame at westnet.com>
Sent: Monday, May 19, 2003 5:23 PM
Subject: [RTTY] Death of RTTY?


> Well, once again, PSKers are predicting the death of RTTY.  Jim, N2HOS, in
> his latest Gazette, stated "There is plenty of
> room for both [PSK63 and RTTY], but RTTY has already given up this battle.
> Peace!"
> 
> I'd like to make a couple of points, and then maybe we can have some healthy
> discussion on this topic:
> 
> 1.  PSK63 has some attributes that should be attractive to digital
> contesters - Fast (100 WPM) and narrow bandwidth to name a couple.  They
> also claim much better participation, judging from current PSK31 use.  Thus
> I think we need to evaluate it for its strengths and weaknesses and not just
> stay with our heads in the sand saying "RTTY FOREVER [no matter what]".
> 
> 2.  Veteran RTTY contesters need to evaluate PSK63 for another reason - RTTY
> contesters have experience!  I would value the opinions and experience of
> veteran RTTY contesters over that of novice PSK63 contesters.
> 
> Jim points out that there are "wall to wall" PSK signals when there are no
> RTTY signals (unless there is a contest).  I could counter that yes, there
> are lots of PSK signals, but there are also a lot of over-driven signals
> endlessly sending macros back and forth to multiple stations at a very slow
> rate (PSK31).  That's not a great criticism, however - Some AFSK RTTY
> signals are overdriven too.
> 
> I'll stop here - I just wanted to put something out here and hope for some
> discussion.  I'd like to see some knowlegeable and experienced RTTY
> contesters evaluate PSK63 so that we will have some feedback from our own
> community.  Hopefully some of us will be able to participate in the first
> PSK63 contest in September.  I suspect that, once again, RTTY will come out
> on top.  I just hope that our guys will jump in and evaluate PSK63 and not
> let moss grow on our keyboards in the name of tradition.  Have faith - RTTY
> is a tradition because it's passed the test of time and several new modes.
> 
> As for "already given up this battle" - Jim, I respectifully think not!  ;-)
> 
> 73 - John, WA9ALS
> 
> 
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