[RTTY] RTTY Best Practices

[Kok Chen]

On Jan 13, 2006, at 5:56 PM, Bill Turner wrote:

> At 05:44 PM 1/13/2006, Bill Coleman wrote:
>
>> On Jan 9, 2006, at 3:56 PM, Ed Steeble wrote:
>>
>>> 1) I will add CQ after my call when CQing.
>>
>> I never liked this practice in CW. Seems I would always copy the CQ
>> and miss the guy's call. I also don't like the "CQ NA AA4LR NA" for
>> the same reason.
>
> I don't like it on CW either, since TEST has fewer elements than CQ.
> Not so on RTTY, of course.

It is not just a good idea, it is plain courtesy to the S&P guys like  
me.

It often saves you one extra CQ message -- when I finally tune you  
in, I may not see the initial CQ in the message.  If I see a callsign  
and the trailing CQ, I can respond to it (there can be about 50%  
likeihood that it happens, depending on the format of the CQ message).

Otherwise I would have to wait until you CQ again, or more likely, I  
will just keep tuning to find the next station up the band.

>>> 6) I found out quickly that it pays to have a buffer with 5 "SC" in
>>> it for
>>> the marginal condition QSOs. Likewise I have a buffer with five
>>> K3IXDs in it.
>>
>> I had a couple of guys do this to me. Waste of time. Most of the
>> time, when I'd ask for a repeat, it was because of some temporal
>> problem: QRM, QSB, etc.
>>
>> Just send the exchange again. If I didn't get it, I'll ask for
>> another repeat. At some point, you just have too much redundancy.
>
> Send the exchange again? Now that's a waste of time. He already has
> your call, his call, "DE", "599" and everything else EXCEPT "SC". So
> why send all that other stuff? Send just the part he needs!

I agree completely.  Especially when people can barely copy my low  
power signal to start with.

Unless the mode has built in error detection properties (which Baudot  
does not), doubling exchanges (just the part that is crucial)  
provides the error detection.  Tripling the exchange will provide  
error correction for a sufficiently low bit error rate.  They are not  
optimal coding, but they are better than nothing.

Sending an extra "OR" in the Roundup added 1/2 of a second to an  
exchange.  It takes me much longer than that to S&P to the next station.

73
Chen, W7AY