Hi Don,
Nice to see you back on D-RATS. I don't have an HF radio available just now, so I'm just doing some static testing. I picked PSK1000 and disabled the squelch in fldigi. I was receiving a bunch of random characters even without a radio connected. I made a connection from D-RATS to fldigi and saw the same random characters in the D-RATS chat window. I next sent Quick messages and QSTs to the fldigi connection and saw them being transmitted by fldigi and could hear it in my computer speakers. The next thing I did was bring SoundModem online. I was able to simultaneously send 300 bps packet on the left channel and PSK250 on the right channel. They both take about the same amount of time to send a string of data. So to answer your question, I'm not really using any mode since I don't have a radio to try it on. I will take some on air testing to determine the best mode to run under fldigi to the get the desired result. PSK250 is about the same speed as HF packet, PSK1000 is about the same speed as D-STAR low speed data of VHF packet. Any other modes seem to be slower. Some groups are using MT-63 2K long on 2 meter FM. I haven't looked at that yet. I just stumbled upon this on this past Sunday while looking at the fldigi documentation, and thought I would give it a try, and share my experience with the group. I hope someone can put it to use.
Good Luck
Patrick (N3TSZ)
Patrick Connor