RTTY / PSK31 for SOTA?

Equipment Radios & Power
1

Hi everyone,

I’ve just managed to get RTTY and PSK31 working with my little uSDX+ radio. Has anyone else used either of these modes for a SOTA activation? I’m considering a trial run from a local [non-SOTA] hill near me, just to test out operating these modes /P.

Be interesting to hear the experiences of others!

Best wishes,
David. G7BEH.

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Hi David, i haven’t done it with SOTA, but i did activate POTA using PSK31 before. Very good mode for propagation, but what i found is in the daytime not a lot of people use it, mostly evenings. My personal experience anyways…

Sly

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I have had 20 or so QSOs in 2011 and 2012 on PSK31. The hard part was seeing the screen in daylight and operating a laptop PC in a field. The PSK bit was not the issue.

73 de

Andrew G4VFL

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4

I use JS8Call on SOTA and VKFF sometimes. Easier mode to find contacts.
You can put the locator grid for your summit in the software and it shows you on PSK Reporter. Got a small following of chasers if I Spot as being there on SW3 most QSO I ever had on a summit with JS8 is 12 from memory. But I always just do it for fun make sure you are qualified on CW and SSB. My Yoga 7 Lenovo is a great pc for outdoors to see the screen as others commented re seeing what’s going on.
All good fun.
Ian vk5cz …

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There was quite a number of PSK31 SOTA activations around a decade ago. These days, the vast majority of Datamode SOTA is done with FT8/FT4.

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Thanks to everyone for their responses. There’s a local hill to me, I might just try it out using PSK31 later this morning…

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I activated today with FT8 and SSB. First time using digital and worked out great

Dave KN4OK

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Yes, I would normally activate with SSB, but wanted to try something different. I realise that most people are on FT8/4 these days, but I like RTTY and PSK31 comes a close second :slight_smile: For portable use, they are both easier in some respects than the FTx modes as there isn’t the same requirement for a precise timestamp (of course, the biggest issue is that so few people still operate these modes!).

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Yes I have used PSK31 last year in Majorca for a couple of summits, Used PSKDroid on an old android phone and TrUSDX, vox controlled with a USB sound card interface. Very simple and works well.

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I did try the built-in PSK31 and RTTY modes with the KX3, sending my text with the paddle in CW, and reading the received text on a 460 character display that I built
see GitHub - on7dq/Arduino-KX3-Reader: External text display for KX3 + some control buttons ...

A few pictures of that project are at the end of this post on my blog

I didn’t think it was worth all the trouble, if I get a good CW pile-up, I can make dozens more QSO’s in the same time, and have less equipment to carry.

I did use a Lynx 7" Windows tablet on some other occasions for PSK31 and FT8.
Again, it all worked as expected, but I couldn’t see the benefit of it.
73,
Luc ON7DQ