[RTTY] Suggestion for JARTS 2008

[Robert Chudek - K0RC]

Eric - VE3GSI said:

"Hi Bob and Gang,

For those of us that use contest callsigns to automatically turn the rotor
to the correct direction with software, wrong call areas often are a
problem. If you tweak the rotor on a weak callsign that not in their call
district then there is a good chance on making the exchange worse and
potentially make more errors.

I for one would like to see the callsign/area used."



To which I reply:

Man... you're living in the lap of luxury!!!  My wife really gets upset when I tell her to go out and pull on the rope too many times during a contest... especially when it's raining or snowing...  :-)

All kidding aside, that's certainly a logical reason why you want to identify the physical district. I was hung up on the concept of working the different callsigns (like WPX), not the physical districts. I'm not using a rotor interface. My yagi basically follows the sun, unless it's a juicy multiplier and I'm not getting through the pileup. But when working EU, I can't fathom the rotor being tweaked 10 or 20 degrees back and forth when calling stations. I would expect premature rotor failure. Heck, my yagi has about 60 degrees beamwidth between -3 dB points so I don't see the point in moving the antenna for (almost) each contact.

Can you set the "sensitivity" of offset before the rotor kicks in? For example, "don't move unless the new station is more than 30 degrees from my current position"?

73 de Bob - KØRC in MN