[digitalradio] Offsets for digital modes
Paul, When you are on CW, many rigs will have an offset. I have an Argonaut V, and, as you noted, you can set the offset tone for your preference. That way you are zero beat with the other station and yet you can adjust your sidetone to what works best for you. With RTTY, the frequency specified was typically the mark with rigs using FSK. That is why there was some confusion from some hams who may be operating AFSK since their dial frequency on AFSK is going to be quite different than the dial readout on FSK. This is mostly dependent on how your rig is designed. For example, on my ICOM 756 Pro 2, if I zero beat on AFSK using SSB and then switch to FSK, it will place the tones with the mark tone of 2125 Hz. If I try to zero beat in RTTY mode, I would be over 2 KHz off. If I try to zero beat in CW I would of course be off by whatever offset I programmed into the rig, which in my case is going to be around 600 Hz. If you are using a sound card mode, you will be injecting tones into an SSB transmitter. The dial frequency is actually reading out your carrier frequency, but of course with SSB, for all practical purposes, there is no carrier being transmitted. The dial frequency is only a place holder, it is NOT the actual frequency you are transmitting. The actual frequency you are transmitting depends upon the frequency of the tone you are injecting into the transmitter and whether you are using USB or LSB. When you are operating SSB, whether on your Drake or your Ten Tec rigs, and you place your carrier at a given frequency (dial frequency) and inject the same tones, you can expect to be transmitting at the same frequency with either rig. If you set either rig at 14.070, and someone else sets their rig at 14.070, and you both use the same audio frequency tones, you would each be on the same frequency. The only problem that comes up is that someone will claim they are on 14.070 and inject a 2000 Hz tone into their transmitter and of course they are really on 14.072 and may be difficult to locate if the receiving station expects them to be on 14.070. By specifying the offset, such as 14.070 + 1000 Hz, you can expect that they will be 1000 Hz higher than 14.070 and if using a waterfall display can pinpoint them quite accurately. Some of the new modes are quite wide and are expecting that the tones are going to be within a given standard bandwidth of frequencies since they take up much of what we normally considered to be a voice bandwidth (e.g., 141A FAE, MT-63, SSTV). In such cases, when someone says they will be on a given frequency with these modes you can expect that both of you will use the same dial frequency and the tones will be placed correctly in your passband of the rig. 73, Rick, KV9U Paul wrote: What is the designation of 10.140 + 1000Hz? When I've looked at band plans I sometimes see 20M psk designated as 14.070.150 More often it is 14.070. When I tune, I tune to 14.070 with a Ten Tec Argo and Pegasus. However, the Drake is different. It doesn't accomodate the offset. For example, on the TT, if I have my sidetone set to 600Hz, and a cw station is on 7.100, I tune to 7.100 and hear him with a 600Hz note. With the Drake, I'd have to tune to 7.100.6 (or 7.099.4?) to hear the station with that tone. So with 10.140 + 1000 I'm guessing with the Ten Tec I'd tune to 10.140 USB but with the Drake I'd tune to 10.141 USB. Is that how it goes? If so, why is it 1000hz instead of 1500Hz? Thank you and 73, Paul
Re: [digitalradio] Offsets for digital modes
If you are operating AFSK, or have a low end rig that does not do FSK RTTY, then you would need to calculate the numbers as you suggest. Most rigs that are set up for FSK RTTY will read out on the RTTY Mark Frequency, but some will read out on Space, so it does vary between rig designs. Since the tones are usually operated at narrow shift, the most you can be off is 170 Hz:) I never had a rig that could do FSK RTTY used to have to get a calculator out to figure out the right dial frequency if I wanted to link in to certain autostart bbs's. I still have my Kenwood TS440SAT and even though it has a button for FSK, it really can only do AFSK. As an aside, this rig still works and since my wife recently upgraded to General, by her request, I set up the rig for listening with a multiband trap antenna. She plans to use this initially when we figure out how to get power from the battery through the firewall in her truck. We just got the bug catcher antenna so she can try out HF mobile, mostly on 75 meters. 73, Rick, KV9U John Becker wrote: I have no waterfall when I operate RTTY or software or computer or can click on anything. But I can do the math from the dial frequence to spot a mark dial frequency if that would make you happy. Maybe you can click on that.
Re: [digitalradio] Offsets for digital modes
In order to use a software version of Amtor, you would need to switch to Linux OS. From what I have read, however, it is not very effective compared to a dedicated box. Amtor had its day, and I operated it with several different types of boxes, but it is fairly slow and can not work into the noise as well as the newer sound card modes, and it can not handle the full ASCII character set. I think you will find that the new 141A FAE mode to do better than Amtor and you have the full ASCII character set and you have quasi duplex operation very similar to the way that Clover II worked. The free Multipsk program can decode AMTOR ARQ but of course has no way to handle repeats. It can transmit and receive with AMTOR FEC. Similarly, it can listen to Pactor 1 ARQ and it can transmit Pactor FEC. 73, Rick, KV9U Danny Douglas wrote: Since I dont use either Pactor or Amtor, I couldnt really recommend any software for either, except I do know that MixW shows both a Pactor and Amtor as well as 16 other modes. But, I believe those two are for receive only. Someone on here may know otherwise and would ask them to chime in here. The last time I used either was 10 or so years ago with a tnc, and there were so few using them, I gave them up for Lent. As to RTTY, I still enjoy it, but most folks have switched over to PSK on daily oprerations, It certainly copies weak signals much better than RTTY, but RTTY contests still are a popular gathering place.
Re: [digitalradio] JT65A HF query/observations
I too have been perplexed why these modes that were developed for weak signals on VHF and above and only have the most meager rudimentary exchange, would have any value on HF, relative to already existing weak signal modes. Perhaps because it seemed new, some focused on trying it out? What I still would like to see is a sound card ARQ modes that is scaleable in speed and also can work with weak signals, QSB, etc. 73, Rick, KV9U Brian A wrote: I've been playing around with this on 20M. The new version which does the decoding starting at 48 seconds is a big help. Of the the 25 contacts I've made all were clearly audible. All could have been worked on CW with no difficulty. They could have been worked on PSK or other such modes too--much more quickly. Most came from answers to my CQ's. Is this the experience of others? So what is the benefit on HF? I clearly don't see this as being the future of HF ham radio. It isn't the killer ap. (I'm sure the MS, moonbounce and VHF capabilities are great and that was the original design objective) I'm a bit perplexed that stations which are S6 and above show up at -6db or so on the display. I know what it is editing. It is a pretty useless number to most users. What I want to know is: how far below the current noise floor is the signal that I'm now working. It would seem that such a below the noise number could be determined and editied. Isn't this what all users (HF and V/UHF) want to know? 73 de Brian/K3KO
Re: [digitalradio] Here's a silly thought.
And to clarify ... exceeding necessary power is not the same as driving the rig beyond linearity. It is the later that causes the wide traces and multiple traces in most cases (sometimes could be due on the receiving end with some lower quality sound cards). If you are not triggering ALC, you are probably OK with your transmitted signal. When you do cause ALC action, you are likely transmitting distortion products and actually have a less readable signal even though it is stronger. Here is a question I would ask: how much power can you run without triggering the ALC with a typical 100 watt rig? 73, Rick, KV9U Danny Douglas wrote: Absolutely spot on Erick. That is one reason that we try to tell new people, on the digital bands, to start with as few watts as they can. There is just no reason to run 100 watts ( and I expect some run more) on the PSK, etc. digital modes. Everytime I say that though, someone jumps in the middle and says that a well adjusted signal, blah blah blah, wont cause problems. Ive been told to get a receiver: get a rig: get a filter, etc. I have all three thank you - but that doesnt mean that the person transmitting such signals is not responisble to the amateur code and should not run the minimum power needed to make contacts. One can almost always tell who is exceeding necessary power, just from the view on the waterfalls. When one signal out of 20 appears 4 time brighter, and has traces above and below their main signal for half the width of the waterfall, they are exceeding power badly. Especially with PSK, many of us use broadband copy software, so we can see and copy every signal on the band at the same time. With one of those signals, I see the same station readout on a dozen or more channels of that window. Often, they just wipe out everyone else.
