[RTTY] Suggestion for JARTS 2008

[Jack West XP]

Hi,

I have to add a comment here.  I once used a Kansas City Tracker PC card and
software to let the computer rotate my bean automatically.  It was neat!

Now...I am retired...no new toys, and my rotator is broken and does not rotate.
However, it free wheels, so I shot a line over the back part of the boom.  Now
I place old automobile tires, in the front yard, in positioins 180 deg opposite the
directions I am interested in transmitting during a contest....

And I simply tie the boom line to one tire and then another etc. according
to my pre-contest game plan.  This way I can rotate the beam only 180 deg
so I use the backside of the beam for Asia, and Oceania etc.

I retired 14 years ago...the rotor broke about 7 or 8 years ago.
Who knows? Maybe I will place a tire in the yard to favor your direction in the
next contest?

73
de Jack / W7LD / "Lucky Dog"
PS. It is nice to have a XYL that has won a couple HF contests...hi


.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert Chudek - K0RC" <k0rc at citlink.net>
To: <rtty at contesting.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2007 7:43 PM
Subject: Re: [RTTY] Suggestion for JARTS 2008


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
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