[RTTY] Dominoex versus RTTYcontesting ?

[Andrew O'Brien]

I wonder, from the contesting perspective, if anyone got enough
experience with DominoEX this weekend to compare it to RTTY
contesting?  I worked the Dominoex contest and a few hours of the NAQP
RTTY Contest.  I enjoyed the RTTY contest because it was easier, I
just parked on a frequency, called CQ, and had 1-2 calls per minuute
calling me !  With the DominoEX contest it was as expected, long
periods of time between QSOs.  So, I am not sure I had the best chance
to compare the two digital communication methods.  Psychologically, it
took my brain a little longer to get used to working a station that my
ears could not hear.  That happened a couple of times with DominoEX, I
think in contesting you get used to operator behavioural cues like
beable to hear the station hand-over..  It was nice to get a ZL1 and a
VK3 calling me on DominoEX , my simple dipole does not hear many ZLs
and VKs  these days.

I think the best thing I can say about Dominoex at the moment is that
under contest conditions I noticed no difference between it and RTTY.
By that I mean, speed of operation and ability to decode signals
appeared the same.  That's using the DominoEX 11 baud default, but I
did use 22 baud to successfully call CQ at a faster rate.  I did not
have  enough contacts to experiment with lower baud rate and weak
signal reception.

So, while the technical specifications of Dominoex may indicate it
will out perform RTTY under certain conditions, my experience is
sufficient to only conclude that it will do at least as GOOD as RTTY.
Of course, I was not able to experience crowded adjacent channel
conditions that one gets in a popular RTTY contest.  I am not sure how
Dominoex would handle this.


-- 
Andy K3UK
Fredonia, New York.
Skype Me :  callto://andyobrien73
Also available via Echolink