[RTTY] hyphen or no hyphen

[Robert Chudek]

I would never operate a RTTY contest without listening to the incoming audio tones. If you operate in silence, you throw away some of the most important tools in transcribing the decoded text into valid contest QSO's... These are your eyes, ears, and brain.

When you monitor the receive signal your eyes & ears will synchronize with the characters printing to the screen. Soon you will begin to correlate misprints caused by static bursts, key clicks, impulse noise, qsb, selective fading, and other interference competing for the decoders attention.

The second benefit is you can zero beat a station with your eyes closed! I listen to my own tones and match the incoming and outgoing tones. Kind of like tuning adjacent strings on a guitar! During the ARRL RTTY contest there were many stations that did not reply on frequency.

73 de Bob - KØRC in MN

------------------------------

Message: 9
Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2007 15:37:59 -0500
From: Bill Coleman <aa4lr at arrl.net>
Subject: Re: [RTTY] hyphen or no hyphen
To: Graham Ridgeway <m5aav at btinternet.com>
Cc: rtty at contesting.com, Bill Turner <dezrat at copper.net>
Message-ID: <42254A05-14D2-4929-852B-D2D90F740C24 at arrl.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed


On Feb 15, 2007, at 1:11 PM, Graham Ridgeway wrote:

> Correct - absolute silence - and the Wife loves it.......I can think
> of little worse than being assaulted by 48 hours of jingle bells -
> apart of course from being assaulted by the Wife <smile>

Wife assault aside, I find that listening to the signals gives you an  
extra dimension that you can't always get from watching the print and  
crossed-banana display. You can often hear signals that don't print  
well, even if they are in tune.

Sometimes it makes the difference between CQing in someone face and  
the more friendly QRZ? The former will often cause them to give up,  
the latter invites them to try again.

When running RTTY, I wear headphones and listen to the audio, but I  
turn the volume WAY down.

Bill Coleman, AA4LR, PP-ASEL        Mail: aa4lr at arrl.net
Quote: "Not within a thousand years will man ever fly!"
             -- Wilbur Wright, 1901