Well, once again, PSKers are predicting the death of RTTY. Jim, N2HOS, in
his latest Gazette, stated "There is plenty of
room for both [PSK63 and RTTY], but RTTY has already given up this battle.
Peace!"
I'd like to make a couple of points, and then maybe we can have some healthy
discussion on this topic:
1. PSK63 has some attributes that should be attractive to digital
contesters - Fast (100 WPM) and narrow bandwidth to name a couple. They
also claim much better participation, judging from current PSK31 use. Thus
I think we need to evaluate it for its strengths and weaknesses and not just
stay with our heads in the sand saying "RTTY FOREVER [no matter what]".
2. Veteran RTTY contesters need to evaluate PSK63 for another reason - RTTY
contesters have experience! I would value the opinions and experience of
veteran RTTY contesters over that of novice PSK63 contesters.
Jim points out that there are "wall to wall" PSK signals when there are no
RTTY signals (unless there is a contest). I could counter that yes, there
are lots of PSK signals, but there are also a lot of over-driven signals
endlessly sending macros back and forth to multiple stations at a very slow
rate (PSK31). That's not a great criticism, however - Some AFSK RTTY
signals are overdriven too.
I'll stop here - I just wanted to put something out here and hope for some
discussion. I'd like to see some knowlegeable and experienced RTTY
contesters evaluate PSK63 so that we will have some feedback from our own
community. Hopefully some of us will be able to participate in the first
PSK63 contest in September. I suspect that, once again, RTTY will come out
on top. I just hope that our guys will jump in and evaluate PSK63 and not
let moss grow on our keyboards in the name of tradition. Have faith - RTTY
is a tradition because it's passed the test of time and several new modes.
As for "already given up this battle" - Jim, I respectifully think not! ;-)
73 - John, WA9ALS
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