[RTTY] Pet Peeve

[Richard Ferch]

At 10:25 PM 18/10/2004, W4UK wrote:
<snip>

>I agree that a separator at the end of a buffer is needed. I also have 
>spaces at the end of all my buffers to make sure my text is clear. They 
>are sent by WL. I would never have guessed that software would strip out 
>any trailing spaces. Maybe so in a CW macro, but not RTTY. Can you tell us 
>which programs would strip them? Should be easy to check this - just put 
>one char at the front of a long macro of spaces and see what happens when 
>you send it.

Hmmm ... I seem to remember someone once naming a popular program that did 
this, but I'll be darned if I can find the message now, so maybe my memory 
is playing tricks on me. I just tried it out with the N1MM/MMTTY 
combination on AFSK, and it sends trailing spaces. I don't have Writelog, 
so can't test that. I suppose it may also depend on whether you are using 
MMTTY or a TNC...

Anyway, I figure that the total number of QSOs I make in a contest is 
limited by the number of stations who can hear me, which in most RTTY 
contests is far fewer than the number I could possibly work at a maximum 
rate. In other words, whether a perfect QSO takes 15 seconds or 16 seconds 
will probably make little or no difference to my score, but if each QSO 
were to take 30 seconds or a minute instead of 15 seconds due to extra 
repeats, waits, etc., that might just cut into my total depending on how 
long that particular band is open - so I tend to prefer slightly longer 
messages which reduce the likelihood of requests for repeats.

73,
Rich VE3IAY