[RTTY] Cut numbers in RTTY -- why?

W0YR at aol.com W0YR at aol.com
Mon Feb 16 13:53:03 EST 2004


Jerry,

You describe things correctly!   It is difficult to understand why some 
people are so reticent to send something repeately when they are asked to do so.  
Perhaps it's some kind of modesty or a fear of wanting to seem overzealous.  
Also, stations are so often reticent to GO BACK and MAKE SURE they have 
copied things correctly.  Neither operator should forget that errors will be 
penalized.  On several occasions, stations about which I had real questions as to 
call or report never made it into my log.  In this way I had a cleaner log 
without errors.  The other guy lost out because he won't show up in my log and will 
be penalized for it.  Blazing ahead to protect "rate" at the expense of 
accuracy is a dumb way to conduct onesself in a contest.

Through trial and error I have hit a few methods that really do help "get the 
number through." One of them seems crazy, but isn't:

1.  Do NOT use dashes at all in the exchange.   599-023-023 is just asking 
for trouble because it does not allow the "system" to UNSHIFT.

2.  Instead of using dashes...use  TWO  spaces between the report elements, 
like:
         599    023    023    
    I could go into a long explanation about unshifting on space, etc., but 
believe me, this helps much of the time.

3.  For really rough cases I actually have a macro that purposely sends the 
serial number both SHIFTED and UNSHIFTED.  When it gets tough, I would send:

        W6IHG   599   023   023   023   PQW     PQW    PQW

    That way the other op can (with most software), click on the PQW if he 
recognizes it, and it will be converted to  023

I was very pleasantly surprised by the few stations I heard overdriving the 
first audio stages of their rigs with their sound cards.  That fad seems to be 
pretty well under control. 

73

Mike
W0YR 


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