[RTTY] Death of RTTY?

[WA9ALS - John]

> His example of how PSK63 would be great for contests because you could say
> "hi there and goodbye" in addition to the exchange really is ridiculous.
If
> you give AA5AU twice the sending speed he is going to use that time to
work
> more stations -- not to discuss his life.

Yes, I doubt that Don would want to use the PSK63 "advantage" of sending his
thumbnail image during a contest.

> The supposed power advantage to PSK is overstated.  They ignore issues of
IF
> bandwidth, receiver dynamic range, phase distortion on bad paths, and
> frequency stability.  MMTTY will copy into the noise.  Sure PSK has a few
db
> of advantage but the QRP thing is all hype.  In addition, of course, if we
> go to PSK63, any serious contestant is going to run as much power as his
> power class allows.  So the argument that you can only run 5 watts will go
> to pieces.

Witness the winner of the first ARRL Roundup PSK31 plaque - won with 1000
watts.

> How a bunch of canned messages saying that you're
> running a Mark IV with Rig Blaster and an old IBM laptop is interesting is
> beyond me!

There is a lot of philosophy in Mike's remark above.  If you don't see it,
you're probably standing too close to the mirror.

> Lastly, in a
> contest situation the theory of running 2.1khz bandwidth and sorting
things
> out in the audio card and clicking on multilple "tracks" from a waterfall
is
> not going to work.  The strongest signal in the bandwidth is going to
> capture the AGC and the weak ones just fade away.  The solution, of
course,
> is to defeat the AGC by turning down the RF gain -- but the real
solution --
> and one that will let you use this wonderful bandwidth advantage -- is to
> crank your IF selectivity down to 50hz. Imagine 20 of the biggest RTTY
signals all crammed into one 2.1 > hz passband.  What a mess.

Check out how this works visually at http://www.qsl.net/wa9als/passband.htm

When's the next RTTY contest??  The fact that PSK is bringing more guys into
RTTY contesting is a good sign!  73 - John, WA9ALS