Re: [digitalradio] 12 meter activity (or lack thereof)
I often will tune across the bands, starting with 6 meters, moving on down to see what is happening. You are right that 10 meters can be open with Es and there are some signals on 12 meters which could be F propagation or Es. Mostly the signals have been very weak and can be DX. I have heard some SSB Spanish speaking stations but a very weak. My antenna is only a Butternut HF-9V vertical. You could use CB frequencies as a way to determine if there is any F propagation above 12 meters. I am in a rural area and if I start hearing a lot of heterodynes on a given channel, it could mean longer distance F propagation. Ten meters has a much more active following than 12 meter due to historical reasons. It has the 10-X membership that help promote the band and tend to have more activity than would otherwise be the case. Recently, I worked a ten meter station near the 28.120 water hole frequency and he mainly wanted just the 10-X number:) I have noticed that if 10 opens with any propagation, it is not uncommon to hear some digital activity at the watering hole. Good that you are running a beacon. Again, 10 meters has many beacons and they are very helpful to determine the propagation. 73, Rick, KV9U Joe Veldhuis wrote: 10 meters has been open almost every day for the last month, with MUFs often reaching 6 meters (and sometimes as high as FMBC) somewhere in north america. Given that the F2 MUF has been getting up to 15 meters pretty consistently, and Es MUFs are hitting 100+ MHz, it stands to reason that, by one mechanism or another, 12 meters must be open. Yet, not surprisingly, whenever I tune across the band, I never hear a single signal. Not one. No phone, no CW, no digital. No beacons. Nothing but birdies and QRN. Likewise, I can call until I smoke my rig and never get an answer. I posted a message on the QRZ sked board asking for people to try the band, and got a rather unenthusiastic response. Anyway, I am running a beacon on 24.929 MHz, although at present it is running on my main rig and my only HF antenna, so whenever I want to use that rig, the beacon goes off. I am working on a dedicated transmitter and I made a 1/4 wave groundplane antenna, although I haven't put it up yet. Listen for it, probably won't be too strong as it's only 5 watts to a non-resonant (though very long) wire dipole, but if the band is open between your station and mine, you should at least be able to see it on a waterfall. If it seems like the band should be open (hearing activity on 10 meters is a good indication of that, as would be hearing my beacon!), start calling. Hopefully, if a few of us check out the band, some contacts can be logged. The digital subband is 24.920-24.930. -Joe, N8FQ
Re: [digitalradio] Re: Comments to ARRL on New Digi Protocols
Skip, Sounds really interesting. Isn't much of this is available right now with Linux, on PSKmail? However it is not available on MS Windows OS which is what 95+% of hams use worldwide for now. It would seem that adoption will be low until we have cross platform capability. My experience with DEX (DominoEX) is that it is much better than PSK modes on the lower HF bands since PSK can not handle much selective fading and phase errors, doppler, etc. We also found that DEX/FEC could outperform PSK modes over a short NVIS (~ 25 miles) distance during testing done once a week over several months with different modes. Of course other modes such as MFSK16 can greatly outperform PSK31 if you have highly accurate tuning and under emergency conditions that might be problematic. It seemed to us (non-scientific testing) that even DEX22/FEC was better than PSK31 unless you needed to work deeper into the noise. I would agree that ARQ would be much better than FEC in terms of throughput and would be most welcome. Then you could lower the speed manually until you found a sweet spot. However, this is not easy when you are trying to work the other station without a coordinating frequency and ideally there needs to be a protocol that both operators follow so you don't wind up losing the station and not knowing what speed is being used or how far down in speed to go. Unless it was done automatically at some point in the future as modes are further developed. This could be done with RSID technology already developed by Patrick, F6CTE. Are you considering the possibility of using the already invented concept of pipelining the ARQ in the background while the next packet is being received? It seems to me that this is the key to successfully ARQ any of the digital modes and have them work with non real time computer switching speeds. If you have ever tried SCAMP you will know exactly what I am talking about. In terms of tuning though, when we operated Clover II many years ago, the frequency stability and accuracy was very tight and yet it was possible to access remote BBS systems under the now discontinued Winlink worldwide BBS system when it used both Clover II and Pactor I modes. Because of the potential increase in HF operation due to the change in licensing requirements, I expect to see a move toward HF and away from VHF communications. One exception might be 6 meters since more rigs are starting to carry this band and if you are already set up for digital modes on HF you have everything in place except perhaps for the antenna. Simple 6 meter antennas do not work all that well though for moderate ranges:( Cross polarization makes it almost unusable. 100 mile ranges on VHF might be OK for flat areas, but in our driftless region it is not always possible to consistently get out very far unless you have a high location. For example, when down at the Mississippi River levels you would need some significant height to do this and this would not generally be available during emergencies. During public service events, it was not uncommon to require a multielement 2 meter beam just to reach the our voice repeater only 20 miles or so. Thanks for all your work on this matter and your previous development. As I always say, it only takes one person to make the difference when it comes to developing new software and concepts. Sometimes it can be a big difference changing all the rules. 73, Rick, KV9U Skip KH6TY wrote: ** The following was my submission. After further on-the-air tests, I am now recommending PSK63 over DominoEX16 because of the more narrow bandwidth. Using VHF is still highly recommended, but HF can also be used effectively over several hundred miles with NVIS antennas. The concept was to start with a transmisson technique ( PSK63), which was excellent to begin with, and fast, and then add ARQ. Because PSK63 has a low error rate to beign with, few, if any, blocks need repeating, so the throughput penalty by using ARQ is very small. This is even more true on 2m where there is almost never and QRM or QSB to slow things down. *_* ** *Access Method:* PSK63, PSK125, or DominoEX16 *Data Rate and Bandwidth:* Throughput of 5 cps for PSK63, 8 cps for DominoEX16 and about 10 cps for PSK125. Bandwidth of PSK63, operated in linear fashion, is 63 Hz, 125 Hz for PSK125, and for Dominoex16, 355 Hz. Note: For email delivery, in which there is an unknown retrieval time for a message lying in an Inbox, *an extremely fast data rate has little impact on the time from transmission to retrieval from the recipient's Inbox*, which may amount to many minutes or even hours, depending upon when the recipient checks for incoming email. *In addition, the time it takes to establish a reliable connection also has to be considered as part of that total elapsed time*. With a multiplicity of stations
[digitalradio] Power vs. proper modulation of digital signals
