I did some preliminary testing and it seems entirely adequate for Winter Field Day. It supports some rudimentary macros, not all of which are currently applicable to WFD. It's unclear at the time of writing whether these new JTTY macros will be user definable in the future. The biggest question I had was whether there's a character limit. JTTY messages are limited to 80 characters. That's greater than the standard APRS 67-character limit, and is certainly enough for basic emergency traffic.
I'd like to see a character limit warning and hard stop in the message box. Currently, the sender won't know where the message is cut off until it sends. Better yet, it would be fantastic to see the character limit lifted entirely. That would bring it one step closer to being comparable to JS8.
"BUT YOU SAID ALL WSJT-X MODES ARE BANNED!" No, we didn't. We talk about "WSJT modes" as the set of frame-exchange modes that are so limited in their protocols they they cannot pass emergency traffic effectively. Words have meanings, and we define our meanings right in our rules document (https://winterfieldday.org/sop.php). JTTY appears to be capable of passing emergency traffic effectively, so it's allowed for WFD 2027. We'll look at adjusting our terminology in the future.
As a side note, we have never maintained a list of allowed modes, and we never will. We only maintain a list of prohibted modes for the sake of clear and complete communication with participants.
The current WSJT-X release candidate expires at the end of 2026, so we'll most likely see an updated implementation of JTTY before WFD. Yours truly will evaluate that as well, and provide any relevant updates here and on our socials. Give JTTY a try here and let us know what you think!
72, KY4LV