[RTTY] Length-of-Exchange utility

[Tom Osborne]

Hi Bob

Here I do this:

CQ test W7WHY CQ

W7WHY de W7XXX

TU W7WHY CQ

That really cuts down on the transmit time.  Makes it a lot easier on the 
old SB-200 tubes!!  73
Tom W7WHY


Right on the money, Bill!

But I've taken this one step further.

To keep my exchange at the absolute minimum, I did not participate in
the last RTTY contest. This provided a couple other benefits... there
were no busted calls in my log and I wasn't constantly asked for repeats
due to my pathetic signal and/or QRM.

73 de Bob - KØRC in MN


On 3/29/2011 5:07 PM, Bill wrote:
> I ran that and after careful analysis I realized that if I keep my
> serial numbers below 10 i.e.
> w1xx 599 10  w9ol cq
>
> I will be much faster and have more time to make more qsos.
> No wonder I haven't won a contest lately, I've been INTENTIONALLY TRYING
> to make my serial number multi digit!!!!
>
>
> On 3/29/11 4:34 PM, David Westbrook wrote:
>> Here's a little web utility to compare different exchanges such as "599 
>> 0123
>> 0123" vs "599-0123-0123"  and display the real (including shifts) length 
>> and
>> the real time (in seconds) it would take to transmit.  Assumes 45.5 baud,
>> and has the stop bits and Un-Shift-On-Space (USOS) as options.
>>
>>           http://dwestbrook.net/projects/ham/rtty-length
>>
>> What sparked this was Chen's comment in the recent "RTTY" thread re: 
>> AL9A's
>> "slow" rtty:
>> ~~~~~~~~~~
>> "'Someone' in the contesting community should whip up a Java tool to
>> figure out the number of seconds an exchange takes when you enter the
>> actual exchange and states such as number of stop bits and USOS
>> condition. Perhaps such a tool should even be embedded into RTTY contest
>> programs. Most RTTY ops know how to count them, but it could be an eye
>> opener for folks who are not familiar with stop bits and LTRS/FIGS 
>> shifts.
>>    Often, it is not a matter of choosing a shorter exchange for the human
>> reader, but on how you create the exchange for a machine."
>> ~~~~~~~~~~