[RTTY] Getting spotted by RTTY skimmers

[Michael Adams]

I'm not disagreeing, and I may be editing my macros to reflect this.  (This was the first RTTY contest I was very active in where the RTTY skimmer network was robust enough to be a significant consideration.)

However, I thought that collective thought on RTTY contesting best practices was leaning towards minimizing CR/LF, partly for efficiency (fewer symbols to transmit), and partly to be nice to those who find it painful to chase print through a scrolling window.

Also, with most contest loggers being limited in how many easily accessible macros, it'd be nice to be able to have one's macros be potentially usable for multiple situations, and putting carriage returns in a macro can limit its reusability (if scroll-reduction is a consideration).

So, right now, in N1MM+, I have a macro:  "{TX} {MYCALL} {MYCALL} {MYCALL} {RX}"  used in S&P.  I give my call thrice because when I first started playing with RTTY contesting, I saw others do it, it felt right at the time, and it's about as long as most CQ's or exchanges, facilitating getting a good rhythm going between runners and callers.

This weekend, there were plenty of times that sending my call once or twice would have been sufficient, for easy contacts.

So, as part of my contest post-mortem, I had been debating considering changing that macro to "{TX} {MYCALL} {RX}", and just tapping the function key repeatedly if conditions warrant a repeat.

In other words, tap once and " N1EN " is sent
Tap twice and " N1EN  N1EN " is sent.
Tap six times and " N1EN  N1EN  N1EN  N1EN  N1EN  N1EN " is sent.

If the conclusion is that S&P stations need to send a carriage return to avoid being mis-spotted, then I'll likely change my macro to "{TX}{ENTER}{MYCALL} {MYCALL} {RX}", which means that if I have invoke the macro thrice (due to conditions or a request for a fill), the following will print:

N1EN N1EN
N1EN N1EN
N1EN N1EN

...and that would be annoying enough that I'd probably just continue to have separate MyCall and RptMyCall macros.

If that's the right thing to do to maximize collective fun, then I'll happily do so.

However, I can always hope that discussions such as this one will find their way to the skimmer developers' ears, and perhaps some updated code could be created that considers where a call is in a line with respect to " CQ ", and with respect to any other calls in the line, when guessing whether the call is a running station or not.

-- 
Michael Adams | N1EN | mda at n1en.org


-----Original Message-----

Start your macros with <CR><LF> .... that will make sure you don't get picked up with the trailing CW or TEST from the previous station.

73,

    ... Joe, W4TV