[UK-CONTEST] CC Rule Change

[G Wood]

Hi All

It appears to me, as normal, the Contest Committee or whoever
decided to change the rules for Data CC has not fully thought
through the implications. Potentially it could create more
problems than it was meant to solve.
The main problem would be extending the segment above 3.6mhz,
this is going to cause friction with non-contest SSB & AM users,
maybe causing more interference to RTTY stations, than occurs at
present and add fuel to the ever-present contest/noncontest
argument.

Regarding PSK, using a worse case scenario, suppose all the
contest stations decide to use PSK at the same time the QRM
would make it unusable, all squashed in 5khz.
I used PSK in CC couple of years ago it didn’t seem to be worth
the effort. There doesn’t appear to be enough time to work the
RTTY stations without having to mess about switching modes.
Surely the simple answer would be to ditch PSK, or use the
fourth week for PSK.

Following discussions with other local station, there seems to
be problems getting logging programs to work RTTY & PSK without
too much trouble. I think most op's use FSK on RTTY but PSK
needs AFSK.

My homebrew logger used to run Hamscope, running AFSK for PSK &
RTTY and used DDE(Direct Data Exchange) to connect to the
logger. Switching mode was easy. One problem with this, was the
tx power used to vary from over to over, due to variations in
output from the sound card.
When I bought the IC7000 I switched to FSK RTTY, this meant the
power out was set by the rig and I was able to use the built-in
double peaked filter for RTTY.
I decided to ditch PSK as a contest mode and redesigned my
logger. I now have the MMTTY Engine built in, as N1MM, the
logger works very much better on RTTY so I dont feel inclined to
go back to using Hamscope, just for a few short burst of PSK per
year. I would imagine quite a few operators will just stick to
RTTY or not bother to come on at all.

All this extra work to satisfy a minority of moaners. Maybe we
should demand a referendum!!
It will be interesting to hear the views of other Op's.

73's - Graham G3VIP