General Rules

The PSK-F Award Series was devised by the European PSK Club on 4th November 2007. This was to sponsor a series of PSK awards based on different PSK-F boud rate two-way digital contacts. There are three different PSK-F awards available at the moment: PSK63F Award, PSK125F Award and PSK220F Award. Any PSK-F award may be claimed by any licensed radio amateur, club station or SWL/DMS eligible under these rules who can produce evidence of having contacted/monitored amateur radio stations by using different PSK-F boud rate modes. All claims must be submitted in an appropriate application form listed on the EPC website. Contacts with none EPC members have no date/time restrictions; contacts with EPC members must be made on or after 10th June 2006. EPC membership is required for the PSK-F Award applicants.

QSL-cards are not required. Awards are issued to the person or club. The person or club can use any legal call sign. Contacts made from club stations or special event stations count to the credit of both the club and the operator. All stations must be operated in accordance with their licensing conditions. Contacts may be made from any location in the same DXCC country. Credit will be given for contacts made on any of the amateur bands below 145 MHz. Confirmations from the EPC Short Wave Listeners or DMS Stations are accepted as confirmed contacts.

The submission for credit of any altered or forged log extractions or, equally, bad behaviour on or off the air which is judged by the European PSK Club to bring a particular programme into disrepute may result in disqualification of the applicant from the Award Programme. The decision of the award manager on this and other matters of dispute will be finals.

All awards are issued FREE of charge in a high quality PDF format and sent via email to the applicants. Awards could be printed with the highest quality and with optimal performance by applicants themselves. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

The PSK63F Award may be claimed by any EPC member eligible under the PSK-F General Rules listed above who can produce evidence in a form of ADIF log of having earned 1000 points for contacts with any amateur radio stations by using PSK63F mode (62.50 baud rate). Each contact with EPC member is worth 50 points. Each contact with none EPC member is worth 5 points. The final score is the result of the total QSO points.		The PSK125F Award may be claimed by any EPC member eligible under the PSK-F General Rules listed above who can produce evidence in a form of ADIF log of having earned 1000 points for contacts with any amateur radio stations by using PSK125F mode (125.00 baud rate). Each contact with EPC member is worth 50 points. Each contact with none EPC member is worth 5 points. The final score is the result of the total QSO points.
The PSK220F Award may be claimed by any EPC member eligible under the PSK-F General Rules listed above who can produce evidence in a form of ADIF log of having earned 1000 points for contacts with any amateur radio stations by using PSK220F mode (220.50 baud rate). Each contact with EPC member is worth 50 points. Each contact with none EPC member is worth 5 points. The final score is the result of the total QSO points.

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Technical Information

The PSK-F mode is the same as PSK but with a "convolution" encoding. It is a powerful mode with the presence of noise. The minimum Signal-to-Noise ratio is about -12dB. These modes have higher raw speed and use more bandwidth than PSK31, as suggested by their names. Both also make use of forward error correction, or FEC, to reduce the effects of errors. PSK63F therefore has the same text speed as PSK31 in twice the bandwidth, while PSK125F is both twice as fast and four times as wide as PSK31.

PSK63F was designed to provide better performance than PSK31 in two areas - first, the higher baud rate (62.5 baud) significantly reduces the effect of polar doppler instability, and secondly, errors are reduced through the use of full-time FEC. Unlike QPSK31, doppler sensitivity is not increased when FEC is used. Through more efficient coding, it is also slightly faster than PSK31, although the signal bandwidth is doubled.

Use PSK63F for short-haul HF DX, say up to 10,000 km, for local QSOs and for VHF. The mode is very tolerant of drift and inaccurate tuning. It is a good mode for digi-beginners, and an excellent mode for QRP operation. Good for DX on 6m, or 15m - 10m when the band is open. PSK63F is useful for (small) text file transfers under reasonable conditions. It is not as sensitive as PSK31 or as QRM tolerant as MFSK16.

Mode	PSK63F	PSK125F	PSK220F
Software	IZ8BLY Stream and F6CTE MultiPSK		F6CTE MultiPSK
Baud Rate	62.50	125.00	220.50
Speed	42 WPM (average)	90 WPM (average)	140 WPM (average)
Modulation	Differential Binary Phase Shift Keying (DBPSK)
Reception Mode	Indifferent (LSB or USB)
Character Set	ASCII Characters + Almost all ANSI Extended Characters + an Error Reset Character (« Varicode » Characters)
Shape of Pulse	Raised Cosine
Bandwidth	110 Hz	230 Hz	430 Hz
Synchronization	Automatic Using the Signal
Correction	FEC (Forward Error Correction)
Convolution Code	R (Rate) = 1/2, K (Constraint Length) = 7 with Viterbi Type Decoder (both coder outputs being sent successively)
Drift Tolerance	1.0 Hz/sec (+/- depending on signal-to-noise ratio)	1.5 Hz/sec (+/- depending on signal-to-noise ratio)	2.5 Hz/sec (+/- depending on signal-to-noise ratio)
Pmean/Ppeak	0.79
Lowest S/N	-12dB	-9dB	-7dB

 

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