Hi all,
Well, after the discussions on here before the contest, I was hoping for
great things. However, there were a large number of folk who did not
"behave" as they ought!
I had quite a few callers that sent an exchange in answer to my CQ, and more
than a few that wouldn't wait till a contact was over before calling.
It always amazes me how many folk see a spot for me, and call, whether they
can hear me or not.
Now on the subject of slow, or odd sounding RTTY, I can confirm that if you
use a microHam router with MMTTY, and you have Strict BPS enabled, the
resulting sent stream of text is much slower than usual.
I can replicate this easily, and found out quickly that Strict BPS is not
needed with MMTTY, although it IS needed with some other programs.
The awful RTTY produced by (some) K3 owners using paddles to send is quite
often very poor, and I have found that MMTTY doesn't always decode it.
During WPX, I had one caller that I suspect may have been using a K3, and
that was N4RJ. I don't know if he is on this list or not, but if someone
knows him, perhaps they can confirm/deny this.
During his first calls, the RTTY tones sounded distorted, and I had no clear
print at all.
I was trying to work AC4M, and kept hearing tones which blocked the reply
from AC4M.
After a QRZ, he tried again, and out of a line of gibberish, I managed to
see N4RJ, and called him.
No response, so I worked the next station, and once again, saw the line of
letters.
Eventually, I did work N4RJ, but he took time to start his Tx. After my
tones dropping, I was expecting a quick response, but it was so slow, I was
about to send my report again.
Apart from being slow, the tones were not flowing as normal, but seemed
choppy, and I didn't always get clean print.
Here is part of the text I got from him -
NRRJPRRJI N T TNXTN NIVTMM 0QT MEXJVWN N4RJISZCPPU
Whilst I think it is pretty neat that you can actually use the CW paddles to
send RTTY out from a K3, it really ought to have some sort of buffer that
smoothes out the sent text.
I know a few folk who use this successfully, so it is possible, but maybe
you need to be more than a little proficient at CW to start with.
73 all
Phil GU0SUP
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