Loyd, What I seem to be reading in your message is that digital modes are somehow different than other modes and do not follow the laws of physics. While the digital text modes can often get through under what seems nearly miraculous conditions, they can also go from solid print at one moment to nearly nothing if the signal to noise ratio drops even 1 dB. Lifting your signal up a few dB's will make all the difference. If you double your power, your signal should increase by a factor of 3 dB, which is significant. If you increase 10 times, you can expect a 10 dB increase which is a very large difference. Usually, if you are on the edge, the doubling can really help unless the band is going out or going long or the receiving station has some QRM or increased QRN such as you will experience in the evenings on the lower bands. I generally run my ICOM 756 Pro 2 at around 25 watts on the meter when running most digital modes. I can run much higher power without triggering ALC if I carefully control the audio drive level from the computer. In fact, I use the lowest possible drive level possible that does not trigger the ALC when running near full power of 100 watts. Then I typically back down to the 25 watts. I have found during some of my NVIS tests with a local ham, that when 25 watts just won't make it, 50 watts results in 100% print. As long as you are not improperly modulating your signal it makes no difference whether your signal is digital or analog. 73, Rick, KV9U Loyd Headrick wrote: I work mostly digital and have had this problem with the BIG boys running enough power to light up half the town. I've made contacts with 10 watts. if I can't work a station at 10 watts 100 isn't going to help much more except to prove that I can't operate properly with band conditions. In an emergency i could see using 15 to 20 watts power to get the message delivered I think common sense and courtesy was overloaded by their egos and all the RF in their shacks guess just have to live with it and hope they learn to control their stations better (my 2 cents) *//*
Re: [digitalradio] Dead US Veteran/Ham question
Andy, Did someone tell you that from the American Legion? Contacting the Service Officer is a good suggestion made earlier. We will help ANY veteran as much as we can although in this case there would be legal implications from local government. We along with other veterans organizations provide military honors at funerals. You do not have to be a member of the organization. The American Legion is an organization Chartered by Congress and has certain duties to carry out in support of veterans. Rick, KV9U Member and Officer of my local Post Andrew O'Brien wrote: Thanks. It seems that since he never joined some of the veteran's organizations, he is ineligible for their assistance in this regard. Andy K3UK
Re: [digitalradio] HFLINK Comments to ARRL on Development of New HF Digital Comm Protocols]
The ARRL has come under criticism in the past because it did not provide enough input from the membership and I suspect that they are opening up this line of communication from the members to even ask the questions to determine what it is that we want (or not want), before they start making moving in an RFP like direction. Initially, it is a determination of whether we want some kind of open source protocol and, if so, what we think might be some of the characteristics of that protocol. Based on comments to this group, there are different views on what that should be. I am expecting that they will eventually publish some kind of collation of the input and perhaps we may find some areas of consensus. 73, Rick, KV9U Art Botterell wrote: They say it's not an RFP, and I have no reason to doubt that, but that still leaves me wondering what the League's query actually IS. Has there been any articulation of what the League's purpose might be in soliciting these comments? Is this a foray into standards- setting? Product development? Or what?
Re: [digitalradio] Re: Comments to ARRL on New Digi Protocols
John, It is you who are the offensive one. And you have done this a number of times on this group. Reasonable people do not win friends and influence people with that approach. No one with your vitriol should have remained in a leadership position with the ARRL Digital HSMM group and I wonder if this was part of the reason for its demise? People who are in leadership positions need to work toward consensus when they are involved with volunteer work of this nature. Using terms such as babbling, telling others they know nothing, knock it off, etc., suggest a disturbing behavior on your part. If you disagree with someone, why not respond by calmly explaining why their view appears to be wrong (to you) instead of attacking them. You might find it better for everyone, including yourself. Rick, KV9U John Champa wrote: Bruce, When are you ever going to stop your babling ignorance about wide band HSMM on 6-meters? You are worried about 100 kHz when the band maybe opens in a few years out of a 4,000 kHz wide band. Get real! Attach brain to keyboard. I am getting very tired of reading about something you know absolutely nothing about, as in cognitive radio DSP design. Please knock it off, and stick with things you have EXPERIENCED. Your comments are much more worthwhile and enjoyable in that context. Thank you, John - K8OCL Original Message Follows From: bruce mallon [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [digitalradio] Re: Comments to ARRL on New Digi Protocols Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2007 08:14:08 -0700 (PDT) --- Skip Teller [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Bruce, the center frequency of my skeleton-slot design is 144.2 MHz, as it is specifically intended for SSB operation. INTERESTING I could not remember the name it's been too long but the antenna worked as good as stacked 7 elm cushcrafts back in the DAYS OF 2 METER AM. MY use of them and the one station here in tampabat shows this array is very good as you describe in a semi directinal net antenna use with a wide lobe which requires less turning. YOUR COMMENT... Email, cell phone, telephone, and SMS are so pervasive today, I don't see as great a need for message relay by radio like we used to do, but hams can provide a message bridge to a person outside the disaster zone when nobody else can. NOW thoes who are pushing digital need to remember many of us USE digital where we find it is a good choice. THE BIG PROBLEM WAS THE 100KHZ wide stuff. It dosn't take a moon rocket designer to know what would have happened when 6 and 2 are open and if we are talking NARROW band digital and the ARRL keeps its meeting open it will go much better the next time. bruce Boardwalk for $500? In 2007? Ha! Play Monopoly Here and Now (it's updated for today's economy) at Yahoo! Games. http://get.games.yahoo.com/proddesc?gamekey=monopolyherenow Announce your digital presence via our Interactive Sked Page at http://www.obriensweb.com/drsked/drsked.php Yahoo! Groups Links
Re: [digitalradio] Re: Comments to ARRL on New Digi Protocols
John, Look at your continued choice of language! You just do not have a clue about leadership or you would never talk like that. You are intentionally polarizing and increase, rather than decrease opposition to what you think you are promoting. Be careful when you start to make claims of what others may or may not have experienced, since unless you know the person well, you don't have that knowledge. Many of us, myself included, have had many opportunities to lead many efforts over our lifetime, both work related and volunteer. As a mostly retired person I continue to work with volunteer efforts, amateur radio included. I co-moderate a group of well over 1000 fellow farmers and you will find widely different views. Sometimes we have to agree to disagree, but we don't have to get personal as you have repeatedly done with putting others down as less experienced, less knowledgeable, than you claim to be. Just because someone supports the status quo does not mean that they are necessarily wrong. Just because someone wants change doesn't necessarily mean its the right thing to do. As President of our county amateur radio organization, I try and work with the strengths of our members and promote our group as welcoming to new members, plus had the opportunity to set up the first VE team many years ago and teach many amateur radio classes in several communities since I have been working in such capacities for decades. One of our most difficult tasks a few decades ago was how to get disparate amateur radio clubs and groups together for the common good. It took several years, but enough of the leaders did what was right for amateur radio and built a very strong bond with new and old members. I like a good debate and I promote sifting and winnowing as much as anyone (probably more). But only if it is reasoned and respectful and not stooping down to name calling as you do. In fact, it is shown time and again that those who name call, do so because they have no real argument and are frustrated that they are losing the argument. And people intuitively know that and those name callers are eventually marginalized to the fringes where they belong. Like many (most?) hams, I am skeptical that having extreme wide bandwidth modes are a good idea on any of our HF and lower VHF bands. On the other hand, in our area, 6 meters is lightly used even though the band plan would make it difficult to incorporate ultra wide bandwidth