Rick, > comprehension. But let's say a miracle occurs and you could get greatly > improved quality with a narrow bandwidth. If that happened, we would see > a migration to the narrower voice modes which will free up a lot of > bandwidth.
That is the hoped-for goal. How we are able to handle modes that cannot communicate sharing has to be developed. > > As you point out, there are hams who read the text back with a "voice" > and it has been around for many years. If you recall, not long ago (year > or so?) there was a QST article about a ham sending PSK31 via a speech > to text conversion so that is also being done, at least on a limited > basis. I worked him on the air by accident and was very impressed, until I emailed him and he admitted to editing the text to take out the errors before sending! :-) A 5% error rate means one word in 20 is going to be pronounced wrong. > I rarely get involved in contesting, but it appears that RTTY works > better for fast exchanges. At least it may be perceived that way. I have > tried PSK31 for casual quick contacts such as Field Day and found it > impractical for me to work many stations compared to voice. That is why we devoloped PSK63 - for contesting speed equal to RTTY, but with less fills and less bandwidth consumption. It is just as fast as RTTY overall. I have not > tried PSK63, (other than casual tests) but hope to use this for a very > different purpose when the MS Windows version is made available for the > emergency communication program that is currently being used on Linux. > Are you personally involved in that project as you were with the Linux > version? Yes, I am the project manager and co-developer. Everything is looking good and almost ready for beta testing to uncover any problems that have not shown up yet. I am also net control for a 2m PSK63 ragchew net on 144.144 MHz, USB,1500 Hz tone frequency, which has been meeting twice a week for over a year and a half now. We use PSK63 instead of FM for greater range and instead of PSK31 for better multipath interference resistance and less drift problems. We use the extra speed for net control to replay all incoming transmissions at 100 wpm, so that everyone on the net gets to know what anyone else has said in case they are not in a station's beampath. There is no directional calling by net control as there is on other VHF nets. All stations beam toward net control, and I use a special high-gain, bidirectional, horizontally-polarized antenna covering 88 degrees to the front and 88 degrees to the back so everyone is able to copy me without my having to rotate. Most people type about 20 wpm and for about 2 minutes on their turn, so it takes only 24 seconds on the average to retransmit the incoming text for all to enjoy. Range using PSK63 is 100 to 200 miles, depending upon the elevation and antenna gain of the distant station. This is another thing PSK63 is good for. The European PSK Club, which heavily promotes PSK63, just finished their annual 24-hour QSO party on November 18 and the passband was filled with PSK63 stations for 24 hours. Andy can elaborate. You might give it a try next time and compare the speed of exchanges to RTTY contests, of which there are many. 73, Skip KH6TY
