[RTTY] Article on RTTY Demodulators.

[Kok Chen]

I have been digging through old articles on RTTY, and to fill some missing gaps in my knowledge, I recently went and bought the set of RTTY Journal CD-ROMs from Wayne, K7WM.

In the early days, the RTTY Journal was called just "RTTY" and sometimes referred to as the RTTY bulletin.  After a few more name changes, it became "Digital Journal" by the time Bill Henry K9GWT took over publishing it.  

*Digital* Journal?   Yep, that was the name :-).  And if Mr. ST-8000 himself did not object to the name, who am I to complain? :-).

I had subscribed to RTTY Journal from the early 1990s on, but all the paper copies have long been discarded.

Anyhow, while I was combing through the old issues and taking notes for myself on technical issues of FSK demodulation, I thought that those notes could be useful for others too.  From time to time, there had been queries on this reflector about where to find more information about RTTY.  I have also been communicating offline over the past dozen years with a handful of folks not just newer digital modes, but also of RTTY.

I cleaned up the notes into something more presentable and it can be found at 

http://w7ay.net/site/Technical/RTTY%20Demodulators/

There are some non-technical bits in there too, and for those of you who have seen it before, it could still be a nice trip down memory lane (with my biased commentary to fill the space in between the real information :-).

Enjoy, and if not, "use the delete key" HI HI.

Many thanks to Mr. Henry for releasing the old issues to Wayne and also a big thank you to Wayne for spending the time to scan them all into CD-ROM.  Much of RTTY history would have been lost without the their contribution.  And I hope that they forgive me for cutting numerous figures and diagrams from the CD-ROM -- I was too lazy to redraw those figures and charts. I have learned in the past to use the "ask forgiveness afterwards" approach, and sure hope that it does not come and bite me in the back this time! :-)

In addition to being biased, my article is nowhere near complete either.  I hope that it is a good concise starting point (which is how I intend to use the web page myself) that will lead you to go find details from the original articles.  Needless to say, if you don't already have the set of CD-ROMs (they go back to 1953), give Wayne a holler.

On a completely different front, congrats to Doug for winning the August 2011 QST cover plaque for the K4DSP FSKit.

73
Chen, W7AY