[RTTY] Icom Rigs For Contesting

[Michael Zolno]

Hi Peter,

Yes, it pays to shop around these days. The funny thing is that I was forced to get on PSK after I had clean sweep on CW for the 13 Colonies and WM3PEN by Friday night day 1, except for GB13COL as the UK picked a op that does CW verses a CW op. He did literally hours of digi-modes and then would call CQ, work a few stations and after a minute or two would go back to digi-modes. So in frustration, I looked around the junk box for an isolation transformer for audio to use with my transistor keying circuit. Fiddling with the ICOM menu, I stumbled across Data on, Data off menu and happen to scroll VFO knob and menu changed to USB. I then thought well I'm wasting time, lets see if we can get it to transmit on USB and voila, it did. I have not tried transmitting RTTY through USB since I have the keying circuit, and I think now I should try. I will look to the Yahoo group you spoke of.

I did not do any testing, but it is clear to me that the BW is not the very best (though perfectly adequate) and the purest will get significant increase using an ASUS Xonar U5/U7 or any of the newer external 192kHz sound cards for these modes. The fact that you don't have to buy an external box, signalink, rigblaster, etc should be advertised a bit more since many of the newly minted hams seem to gravitate to these sound card modes. 

Their path is, in my observation, somewhat atypical to what was the path years ago. Speaking of my self, NAQP was the first RTTY I have done in 20+ years, and I had a blast! Back then it was with my PK232 at 200Hz AFSK. Though as a young commo soldier I can remember the AN/GRC-106, tuning forks and yellow paper reels of our TTY rig. What at first, seemed so difficult to get the tune and load meters aligned in a short period quickly became so easy.

Anyway, I digress. Thanks for the info. Have a great day!

All my best,

Mike

Sent from my iPad

> On Jul 23, 2016, at 12:18 PM, Peter Laws <plaws0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Sat, Jul 23, 2016 at 8:45 AM, Michael Zolno <luv.myipad3 at me.com> wrote:
>> For NAQP, I was using FSK through the back 13 pin accy connector and a serial keying interface. As an aside, I purchased both 6k & 3k roofing filters from an eBay seller in Japan, NIB for $78 delivered to my door. A far cry from $100 each US sellers want them for.
> 
> Funny you mention that - I got an Icom mic for my HT from a fellow in
> Japan (via Amazon) for MUCH cheaper than any domestic vendor.
> Shipping was clearly via a slow boat from Japan, but no matter.
> 
> Much discussion about the Icom USB implementations over on the DXLab
> list a while back.  Seems the radios create a COM port for CI-V but
> some also create a 2nd COM port for FSK.  None of my gear has USB so I
> didn't pay close attention to which radios did which, but if you have
> any of the newer Icom gear, it might be worth grepping through that
> Yahoo! Group's archives for the details.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Peter Laws | N5UWY | plaws plaws net | Travel by Train!
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