[RTTY] Strange tones at beginning of RTTY transmission

[Dave Hachadorian]

Every now and then, I encounter a RTTY station whose transmissions begin with a strange two-second series of tones before sending RTTY.  I jotted down one such call sign from the RTTY Roundup, and sent the gent an email this morning, asking about his setup.  He replied that he had noticed it too, and after some further digging today he found out that he had had RSID enabled in his Ham Radio Deluxe DM-780 software.  He said that after he disabled RSID, his transmission sounded normal.  Mystery solved – at least in his case.  Below is what the DM-780 Manual says about RSID.

Dave Hachadorian, K6LL
Yuma, AZ





This is the icon to toggle your RSID on or off. For those not familiar with RSID, it 
stands for  Reed-Solomon ID
RSID was originally developed by Patrick Lindecker, F6CTE.
The Reed-Solomon ID (RSID) is a short 16-tone MFSK transmission which identifies the mode in use. The RSID transmission is 
about 180Hz wide and lasts for just less than two seconds.
You should enable RSID when using an 'exotic' mode such as Olivia so that users of programs 
with RSID support know what mode you are using.  For a full list of modes supported by this 
program look in the Program Options for Modes + IDs
.
There are two ways to enable RSID:
1 In 
Program Options 
select Modes + Ids and check the 
option to show the RSID button in the 
Transmi
Toolbar,

2 Add the tag <rsid> 
to the beginning 
of a CQ macro. The latter is most recommended since it is rather annoying to have the RSID 
popup coming up EVERY time a contact transmits during a QSO. By including the tag in the CQ 
macro, the RSID information only displays when the CQ is received.

.