I wasn't so much disappointed as I was surprised by the popularity of
PSK31 as shown on the ARRL poll. It's hard to say how accurate the
poll was, but I believe it may be accurate enough to show us that PSK31
is the most popular HF digital mode for the many reasons given by some
here on the reflector. It's a great conversational mode you can use for
both ragchewing and DX'ing with low power. It really is a nice mode.
The most interesting part of the poll to me was the 44% that said they did
not operate HF digital. I would venture to say that number would have been
much larger just a couple of years ago and that the introduction of PSK31
along with sound card programs such as MMTTY brought the numbers
up. The poll suggests that more than half do operate HF digital.
It's fact now that if you are chasing new DXCC entities on digital that
you must be QRV on PSK31. Many of us would love to work all the
entities on RTTY but because of the popularity of PSK31, that is likely not
to happen unless you are already well over 300 entities already.
I have 3 entities that were not RTTY - Peter I was on Amtor (before Tony
finally got RTTY going with the damaged PK900's), Sudan on Pactor,
and Guinea on PSK31. I did eventually work all 3 on RTTY, but the way
it's going, it's important not to neglect PSK31.
I probably will be doing more PSK operating in the future. Another
major advantage of PSK is that it's easy to tune signals without hearing
them. I haven't found a program that works well enough yet, but I'll
be able to operate PSK31 much more easily remotely than I would RTTY
since I haven't found a decent way to run audio with my remote setup.
I doubt PSK31 will replace RTTY as the choice mode for digital contesting
any time soon. I think it's too slow. I am guessing that a lot of those
that chose PSK31 in the survey also operate RTTY but just prefer PSK31.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
We have to face the facts, PSK31 may be the digital mode of choice by
digital operators and therefore it is likely that more and more DXpeditions
will run PSK31 instead of RTTY. Just be ready for it.
Don AA5AU
----- Original Message -----
From: <Arsk0jn@aol.com>
To: <rtty@contesting.com>
Cc: <Arsk0jn@aol.com>
Sent: Friday, May 31, 2002 8:57 AM
Subject: [RTTY] ARRL.org Vote - We Need to Become More Pro-active
> Maybe this isn't shared my the majority on this site but I was disappointed
> that RTTY only got 1/5 (19.9%) of the vote while PSK got nearly 1/3 of the
> vote. There are many times when I tune across the RTTY band and find no RTTY
> DX activity (or any other kind for that matter). I check the PSK frequencies
> and they are full of DX, mostly Europe. I have asked many upcoming operations
> for RTTY, like the recent operation to the Vatican, and most reply "no RTTY,
> maybe PSK" . K7ASU operated only PSK from Wake Is. just recently. VK9XV &
> VK9LO are without RTTY operations. Maybe most RTTY enthusiasts "have them
> all" or most of them; so they don't care and just operate contests. I think
> we all need to care or we'll continue to become a minority to other forms of
> digital communication (except in RTTY contests) especially PSK. I think we
> would all regret to see that...I certainly would.
> Regards,
> Joe, K0JN
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