[RTTY] Zone sent as letters?

[Bill, W6WRT]

ORIGINAL MESSAGE:

On Sun, 27 Sep 2009 18:01:25 -0700, "Paul Playford" <paul at w8aef.com> wrote:

>
>But I did see a few unshifted zones.
>
>Never a problem when a hyphen was present.

REPLY:

Paul, your two statements above contradict themselves. The most likely reason
you saw unshifted zones was BECAUSE hyphens were present. An unshifted hyphen
prints as the letter "A", as in TOOAWTAWT, familiar to experienced ops as 
599-25-25 when there is a missing or garbled FIGS shift just before the 599. 

Using USOS and having spaces instead of hyphens would make the above example
print as TOO 25 25. Which is easier to read? The answer is obvious. 

USOS was invented long after the Baudot code itself, and for good reason, to
prevent just this kind of problem. But for USOS to work, there must be spaces
between the elements of a macro, not hyphens, slashes or any other character. 

Please give it (no hyphens) a try and I am sure you will notice a drop in the
number of requests for a repeat. That's the main reason.

73, Bill W6WRT