modes without some reallocation to the plan. Because 6 meters can open up to very long distances, including worldwide, one has to be very careful about conflicting with other types of activity. We can not use frequencies that are set aside for weak signal, DXing, radio control, etc. The 6 meter repeaters take up a large chunk of the band. The one area that looks the most promising would be 50.3 to 50.8 with some accomodation to digital packet at 50.62. We used to have a number of 6 meter digital links here in the state but I think most of those have been discontinued. But we can not just think of our area since we could cause serious interference to other areas and even regions if the bands open with Es and F layer propagation. Rick, KV9U John Champa wrote: Rick, Unless you have had the opportunity to lead such an effort, it is you who should knock it off. Obviously you have never stepped into the heat. Lack the courage to lead, Rick? So you too are writing from a non-experienced position, non-leadership situation, just like my old friend Bruce? Putting up with nit picking, barracks lawyers like Bruce and his ilk of ill-informed narrow-minded Hams for four years is what made me bitter about many Hams. I used to be a nice guy too! But I love this avocation. It's our frequent refusal as a group to adapt and our anti-progressive head in the sand approach, almost (almost! HI) makes our dinosaurs' fate deserving. See how quickly Bruce labels those who are trying to look ahead as elitists! He's afraid of change. And, I can't take his fear away. And, if he won't read and try to comprehend, well, I have only so much time to try to help him catch up. I have my own keeping up ti take care of, ya know (HI) ? Like they say down here in TX, you can lead a horse to water, but... Thanks for the feedback, Rick. Vy 73, John - K8OCL
[digitalradio] Why some bands have low useage
. But there are only so many of us to go around and if we are on a given mode, we are likely to not be on another one at the same time. Many (most?) of us just can not have antennas for many bands, some find it difficult to have any antennas at all. So we find a few bands that interest us the most and a mode or two or three that we like. If a large contingent of hams had ultra wide band communications links on some of the VHF/UHF bands, it would attract more of us, if there really was a compelling reason to do so. I just don't see that happening except for emergency communications and even there, I personally would like to see more HF capability that stands alone and is not dependent upon some failure prone infrastructure. 73, Rick, KV9U bruce mallon wrote: ITS NOT what is going on is the government has radar on that band and HAMS are not supposed to interfere with it. They have a problem with that radar. NOW if 70cm goes away it will go back to the GOVERNMENT. SAME OLD LIES .. no one is out to get it and the government has 1st dibs anyway. If 70 cm is in danger and digital already is allowed on 70 cm WHY is bonnie transmitting on that band and asking others to join her ? Here in TAMPABAY we have a few sparely used repeaters no one on SSB i have worked 2 by calling them up no TV and few on digital on the 70 CM band. And McDill AFB right in the center with lots of radars you would think we would have a problem . No rumors here . none .. I listen on 12 meters and in the last year I have heard NO ONE ZERO maby we need to work on saving it too .. Same on 10 less on 10 than 6. Bruce On 6 since 1966
Re: [digitalradio] Linux WINE users who use Win XP Ham Digital Programs
Thanks for your quick response, Howard, I do have gMFSK, gpsk31 and kpsk as test programs to try and figure out why I can not get fldigi to work. It is not the fault of a single program, but there may be incompatibilities with these programs and my computer components. I can get RigCat to work OK when controlling it from the Command Line and yet when it runs through other programs such as fldigi , it has a great deal of latency and once you hit PTT it can not stop TXing. Also, none of these programs are able to use the sound card even though Audacity works with no problem. It has been perplexing to say the least. Everything worked fine in the past with XP and I even started wondering if I had an equipment failure and went back to XP to see if things were still working and everything worked fine. There are modes on Multipsk that I need to run and they are not available on Linux at this time so that is why I was hoping that it would be possible to run these kinds of programs under WINE. The other interest was PSKmail, but to be honest I don't think this mode will be successful here in the U.S. until there is a cross platform version, or more likely, something to replace it on the MS Windows side. I entertained thoughts of using it for emergency communications, but no others in my area would even consider using it so it just is not practical. I have tried about 10 GNU/Linux versions, including Ubuntu Feisty Fawn, but no luck with the video support with my hardware:( 73, Rick, KV9U Howard Brown wrote: Rick, my answer to your question is no (I do not have those two programs running as well under Wine/Linux). I do have a rig control program running under Wine for my TS-2000 - ARCS II by WB5KIA. There may be others for your rig. gMFSK IS an excellent sound card program for Linux. Although the name implies it only does MFSK, it does several other modes as well. There are several PSK31 programs included in some distributions. I use a native Linux application called kamplus to control my KAM+ tnc. It does not talk to Winlink 2000 although it does work with earlier versions of Winlink. I know that a couple of people are working on a native Linux application to work with Winlink 2000. PSKMail is a native Linux app that does email and uses another excellent sound card program called fldigi. There is one sound card program called 'hf' (aka hfterm) that will work Pactor 1 (and other modes). I had trouble setting that one up so I went back to kamplus. I am able to run Airmail under Wine but it is fragile and some parts do not seem to function there. Best of luck. Oh BTW, I use UBUNTU 7.04. It seems to run all my hardware well and is guaranteed to be free forever. Howard K5HB
Re: [digitalradio] Most robust digi-mode with 200 to 600 bps ?
Depending upon your definition of robust, and, if you are using the modes on HF, with a wide bandwitch (voice width) ARQ mode, it would seem to be Pactor 3 which can adjust the speed to meet varying conditions. Raw speed up to SL6 at 3600 bps which can yield a net user data rate of 2722 bps. With compression, this can yield over 5000 wpm throughput. Of course these are for very good conditions which is necessary for these high speeds. The SL1 slowest speed under the worst conditions, is 200 bps yielding ~ 77 bps and four other levels in between. The only sound card mode that can match this with good signals was the SCAMP protocol, but it did not have a fall back mode such as P3 had and was abandoned by the Winlink 2000 developer. For other sound card modes, there are few modes that have been designed to approach even a 400 bps rate. Even MT-63 at the 200 wpm rate is well under that speed. AX.25 at 300 baud would not have a good enough throughput, but 1200 baud (10 meters and up) could do this with perhaps a 600 net throughput. I had heard something about the voice codec a while ago and can not remember if this was open source software or not, but it would not be difficult to do this. Many years ago, I assembled a Heath HERO robot kit as a demonstration project for the agency I worked with at the time and it was relatively simple to program speech by using various phonemes. I am not sure how useful this would be though. 73, Rick, KV9U cesco12342000 wrote: Question to the experts: What is the most robust digi-mode with a 400 to 600 bps raw capacity (or 200 to 300 bps fec capacity) ? Is a boosted psk variant the best coice or is mfsk capable of such rates ? Other options ? Background: Seems someone has developed a 200bps voice codec. It's a phoneme coder. The data rate and the description sounds plausible. I dont know if this will ever be available as open source for amateurs, but it would be intresting to estimate the possibilities of such a codec for DV (digital voice). Such a coder could probably beat analog ssb in terms of robustness in marginal conditions. Announce your digital presence via our Interactive Sked Page at http://www.obriensweb.com/drsked/drsked.php Yahoo! Groups Links
Re: [digitalradio] Re: Most robust digi-mode with 200 to 600 bps ?
