[RTTY] WHY put CQ at the end?

[Pete Smith N4ZR]

A couple of points need to be made here.

Precisely because of the relative verbosity of RTTY- things like 
repeating callsigns of both stations, adding CQ at the end of messages, 
and so on- RTTY Skimserv has adopted a contest-specific approach to 
determining when a transmission is a CQ and when it is part of an 
exchange between stations that have already established contact.  These 
definitions are contained in a separate contests.ini file.  To use them, 
the RTTY Skimserv operator needs to manually select the appropriate one, 
as well as manually changing the definitions of RTTY segments from 
normal to contest use so as to cover all the frequencies in use.

Remembering that RTTY Skimserv was only released last month, it should 
not be surprising that these contest-specific definitions still need 
work.  As of now, there is no CQWPXRTTY section in the contests.ini 
file.  I tried using an experimental definition that one of the alpha 
testers had written, only to discover that, for me at least, it was not 
forwarding any spots.  I then switched to the ARRL RTTY Roundup 
definition, and spots began to flow.  Was it optimum? Probably not. How 
well did it do at distinguishing CQers and non-CQers? Only detailed 
analysis will tell us.  I don't hear very well, but I did make 
approximately 25,000 RTTY spots per day over the weekend.

A second point - some of the RTTY spots seen on the RBN this weekend 
were contributed by another decoding application, RCKRtty, written by 
DL4RCK.  It works entirely differently from RTTY Skimserv, scanning the 
RTTY segments one band and 3 KHz at a time, but it also spots PSK 
stations.  Because of this, we've encouraged him to continue supporting 
RCKRTTY, and his users to continue feeding spots to the RBN.  That's why 
you'll see occasional BPSK spots on the network.  I can't address how, 
or how well, RCKSkimmer discriminates between CQers and callers.

Finally, intelligent use of Bandmaps can help a lot.  If you see 
multiple stations, seeming to be on exactly the same frequency, that 
shouldbe a pretty good clue that someone on that frequency is confusing 
things, and that maybe you shouldn't jump to conclusions.

I hope this is helpful.

73, Pete N4ZR
Check out the Reverse Beacon Network at
http://reversebeacon.net,
blog at reversebeacon.blogspot.com.
For spots, please go to your favorite
ARC V6 or VE7CC DX cluster node.

On 2/17/2015 12:34 PM, pcooper wrote:
> To Dave K6LL and the group,
>
> Dave, I don't think the way you have your macro set is the reason the skimmers are seeing callers to YOU as spots.
>
> As far as I can see, skimmers appear to be spotting pretty much anything, at any time.
> My reason for saying this is based on what I was seeing in the K1N pile-ups.
> During their time on RTTY, there were spots for loads of calls on that band, and none were using CQ in their calls at all.
>
> I actually got spotted on 17m when I made a call to them, and I did not use a CQ, nor were there any CQ's on that frequency during the (short) time I called them.
>
> It is the reason I have given up using a skimmer site when contesting. It appears that all calls get spotted regardless of whether they use a CQ in their macro or not.
>
> And yes, I do use a CQ at the end of my macro, as it can be a right pain to sit and wait for the caller to call again and check that he is calling CQ, if you happen to chance upon them and only get the call.
>
> 73 de Phil GU0SUP
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