[RTTY] Getting useful fills

[Shoppa, Tim]

Like many others (just looking at IW1AYD's very good post mentioning macros for useful exchanges, he's got it right!) I sometimes get a little frustrated asking for fills.

If I ask "NR AGN NR AGN NR AGN NR AGN", I would like the guy on the other end to realize that I don't need the 599 repeated again. I don't need my call repeated again. What I need is for him to send the serial number - the one variable part of the exchange I need to get credit for the QSO - to me MULTIPLE TIMES so I can get a good print and beyond that a second print to verify things because the conditions are so marginal.

At that point I've already looked at your signal in multiple decoder windows. I've looked at it both shifted and unshifted. And I couldn't put together serial.

So if I ask "NR AGN NR AGN NR AGN NR AGN" please realize that I want you to send the number at least 4 times. Sending it 6 times wouldn't hurt either. Having a macro set up to do this efficiently - i.e. send me the serial without sending your call, without sending my call, without sending "GOOD MORNING TIMOTHY" and 599 each time - would be best. But I would like you to go into manual keying if necessary to do this all efficiently. I don't want to waste your time getting the fill, I want you to send it to me the most efficient way possible. I would suggest a "superfill" macro key that sends the variable information - like serials - repeatedly, with no repeat necessary for 599 or calls or anything else, if you do not like to do manual keying in a test.

If you send me the serial 4 times or 6 times, and no single one prints cleanly on my end, I will almost always be able to cross-correlate all your repeats into a "believable serial number" such that I don't need to ask for a fill again.

This is not a problem unique to RTTY, I also had it in spades on CW on the low bands in the summer. E.g. WAE CW this past summer, there is a serial I need to copy, but horrendous storm noise on 80M in particular mean that if I ask NR NR NR NR that I do not want you to send me the number once, I need you to send it multiple times. I do not need you to send 5NN. I do not want you to do wild speed CW changeups. I do not need you to send your call. I do not need you to send my call. I need the serial, because I'm having a very hard time copying it, and I need to copy it. WAE CW this past summer, I had huge problems copying even the biggest signal EU megastations on 80M. I contrast that sharply with 80M in the RTTY RU - 80M was pristine and a huge success for me. Oh, 80M was so good. Well many other bands were good too! But I love 80M when it's pristine like it was in RTTY RU.

Tim N3QE