I agree that for DV you would not want ARQ as you just can not tolerate the latency and overhead. It is difficult enough with basic OFDM modulation and as you noted, needs a good signal to work well enough. When I responded to your question, I was looking at this as an accurate transfer of data. When I use the term robust, it needs to get through with weak signals, even though the speed has to drop to meet the conditions. I did not consider you were using this for DV as I really don't think you can do much better than WinDRM type OFDM modes since you need the bps throughput to make it work adequately. The hard part about DV, when compared to an ARQ text data mode is that in addition to latency, you can have serious problems with QSB. If your signal drops below the minimum requirement, the link drops out and on HF this can be for an extended time (many seconds) if you are right on the edge. And there is no warning like there is with analog. DRM may be better in some cases than the RDFT mode that was used in SCAMP. In fact, at the time, I could not understand why the author of SCAMP was thinking that it could work down to around zero dB S/N since the SSTV users of RDFT modulation needed a fairly good signal. And it turned out that we needed perhaps 7 to 10 db at the slowest speed to get it to function. Once you reached the threshold, it was very impressive in moving e-mail type data to a server and into the internet. There is nothing comparable to that with OFDM at this time, but it is possible that the SCAMP developer might incorporate OFDM into a SCAMP like protocol someday providing it has a fallback mode. I am not familiar with a robot-qrm mode, but Pactor 3 is about the most robust mode at this time. At this time there is not a lot of interest by the programmers of amateur digital modes to design a high speed mode. The main use for this mode would be for emergency use and they have indicated that they are focused on keyboard speeds, but at the most robust level you can get at say 20 to 40 wpm. It is not unreasonable that someone could develop an OFDM mode that was adaptable to conditions and would work as a robust mode under difficult conditions. Other things that I have read seem to suggest that other modes are better suited for the more robust, weak signal, disturbed conditions with severe ISI/doppler, etc. The main thing is that we would need to have a standard that we can agree upon and then the stations negotiate for the appropriate speed for the conditions. With the ARRL taking a more active role in working toward a digital mode with characteristics that meet emergency needs, we may eventually have some solutions. 73, Rick, KV9U cesco12342000 wrote: ARQ makes no sense in DV, and FEC is easily adaptable to meet those 375 or 300 data rates of those 2 modes. Are any minimum SNR numbers of those 2 modes known (375/300 bps)? The problem with ofdm (windrm style) is that it's hard to go below SNR's of +5db. The current DRMDV program works down to +5db snr at 1400bps rate, so i expect a more robust mode to reach stable 350bps at -1db SNR. @rick: drm (ofdm) runs circles around scamp, and outperforms pactor3 in data rate at given snr as well besides that the robot-qrm mode is insanely expensive
Re: [digitalradio] SCAMP?
As far as I know the Winlink 2000 developer has not released it. He initially said he expected to do this, even if it was used for Winlink 2000, but that was over two years ago and he may still have long range plans for changing the protocols so that it can work with weak signals. It was intended to work with the Winlink 2000 system so it was not as convenient to use where you would be sending non e-mail messages such as used with emergencies. Considering how incredibly well it worked to send messages, if the signals were strong enough, it is a shame that it is not available. My hope is that there may be some help in a new direction with some ARRL backing for an HF emergency protocol. 73, Rick, KV9U Andrew O'Brien wrote: If Scamp was abandoned, is it publicly available for others to play with ? Andy K3UK __._
Re: [digitalradio] Re: SCAMP?
I have wondered about this as well. The author said he thought he would eventually release it and, at the time, I had very little knowledge of the GPL. I am still not totally clear on this, but since SCAMP was only a beta test, and not a fully released product, perhaps that allows you to not release the code? The critical value of SCAMP is not the modulation scheme, of course, it is the two profound solutions that the author was able to solve: 1) Rock solid busy channel detect that absolutely works 2) Pipelined ARQ that absolutely works. These were two of the main stumbling blocks that needed to be solved with wide bandwidth modes of this type and it is not available to radio amateurs to continue working on. Not long ago the main Winlink 2000 owner stated that if they actually employed busy channel detection, the Winlink 2000 system would no longer be useable. (Active busy detection would stop all PMBO operations. - 16782) Also, ( During an emergency, when it is critical to get info through, you are in that 20 percent dwell. Or, someone plops down on you just for spite (happens all the time) and puts on a big fat carrier, and you cannot get through..Tell you what, you use it on the client end as an active agent and see how long it takes you to get a connection. - 16783) A very telling admission of the interference that this system causes. This may have been one of the reasons that they did not want to incorporate such as system. They also apparently believe that some hams are intentionally interfering and while it does happen from some disturbed individuals, it still does not give you permission to return the favor. Ironically, more recently, (17520), another ham saw through his claim that he wanted help in developing busy channel detection with his diametrically opposite statements. I do not recall seeing a reply. 73, Rick, KV9U Dave Bernstein wrote: Since RDFT was released under the GPL license, failure to release the source code for SCAMP may be violation of the GPL license. 73, Dave, AA6YQ
Re: [digitalradio] Re: SCAMP?
Cesco, Most of us do appreciate the freeware authors. Even if not free as in beer. However, where you and I differ is that if they are doing something illegal, I would not support them and would rather they not produce the software in such a case. If what they are doing is legal, then very few would oppose their work except for those with agendas such as RMS who believes in totally open and free software in all cases. This external use of GPL'd code is something that I have never heard of before and although some may not approve of this, if it is legal, then what can you say? 73, Rick, KV9U cesco12342000 wrote: The rdft routines are not integrated into scamp, they are external exe's. Same trick is used by mixw, gpl-code is moved to an external library. While this seems to be legal in the scamp case, the mixw case could be different. To use GPL code in a library (.lib or .dll) the code must be released under lgpl (library gpl) i think. My personal thougths: It is very impolite to push a freeware developer to release his source with legal threats. The developper will get angry and stop working (for free) for the ham-community. This is an absolute NO-GO !
Re: [digitalradio] Re: Digitalradio Skypecast 0100 UTC June 15
I must be doing one (or more) things wrong with trying to get the 141A mode to work with Multipsk. I saw K8KHW frequently on the FRM: box and tried calling but no luck. I came back at one time and only got one line of text, even though hearing a lot of ALE sounds, and it mentioned that my call was detected by they could not connect to me. Even reading over Patrick's explanation of the mode(s) I get a bit confused as to where do you enter the call of the station you want to connect with. Do you have to put it in the options | Callsigns boxes? Do you use the normal Call box above the RS ID area for certain applications for 141A or do you not put anything in there? I had a contact with a local ham a few months ago using the ARQ FAE mode and although it was not robust enough to work well with an 8 pm local time contact on 75 meters (about 20-25 miles), it did work for a short time until the band lengthened. But I can not remember how I set up the contact. It seems to me that these modes should work more like connected packet radio works. A few simple commands, and then also could work as a BBS too. That always seemed to make sense to me in the old days. 73, Rick, KV9U Randy wrote: We tried connecting to digitalradio last night on skype and found the group but could not get connected Randy k8khw
Re: [digitalradio] DXLab on Vista update
