[RTTY] Field Day Digital: PSK vs RTTY

[Al Kozakiewicz]

I found the same thing.

I had a few club members express interest in operating PSK on FD.  We were class 5A. I set up one computer with my DigiKeyer interface to run both PSK and RTTY with a radio I loaned for the effort that was operated on 40-20-15 meters.  In the end, I was the only operator to use either mode and I had only 27 digital contacts in a couple hours of operating. 20 PSK and 7 RTTY.  There were LOTS of PSK signals during the day, but we had  20M antenna problems and our tribander was in use by a voice operator most of the time I was there to operate.  We had a total of about 950 QSO's, so 27 digital is nothing to brag about.  I spent maybe 2 operating hours to get those 27 QSOs spread out over both days.  The remainder of our QSO's were split almost evenly between CW and phone.

What I did find is that the vast majority of the PSK operators were very poor compared to the RTTY operators in a typical contest.  Hideously long exchanges (HI K2AE K2AE PLEASE COPY 599 2E 2E IN LAX LAX) and uselessly long goodbye messages (K2AE GOODBYE AND GOOD LUCK IN THE CONTEST HAPPY FD 73 DE K6LMNOP).  That coupled with really long times to answer my response after I answered their CQ , and I was very happy that RTTY contest operators are largely in a different class.

In our club, there are but a few contesters and many of the FD operators are Techs using the opportunity to operate on HF outside of 10M.  I'd be interested in hearing if that's typical of other operations.

Al
AB2ZY 

-----Original Message-----
From: RTTY [mailto:rtty-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Mike N8MR
Sent: Thursday, July 04, 2013 6:11 AM
To: rtty at contesting.com
Subject: [RTTY] Field Day Digital: PSK vs RTTY

Hello All, 

For the 4th year in a row, our local amateur radio club set up a separate digital station for Field Day. We've heard that RTTY is the most popular digital mode for Field Day, but this year, we found far more PSK31 signals than RTTY signals. We listened for PSK31 at x.070 and RTTY from x.080 to x.100 on 40, 20 and 15 Meters. 

Is PSK31 the more popular digital mode for Field Day? 

What is a good average total QSO count for a digital station on Field Day? 

73,
Mike, N8MR


 		 	   		  
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