[TenTec] The QSK of QSK

[Jim Brown]

On Mon, 16 Aug 2004 16:40:53 EDT, Kc9cdt at aol.com wrote:

>Come on guys, you mean I should be able to hear a station calling someone 
>else in between dits, AND know it's the DX not another station trying for him 
>just like me?

With skill, and with the best QSK radios, ABSOLUTELY!  Especially when the 
DX is working split!  And remember, good operating is about SKILL, 
COURTESY, and GOOD JUDGEMENT.  

There are differences between the performance of QSK radios, mainly how 
quickly they switch (or how closely the receive gaps dits and characters 
resemble the actual keying "makes").  Example -- let's say there is a 10 ms 
gap between dits or characters at a given speed. If switching eats up 8 ms, it 
will be hard to hear much between dits. But if switching is only 1-2 ms, you 
can hear a lot more. 

I can vary the QSK time with the K2 to make it more "slient," but that 
increases the switching time and I can't hear between dits. I set it for the 
minimum time, which allows me to hear more. It's a bit noisier in my cans, but 
it allows me to be a much better operator. 

Running QRP in the WAE this weekend, I needed to do a lot of repeats, but 
QSK allowed me to stop sending when the other guy came back to me. I 
heard a fair number (25%?) of guys who obviously couldn't hear the other guy 
coming back, and it slowed things down a lot. (you notice this stuff when 
you're running QRP, because you have to do S&P and wait in line for others 
to finish. It's painful when one or both of the folks you're waiting for don't have 
QSK, because it takes them longer to finish a QSO or recover from mistakes 
or poor copy. 

Jim  Brown K9YC