This is very good news Dave. As some of you know, I have been experimenting with many Linux OS versions as well as Vista and at this time I have to report that the more I use Vista, the more I like it. There are times where it wants to update your computer without telling you what is going on and will shut down the computer unexpectedly and reboot. I turned off any automatic update features, or at least I thought I did, but have had this happen a few times after that. Because of the increased security and robustness of the OS, I have not had any problems with errant programs and other malicious stuff does not seem to get through. The security interface appears to be copied from the way Linux OS does it with the dimming of the screen, etc. For some it is going to be a shock to the old way with poor security procedures, especially if you did not set up users and passwords and a root administrator which is now a requirement for Vista. Unfortunately, I have had to give up on Linux for now as it just has way too many problems on my equipment. I have to have an OS that is at least close to being as good as Windows in terms of font rendering and general operation and Linux just can not do this at this time. I do have hopes for the future, but I am much more doubtful now that Linux will be practical for the average person until many, many, changes are made to the way it works. It has some very powerful features, but it also has too many current deficiencies. Also, for digital hams, such as myself, there is nothing even slightly close to the DXLab Suite, Ham Radio Deluxe/Digital Master 780, and Multipsk that is even available on Linux. And now with increasing cross platform programs and the ready availability of FOSS/FLOSS software on the Windows OS, it is the best of all worlds. Almost all the programs that I use now are FOSS and that includes, e-mail, web browsing, music (including Ogg Vorbis as one of my mainstay codecs), the Open Office suite, and of course, all my ham radio programs. I am not suggesting that anyone upgrade to Vista with existing equipment, and would only have it on new equipment. 73, Rick, KV9U Dave Bernstein wrote: For those running DXLab applications on Vista, the defect in the Vista File Manager has been identified, and an option has been added to each application to work around this defect. New versions of each application are available via the DXLab Launcher; see http://www.dxlabsuite.com/dxlabwiki/RunningOnVista for configuration information. I am working with Microsoft to get the File Manager defect corrected... 73, Dave, AA6YQ Announce your digital presence via our Interactive Sked Page at http://www.obriensweb.com/drsked/drsked.php Yahoo! Groups Links
Re: [digitalradio] A.L.E., VHS and Betamax
Steve, Can you give us some current information on AQC-ALE? I had not been familiar with this term but did a little web surfing and found a very interesting document: http://www.dsto.defence.gov.au/publications/2402/DSTO-CR-0214.pdf That covers a rather full spectrum of digital modes, including amateur ones. Curiously, some of the information seems to support my comments a while back about using multiple PSK like tones to come up with a higher speed modem, without having too high a baud rate. Is this still too difficult to implement in software such as the 64 tone with moderate baud rate, can still have a high bps rate. It is interesting to note that many of these modes do not work below + 10 dB S/N. We already have some pretty good speeds with WinDRM types of modulation that effectively using a QAM protocol with significant throughput at somewhat lower than +10. Amateur radio, being very different from commercial/military use of radio, does not typically need a calling system since we do this with the CQ in most any mode. I can see some applications from ALE for emergency use or for personal preference, but it will never be all that popular with the average digital ham that doesn't use it in this manner. I was surprised to see your comment that Pactor and Clover could be used via sound card modems if they were not proprietary. The conventional wisdom is that these modes require a much too fast switching time to implement with non real time computers and even Linux was not able to work well enough with Pactor I to equal a hardware modem. What I do think is very doable is to use the waveforms that we know work, and the techniques that we know work with weaker signals and yet can scale up for improved speeds under good condx, and do this using an ARQ pipelining technique of performing the computer time on the last packet in the background while the next packet is coming through. In fact, this is what I hope will come out of the ARRL's interest in possibly developing a new HF mode(s) for soundcards. 73, Rick, KV9U AAR2EY wrote: ... the only threat to ALE is AQC-ALE in my opinion and that's not at all bad. However most Amateurs that are working with ALE have yet to realize the full potential of ALE, let alone the potential of AQC-ALE that is available in PC-ALE. The AQC-ALE performance advantages over ALE are amazing, however its use leaves 99% of the ALE hardware users out in the cold as AQC-ALE is only to be found in the latest, most expensive equipments, thus having it available in PC-ALE is just to state of the art. As a licensed Radio Amateur for nearly 30 years and an SWL for about 15 years before that, its been my observation that the Amateur Radio Service if nothing else, adapts to technology that serves the Amateur Radio Service best. I see ALE, especially in the U.S., becoming more important to the Amateur Radio Service due to the large move underway by the U.S. Government in the use of ALE within Federal circles and those that serve and communicate with them down to the State level and below, thus expect to see RACES and ARES become more ALE active in the near future, the hand writing is clearly on the wall. In general there is great potential for the application of ALE within the Amateur Radio Service, especially in the areas of ECOM and HF e-mail networks and other follow on activity in my opinion. In addition, due to the nature of Amateur Radio and today's and future PC Sound Device Modem (PCSDM) based tools, advances can take place at a much faster pace in areas that would not be seen in the hardware Modem/TNC world where the rules of government licensing bodies around the world do not limit such advances such as in the U.S. with the FCC. Those that want to pursue the developing the PCSDM path of ALE systems operation simply need to choose the proper system components to do so if they are not already in place, many older and certain newer radio and computer equipments are just not up to the task for various reasons. ALE was developed originally to be hardware based and to a set of Federal and Military standards and as many Amateurs use such hardware based systems, an effort needs to be made to be backward compatible with said systems in my opinion. However that should not mean that advances for Amateur Radio use such as FAE ARQ by F6CTE in MultiPSK should be held off do to existing limitations in any areas of ALE systems in use. Users of ALE must choose their method of ALE and all system components, with ALE hardware systems the application of 3rd party tools for follow on DLP activity is very common, aside from AMD some hardware ALE systems provide DTM and some DTM and DBM, use can also be made of the PCSDM based or TNC/Modem based DLP, its just a matter of tying the systems together to maintain the ALE linked state by monitoring the follow on activity state status
Re: [digitalradio] A.L.E., VHS and Betamax
I doesn't sound like this mode would require much change in software, but if you have a rig with some kind of unchangeable firmware, I can see where AQC would not work. If we ever did get ALE placed in amateur rigs, it would be wise to have it in a flash eeprom form that can be updated with new technology. ALE is very unlikely to have a large following with radio amateurs because we don't tend to operate by calling specific stations, but I can see the potential for certain kinds of net operation. Even better would be some kind of store and forward or at least BBS type system to shift away from real time interfacing that we typically must do with nets. In fact, the main reason that I reduced my activity with NTS nets was not only the lack of traffic, but the requirement to meet at a specific time and day, which was not acceptable to me. I realize that part of the attraction of nets is the human social function and machine connections are not the same thing and that is probably why other BBS systems did not stay in the forefront over the years. If I understand your comments, you are saying that it is only a theoretical thing that we could run Amtor/Pactor/ and other high speed switching protocols with existing Operating Systems. I guess I look at all of this as to what can we do with what we have in place now and are likely to have in place for the foreseeable future and any kind of RTOS seems unlikely. The main development of new, and yet practical technology has come from Patrick's FAE mode. As I often point out, we have the pieces already developed, to wit: - very high speed modes that work with very good signals ( 10 dB S/N) and modest baud rates that are legal here in the U.S. - software frameworks such as Multipsk and possibly DM780 that handle the rig control through an auxiliary program such as DXLab Commander and Ham Radio Deluxe - no longer having a need for fast switching due to being able to pipeline data into a background thread to be processed while a new packet is incoming - busy frequency detection The main missing piece is being able to automatically switch between a suite of modes and negotiate the best mode for the current conditions. I'm still very skeptical of the utility of very high baud rate single tone modems for moderate to weak signals that are well below the MUF, but I am keeping an open mind on this and keep looking for some real world testing results that would compare various modes. The earlier document I mentioned suggests to me that these modes may not work well below 10 dB S/N and that is often what we radio amateurs must work with. Lately, there have been more comments about HF e-mail and ALE. What is currently available other than PSKmail for Linux OS that permits anyone to set up servers to route the traffic into the internet? 