[RTTY] Hardest RTTY Station to Work - EVER

[Jeff Stai]

On Sat, May 17, 2014 at 3:53 PM, Robert Chudek - K0RC <k0rc at citlink.net>wrote:

> Keep in mind that you don't need to get the entire call sign twice, or
> even once. You can increase your rate by picking a few letters from the
> "mess"... Maybe you see &*N3)T4#% print to your screen. To me, it looks
> like there's a "N3" among the callers. At this point you want to manually
> insert the N3 into the call sign field. Setup up a macro (N1MM example
> here) in F12 that is something like this:
>

I did this when I did manage to get a clear partial. This was the first
time I dealt with a pileup of this magnitude, so I was using my contest
experience, my reading on the subject, and my experience of being on the
other end to get me through it.

The problem I found was making sure you were on a valid signal so that you
could trust the decode to any degree. In the middle of the "smear" as I
called it, there simply were no distinguishable tones to lock your ear on
to, much less a tuning indicator. It's a wall of discordant unrelatable
tones. If I can't hear a Mark and Space where they are supposed to be and
in rhythm with each other - or my tuning indicator can't show it to me -
I'm not trusting the print. Most of the time once I found a Mark and Space
I ended up with a full call.

Your suggestion works a lot better when the wetware is more fully involved,
it's much better than a RTTY modem. ;)

I also did call stacking when I could, and used K4GMH's good suggestions on
keeping it tight and short.

I didn't really have any pileup problems that I could perceive. Once the
callers understood I was going to finish working what I started working,
and do it fast, and you weren't going to get worked right away if you
stomped on someones exchange, everyone settled down.

- 73 jeff wk6i

-- 
Jeff Stai ~ wk6i.jeff at gmail.com
Twisted Oak Winery ~ http://www.twistedoak.com/
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