[RTTY] RTTY vs PSK on Field Day

[Dave Barr]

Tim, it's a fine idea to encourage more use of RTTY during FD, but I 
think there is a basic problem that will be difficult to overcome.  PSK 
is an easier mode for non-digital types to operate compared to RTTY.   
PSK is a point and click mode, where RTTY in most cases requires fairly 
accurate manual tuning.  RTTY is certainly superior to PSK as a contest 
mode in regard to speed of qsos and resilience under widely varying 
signal levels and qrm.

Non-contest usage of the various digital modes shows PSK to be more 
popular than RTTY as a result of it's ease-of-use, but so are the JT 
modes, the timing and structure of which certainly do not encourage high 
contest efficiency.

RTTY uses wider band segments because we tune through them, whereas PSK 
segments are primarily limited by RX/TX bandpass widths, so an expanded 
segment would be somewhat more difficult to use as efficiently as RTTY.

While I believe a primary difficulty in expanding Field Day RTTY usage 
is PSK's operating facility, I also think the competition for both RTTY 
and PSK air time vs the phone and cw favoring operators may be more 
important.   Perhaps the diminishing percentage of cw capable operators 
will open more opportunity for digital activity.  We need to mentor more 
potential Field Day ops to feel as comfortable with RTTY as they are 
with PSK, or phone for that matter.   And of course we should also be 
mentoring the more recently ticketed hams in becoming cw proficient.

73, Dave, K2YG


On 2/24/2017 4:23 AM, rtty-request at contesting.com wrote:
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2017 04:44:11 +0000 (UTC)
> From: Tim Goeppinger<timgep at yahoo.com>
> To:"rtty at contesting.com"  <rtty at contesting.com>
> Subject: [RTTY] RTTY vs PSK31 on Field Day
> Message-ID:<587187359.117591.1487911451385 at mail.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> I would like to write a letter to QST to hopefully get published by Field Day.?? My concern is that the North Americanhams have taken a wrong turn about 15 years ago for digital modes for ARRL Field Day.?? Somehow, PSK31 becamethe de facto mode for digital in Field Day.?? Before that, we had RTTY, and that worked fairly well for FD.
> What we have now for Field Day is 2 or 3 KHz of spectrum that is packed with PSK31 signals.?? Many stations on topof one another.?? In addition, all it takes is one over-driven signal to splatter and wipe out the whole PSK bandwidth.
> Don't get me wrong.? PSK31 is a great mode 364 days of the year for ragchewing and DXing.? It is elegantly designed, has Vitterbi decoding, and is efficient in is use of spectrum.? But for Field Day, it is the wrong mode.?? In a real-life emergency would everyone crowd PSK signals into 2 -3 KHz?? No, wewould spread out.
> Even though RTTY is from the late 1920's, it is still the primary mode for digital contesting.?? And yes, Field Day is a contest.?? So why not use RTTY?
> And there is a huge chunk of spectrum that we can use.? On 20 meters, we could go from 14.080 to 14.130 MHz.?? Spread the RTTY signals out, so there is no QRM.?? The space is there.? Use it!
> If Field Day stations make the transition from PSK31 to RTTY, would the RTTY contesting community make a special effort to get on the air, andmake some RTTY contacts??? There is a Field Day category for home with commercial power, which is 1D.
> I would appreciate any inputs on this opinion piece.
> Tnx & 73,
> Tim N6GP
>