73, Rick, KV9U Steve Hajducek wrote: GM Rick, Alternate Link Call (AQC) ALE is basically 2G Plus ALE in that its an advanced 8FSK form of ALE where most all of the un-necessary overhead of ALE has been removed and new capabilities have been added, to include a PSK burst mode. The linking time to setup is must faster with AQC-ALE and the ability to achieve a linked state in the face of poor channel conditions is hugely improved. Remember this, ALE is the great facilitator of follow on traffic, be it data or voice ( analog or digital) or remote signaling for command and control and where the data may be of any format and not just 8FSK ALE or other MIL-STD protocols, there are no limitations to what follows after the ALE Link Quality Analysis (LQA) has been used to select the best channel from those provided to work with. GTOR and PACTOR I are a challenge within the frame work on an event driven OS to implement, if you take control of the OS and limit the interrupts to a point of which the application is in control of environment, which would for the most part preclude the multi-tasking 3rd party application aspect of the OS to point where only the digital communications application is running, then it even these fast timing ACK/NAK protocols would work, even AMTOR ARQ which is even a worst case than PACTOR I timing. As to the new PACTOR x and CLOVER modes, they do not have the same short turn around timing, PACTOR III is basically modeled after the newer Military waveforms which run on the MIL-STD-188-110x modem. The work that Patrick has done with FAE ARQ to date is the best example of an FSK ARQ protocol for Amateur Radio designed for the PC Sound Device Modem (PCSDM) in my opinion, it provides the best aspects of the MIL-STD ALE DBM ARQ protocol ( developed from the MIL-STD's which Kantronics also worked up GTOR from) and PAX/PAX2 into a new protocol that I find to be perfect for Amateur Radio at keyboard to keyboard, file transfer and HF e-mail needs. What the Amateur Radio Service will see come along on the PCSDM in the way of a high
Re: [digitalradio] A.L.E., VHS and Betamax
Thanks for some real world experiences. I have no doubt that if you are running close to the MUF you can run the high speeds with strong signals. Based upon the published numbers, the signal has to be very good, and often well above tests that I have tried using the RDFT based modes which can not handle much below +10 dB S/N at 122 baud. What has been your experience using this technology on lower bands for NVIS and closer in communication, particularly in the zero to 200 mile ranges? When it is operating at 300 bps, is that also the baud rate? Would it give you about the same throughput as 300 baud packet and how does the bandwidth compare? 73, Rick, KV9U r_lwesterfield wrote: My Rockwell ARC-190 v8 HF radio and a Rockwell Q9600 modem at “the office” into the SCOPE Command network works very well for e-mail INTERNET access but I do have access to 3khz wide channels. This is military hardware (spelled expensive!!) but it does work and I have seen 8 kbps out of a theoretical 9.6 kbps max running the STANAG 4539 single tone protocol. I have seen it hang in there at maybe 300 bps as low as -4 db SNR but no lower – it just falls apart after that. Thus, it does work for some of us and these terms are Google-able if you want more information. Rick – KH2DF Announce your digital presence via our Interactive Sked Page at http://www.obriensweb.com/drsked/drsked.php Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [digitalradio] A.L.E., VHS and Betamax
When you say ICOM digital voice modes, are you referring to the D-Star system developed by JARA? This is a sort of open system, although it is not quite as open as some of us initially thought. The vocoder uses the proprietary AMBE product so that does complicate things. Also it does not seem to have the most open documentation. Some hams have started some preliminary work on a more open standard but not much has come of it as yet that you can see on the web. There is a beginning opendstar.org that has a few files posted. D-Star is only possible on the VHF and higher bands since it is much too wide for HF use. Even then, it suffers from low quality audio compared to current analog technology when signals are good. The main attribute is that you can trade off audio quality for narrower bandwidth. The current AOR approach to DV is proprietary and I don't see how it can succeed as anything other than a minor niche product. It is very costly at about the price of a low end HF rig and is not compatible with the freely available DV computer sound card modes which work about as well. Its main attribute is that you can use it for mobile use without a computer. The problem with any HF DV is that it really is not very practical as it requires very good signals to work adequately and amateur radio often is challenged with weak signals. 73, Rick, KV9U Jack Hamilton wrote: Is this the reason why the AOR and ICOM digital voice modes are not available in sound card programs? Is the problem in the sound chip, the main CPU, or somewhere else (the serial interface, for example)?
Re: [digitalradio] Announcing the 2007 International Message QRP Relay Race... August 11: Need teams.
There are contests that are exclusive to certain modes. As examples, we have contests that only permit the use of voice or CW or RTTY. When there are mixed mode contests it is not uncommon to allow double points for CW and perhaps digital modes because they do not compete well against voice. This is due to the fact that contesting requires a fast exchange of minimal information. If you have tried to use most digital modes during contests, they are very, very, slow compared to voice. If you had a contest where larger amounts of data were required to be exchanged, then it would be possible for some digital modes to compete better. If the exchange was not only lengthy, but needed complete accuracy, you would find that only a few modes would be able to do this well and it would likely be ARQ digital modes. Ironically, we don't have contests of this type and yet it would much more accurately reflect our abilities to handle emergency messages. I have thought about this over the years and have to admit that it would not be easy to design such a contest. On the other hand, I have seen some comments by misinformed or very biased folks that older modes, and they include both analog and digital ones, are legacy modes, implying that the newer digital modes make the communication more modern or have some other feature that works better. Sometimes this could be true for certain applications, but it is not true when you look at the actual use, such as a contest where the newest modes do not compete well. 73, Rick, KV9U Richard (Rick) Karlquist wrote: This is interesting. Various digital proponents have tirelessly pointed out how inefficient these obsolete modes are. Why not let them compete too and let the best mode win? Rick N6RK
[digitalradio] ALE FAE mode frequencies?
I would like to do more testing of the FAE mode that comes with the Multipsk program. This seems to be the best sound card ARQ mode available at this time with full character set, ability to reach down below -6 dB S/N (tremendously better than 300 baud packet), and operates in a psuedo duplex manner not unlike the way Clover II did many years ago. Since these modes are fairly wide and the frequency is best described by the dial frequency in USB, how about some specific QRG's? At first I was thinking it would be convenient to use the HFLink groups suggested ALE frequencies, but it is probably best that we not tie up frequencies in the automatic portions of the bands, so how about using 14.073 USB dial frequency? Other bands? 3573, 7073, 10133? Other suggestions? 73, Rick, KV9U
Re: [digitalradio] Re: 141A ALE FAE mode
Thanks for the suggestions. I will double check with the other ham on the sound card calibration. We had to do this a while back as we were having difficulty with MFSK16 which requires even more accuracy I think I read in the help files, 4 Hz! On thing that would help us is some kind of measurement to tell us when we are locked on the phase/frequency OK, similar to the way the earlier programs displayed the graphic phase meter on screen when we operated PSK31. By the way, once you do the calibration, is there any way to know that it was done, other than it indicating the offset that it detected? For example, my sound card shows still shows 11101 and 76 Hz offset and does not vary much from that when I run the test each time. On other thing. Has anyone running ICOMs with the CI-V had any problem with the rig not turning off transmit sometimes? This seems to happen with my 756 Pro 2 every so often. 73, Rick, KV9U Patrick Lindecker wrote: Hello Rick, Yes, I confirm, you must: * calibrate Multipsk with the sound card installed: click on Sampling freq. then click on Determination of the standard RX sampling frequency... and Determination of the standard TX sampling frequency It is automatic. * Let the AF frequency fixed for ALE (open the Options window) and be sure of the HF frequency (in ALE you can accomodate +/- 15 Hz, no more). You can start with sending AMD messages through the Aux. functions window. Then try to send FAE APRS position. Afterwards, try General call in ARQ FAE (button ARQ FAE then Call, the other Ham must push the buttons ARQ FAE and Answer). 73 Patrick - Original Message - *From:* expeditionradio mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *To:* digitalradio@yahoogroups.com mailto:digitalradio@yahoogroups.com *Sent:* Friday, July 13, 2007 8:23 PM *Subject:* [digitalradio] Re: 141A ALE FAE mode Any idea on what was causing this? Any settings we need to tweak? 73, Rick, KV9U Make sure your soundcard is calibrated using the provided sampling method in Multipsk. This is the number 1 problem we see with it. Also, be sure of your frequency calibration of your transceiver. Bonnie KQ6XA No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.476 / Virus Database: 269.10.4/898 - Release Date: 7/12/2007 4:08 PM
