[RTTY] How to Score VOLTA RTTY

[Kok Chen]

On May 11, 2009, at 5/11    9:42 AM, Kevin H. Phillips wrote:

> Assuming that most people participating (?)
> are using computers and MMTTY, or similar programs, one thing I  
> noticed
> was lack of Carriage Return and Line Feed at the end of transmissions.

The omission is deliberate.

If you send a newline, the line will jump on a computer screen at the  
other end, potentially just when the op is trying to click on an  
exchange to log it, causing an "air ball."

> A friend of mine (former Navy radioman who used MMTTY to monitor the
> contest) commented on confusion about callsigns because of "garbage"
> printing on MMTTY if a space or "K" or Carriage Return was not used at
> the end of a transmission.

The usual recommendation is to instead append a space character rather  
than a newline to the end of a contest exchange, so the trailing  
characters (usually part of a call sign) is not immediately followed  
by "line noise."

> I had to ask some stations to repeat their
> exchanges several times because of overprinting.

This is because some computer programs send a single CR character,  
instead of a CR and LF pair when they want to advance a line.  These  
programs do not understand the difference between a carriage return,  
where the platen carriage moves to the left, and a linefeed, where the  
platen of the teletypewriter turns to advance the paper.

Without a line feed,  a mechanical teletype will overprint of the  
current line when a carriage return is received.

Most programs are written to consider the reception of a linefeed or a  
carriage return or a CR-LF pair as a single newline "character," so  
they don't notice the missing newlines which you notice on a  
mechanical teletype.  cocoaModem has a "Print Control Characters"  
checkbox where non-printing Baudot characters such as CR, LF and BEL  
are shown on the screen, and I do see a lot of stations that are  
sending CR without the paired LF.

73
Chen, W7AY