[RTTY] RTTY vs PSK on Field Day

[Stephen Shearer]

RTTY is also a "sound card" mode using AFSK.  See fldigi.  It is point 
and click.  Yes, with a FSK TX, you need to tune.  fldigi operates 
multi-mode and includes PSK and RTTY...  "so" any club running PSK (with 
fldigi) should be able to switch modes to RTTY. At FD, most would be AFSK.

When I was active with NAVY MARS 20+ years ago, all traffic into our 
area was RTTY at 100wpm.  They were just starting to use auto-correcting 
modes, but the non-correcting mode worked.  (Navy MARS is no longer).

73, steve WB3LGC


On 2/24/2017 9:58 AM, Dave Barr wrote:
> 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
>
>