I tried some PSK63 yesterday, and I am not impressed! I am an avid RTTY contester, and in my opinion PSK63 will NEVER replace RTTY!
Bear in mind that I am WAY south of the majority of the stations, so all signals are relatively weak compared to EU/NA stations. I have very little difficulty working weak stations on RTTY, with a fairly simple station. I run a Kenwood TS-870S with TL-922 amplifier, running 400W (max legal power here in ZS-land) into a Cushcraft A3S up at about 9m (wire dipole on 40 at about same height). I run FSK RTTY, using either a 500Hz or 250Hz filter, depending on situations. With PSK63, signals were WAY down. It does not handle QSB very well at all, and the slightest QRM knocks it out altogether. Nowhere near as robust as RTTY, and it seems as if people tend to run low power with PSK63 heard a few RTTY signals around as well yesterday, and they were MUCH stronger than the PSK63 stations! Only heard 3 US stations on 20m PSK63 (W9HLY, K7RE and N1DQ) nothing heard at all on either 40 or 20. The two Moroccan stations CN8KD and CN8YZ were by far the strongest stations heard. In general the EU stations were quite weak. PSK63 might be OK when signals are strong and solid, but it doesnt cut it when you are a distance away from the mainstream path. Not even a patch on RTTY!!! My opinion, based on experiences yesterday! 73 de Barry Murrell ZS2EZ (EX ZR2DX / ZR6DXB) KF26TA - Port Elizabeth,South Africa Member : PEARS, SARL, ARRL, SA AMSAT _____ From: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of kh6ty Sent: 19 November 2007 04:00 AM To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Cc: Howard Teller Subject: Re: [digitalradio] PSK63 activity! Because it does a better job than rtty (less fills) in less space. If everyone used PSK63 instead of RTTY, there would not be so many complaints by non-contesters about having so little space to use during contests. A PSK63 stations signal, operated linearly, takes up only 1/5 the space of a RTTY signal. Isn't accomplishing the same job in less bandwidth what we should all be trying to do in an ever more crowded world? It is not like adding CW to a phone contest because both RTTY and PSK63 are keyboard modes. Phone and CW are not. 73, Skip KH6TY ----- Original Message ----- From: ""John Becker, WØJAB"" <[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:w0jab%40big-river.net> net> To: <digitalradio@ <mailto:digitalradio%40yahoogroups.com> yahoogroups.com> Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2007 8:21 PM Subject: Re: [digitalradio] PSK63 activity! > At 07:10 PM 11/18/2007, you wrote: >>Yes, it is very gratifying to see it finally take off a little. Now, if we >>can only convince the RTTY contest sponsers to specifically include and >>mention PSK63, > > Skip with all due respect. why ? > It's not RTTY. Would this not be like adding CW to a side band contest? > Or vice verse. > > John, W0JAB > > > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.503 / Virus Database: 269.16.0/1135 - Release Date: 11/16/2007 10:58 PM
