[UK-CONTEST] RTT Y tones

[Clive Whelan]

Although I am a dyed in the wool CW operator, I have been known to make
occasional forays onto RTTY, especially in contests. In fact, I first
operated RTTY way back and I remember collecting a Creed 7B and driving it
home in a "pop bottle" Cortina, so that would be what ca. 1975/6?


A home brew TU driving the 60mA magnets followed. In those days the "high"
tones were used by default, and if I recall the technical reason was to
avoid harmonic or other non-linear distortion products in the audio spectrum
messing up the crude demodulators of that era.

Later on, ca 1988 when I got a PK232, I was pleased that "low" tones were
now accepted- is it 1445 etc?. My more recent forays have been in the modern
era with computer sound card etc, using AFSK, with MMTTY etc. In that
situation the tone selected seemed to be a matter of personal preference,
and I tended to use lowish tones, which never caused difficulty, even in in
QRM with weak signals, a tribute to MMTTY perhaps?

My present transceiver( IC756PRO3) has a genuine RTTY mode- probably most
modern black boxes do. Of course that is a genuine FSK arrangement, which I
can now in theory use with my microKeyer ( if I ever get it going!). Of
course this still uses the old money tones of 2125 etc. So what's the
problem you ask? Well it's a physiological one I guess. After 40+ years of
CW, my brain is thoroughly accustomed to an audio spectrum centred around
500/600Hz ( used to be 800Hz when they were c/s, and I was younger!). I
suppose one might term that a "pink" spectrum. I find that the RTTY/FSK
"white" spectrum of about 2200Hz, rather wearing, even when using the
speaker, and when using cans is frankly excruciating, giving me a cracking
headache in no time at all.

So I suppose my questions for the RTTY buffs are. Is there now a valid
reason to use high tones, given that modes such as WSJT don't seem to suffer
from using lower tones, and if not why does the technique persist; is it
just tradition? Further, am I alone in finding the high tones uncomfortable;
should I hang in there and hope I get used to it; or should I give in
gracefully and adopt AFSK for the mode?

Your perspective will be appreciated.

73


Clive
GW3NJW