[RTTY] Key clicks seemed less severe last weekend

[Tim Shoppa]

While my ears are still ringing:

In CQ WW RTTY 2017, there seemed to be a general improvement in signal
quality, especially with regards to a reduction in stations showing severe
key clicks.

I don't track the waveshaping improvements ( see K0SM's article
http://www.frontiernet.net/~aflowers/k3rtty/k3rtty.html ) through every
possible contesting rig hardware/firmware update, but I suspect that K0SM's
lessons have been taken up by several manufacturers in the past 5 years.

Huge amount of credit goes towards K0SM's for his exceptionally clear
writeup and all the manufacturers who followed through on cleaning up their
rigs.

It is also possible that contesters have been been moving towards AFSK,
which is another K0SM recommendation for clean RTTY signals.

Also, GRITTY has always been exceptional at being able to decode through
QRMing stations a kHz or two away with bad keyclicks. It seems to do best
in this regard when run at very wide receiver bandwidth. I don't know if
this keyclick rejection is an intentional design goal of GRITTY or just a
natural result of its technologies. I only had to lean on this ability a
handful of times this past weekend, less often than in previous years.

Also, I noticed fewer off-frequency callers than in past years. And I
noticed a very definite increase in callers who seemed completely unaware
of the difference in search vs running macros  - aka "upside down
exchanges" as I've complained about in past years. Not only can these
newbies not figure out that they send their call (and not their exchange)
in response to my CQ, they also continually QRM'ed me when I was S&P by
trying to work me as if I was the CQ'ing station

Tim N3QE