[RTTY] Death of RTTY?

[Ekki Plicht]

No no, RTTY ain't gonna die so soon. 

I welcome innovation and think it's absolutely necessary to maintain and 
promote ham radio in general. In times of ever declining activity (any) we 
should be glad of anything that raises activity. 
In that sense (innovation) I will give PSK63 a try when I finally have an 
antenna at my new QTH. Nevertheless I will stick with RTTY. As others have 
already noted, it's parameters (speed, sound etc.) seem ideal for contesting.

One problem has been pointed out often: the lack of activity between contests. 
Here PSK31 is a winner over RTTY. But why is that so?

During the past 2 years I had the opportunity to devote most of my time to ham 
radio. I often called CQ in RTTY when the bands were open. The result were a 
lot of Q's, but what kind of? 

Just "Hi, ur 599, <f2 macro>, <f3 macro>, QSLL, 73".
4 minutes a QSO max. Is that fun? No, not in my book.

Even when I tried to give the QSO a different twist, like asking for specifics 
of the antenna they mentioned in their brag tape^W^W^W^W macro or telling my 
age and trying to lure the QSO partner into something individual - nothing 
happened except a repetition of the last macro.

Ok, maybe most people are not vy fast at typing. I adjusted (reduced) my 
typing speed to 45.45 baud back when mechanical typewriters had a one 
character (mechanical) buffer, so for me it's no problem... or maybe others 
are not feeling well in chatting in english. But I think you could expect at 
least a small effort in acknowledging something individual in a QSO.

The same (lack of typing skills, lack of foreign language skills) applies 
probably to PSK31 as well. But PSK31 has the benefit of offering DX even with 
lowest power and small/invisible antennas. And that's important at times 
where it gets ever more difficult to to set up antennas in restricted housing 
areas. To my surprise that even applies to the USA, as I learned in Dayton 
this year. This benefit (low power, small antennas) cannot be overcome by 
RTTY, I think. 

Nevertheless RTTY is alive and well, and will be as long as a bunch of crazies 
like most of those subscribed to this list enjoy and use it :-)

73,
Ekki, DF4OR