Re: [digitalradio] Re: 141A ALE FAE mode
If the sound card does vary from the ideal, doesn't the correction bring it to the correct point? As long as it is within the required + and minus of 200 or so? By the way, I checked the sound card in my newer HP Computer that is running Vista and the numbers are almost exactly the right ones. In fact, on one test the number was 11025 for the sound card sampling rate. I may have to try out this machine again for my ham activities. Normally, I use a 2.93 GHz emachines computer running XP for that purpose, but as you note, it does have a mediocre built-in sound card. I actually have a Soundblaster Live! card that is not being used, and maybe I can figure out how to get it to work with my emachine. 73, Rick, KV9U Patrick Lindecker wrote: Hello Rick, MFSK16 which requires even more accuracy I think I read in the help files, 4 Hz Yes (and MFSK8: 2 Hz...which becomes a problem). However you can use the 2 vertical traces in the waterfall displayed at the beginning of each MFSK16 transmission. Simply make coincide these two traces with the two vertical fix lines and it will be OK. A RS ID solve also the problem, as there is an automatic tuning. On thing that would help us is some kind of measurement to tell us when we are locked on the phase/frequency OK, similar to the way the earlier programs displayed the graphic phase meter on screen when we operated PSK31. It will be theoritically possible by measuring the difference of phase (after some time as it is MFSK and not BPSK) between the selected carrier and the carrier received but I'm not sure it will be very reliable and surely not on weak signal. By the way, once you do the calibration, is there any way to know that it was done, other than it indicating the offset that it detected? For example, my sound card shows still shows 11101 and 76 Hz offset and does not vary much from that when I run the test each time. I'll see this. Rick: your sound card is rather not very good...Corrections will apply but with an old Creative Labs or equivalent, you will be more confident. 73 Patrick
[digitalradio] PC-ALE with ICOM 756 Pro 2
If there is anyone who uses a Pro 2 with PC-ALE (and is having success keying the rig) I could use some help. I have some other issues with the rig going into split operation when the program is booted and never returning the rig to normal operation. Thanks and 73, Rick, KV9U
Re: [digitalradio] Re: PC-ALE with ICOM 756 Pro 2
I just received word from other sources about the fact that it does not work as expected. There is to be some alpha software available and I am always available to try something new. But I can not get the rig to TX on PC-ALE at all, so something else must not be set quite right? 73, Rick, KV9U expeditionradio wrote: You should take it out of split manually. The Quiet Relay Scanning using split is not enabled yet in PCALE. It is scheduled for the next version coming up. Bonnie KQ6XA
Re: [digitalradio] Hardware PTT or CAT PTT Re: PC-ALE with ICOM 756 Pro 2
I have had the Use CAT for PTT checked in the enable/disable options. Rick, KV9U expeditionradio wrote: Hi Rick, Depending upon your setup, you need to go into the options panel and select Use RTS for PTT or Use CAT for PTT. Bonnie KQ6XA --- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, Rick [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But I can not get the rig to TX on PC-ALE at all, so something else must not be set quite right? 73, Rick, KV9U Announce your digital presence via our Interactive Sked Page at http://www.obriensweb.com/drsked/drsked.php Yahoo! Groups Links
Re: [digitalradio] Re: digital radio interactive sked page
It is hard to keep so many resources in mind all the time unless you promote it. I had completely forgotten about it until recently. Andy's sked pages for other groups is new to me and I can see where it could really help increase activity. One thing that may work for some groups is having a common frequency for their mode. HF Pack has all sorts of frequencies for different modes. Another group is the NREN (National Radio Emergency Network) which is a kind of niche group that promotes the use of CW as the primary contact resource for emergencies. They typically monitor 7050, 10.115, (some of their info says 10.120) and 14050 as much as possible. If you were operating portable with simple equipment it would almost have to be CW to work with modest antennas and a couple of watts and they can take message traffic out of normal net sequence. 73, Rick, KV9U Andrew O'Brien wrote: BUT the use has been a LOT less than I anticipated. I created the idea with digital modes of all kinds in mind and the use has been quite low. As an after thought, I set up a second page for the Straight Key Century Club ( http://www.obriensweb.com/skccsked/skccsked.php ) and the use there has been very high, often 20-30 users within a 10 minute period. I also created one for Worked All States ( http://www.obriensweb.com/was/was.php ) , even that exceeds the digital one at times. US Islands group will be using one that we created for them ( http://www.obriensweb.com/usi/usi.php ) soon. I am contemplating perhaps a separate page for ALE experiments. Andy K3UK
Re: [digitalradio] Re: digital radio interactive sked page
Sorry to hear this. You would think that they would remove it from their web site if they discontinued it. I have been monitoring some of their frequencies and have been hearing some CW but probably just coincidental use of those freqs? It always was a niche activity and clearly was something that QMN was closely associated with. I have read some of the editorials and realized this was mostly the idea of one person. But it is the sign of the times and one wonders how easy it will be to make CW contacts if you really needed to ask for help, assistance, or ability to route e-mail or other messages to a third party (such as for pick up time from a remote location). I think it is really neat when amateur radio is used for such things and there is no other practical alternative. Maybe they should have worked closer with HF Pack? Some of the frequencies were pretty close so that if you were in trouble and calling CQ for help they might hear you. The problem is that unless it is a full blown emergency, it might be difficult to route messages to the average ham who does not know how to do this. I have not had to handle emergency traffic as incoming from remote backpackers but have had some CW contacts with folks who were operating casually from remote locations. I find that quite enjoyable even though they may be fairly weak. Unfortunately it would be very difficult to operate with other digital modes than CW since you have to have so much other equipment to make it work. We are really fortunate today with the ultra compact and moderately priced portable HF CW rigs, but ironically fewer and fewer hams will be able to use them since they won't have the skill. 73, Rick, KV9U n2qz wrote: NREN is basically defunct due to lack of interest and participation. According to Jim W8SIW on Apr. 4 2007, Interest in the program was quite low, and the NREN concept evolved into essentially an auxiliary web page for QMN (albeit a very good one, thanks to Chuck, AA8VS).
Re: [digitalradio] digital radio interactive sked page
I just used it in the past day or so for trying to coordinate a DEX contact on 20 meters. We couldn't quite do it though, even when we switched to another mode:( A short time later I heard a Pactor 1 FEC station from New England calling CQ not far from my 20 meter frequency, but the Pactor mode (not ARQ of course since we were using Multispk sound card software) is not that good with weak signals so there were lots of hits. We then switched to MFSK16 and had much better copy. I have recently installed a Sound Blaster Live card in my ham computer that I use for sound card modes and it is dramatically more accurate than the built-in RealTek sound. Within 1 or 2 samples per second compared to the built-in sound which was around 76 sps off. It seems to make a difference on getting a better lock on other stations even though both were calibrated with the Multipsk software. I was installing a higher mast for my gimmick 160 meter antenna which is a sloper L that taps on to the feedpoint of my ground mounted Butternut HF-9V and discovered several wire repairs that are needed. So took a break and came upstairs to the shack to see if there were any new ALE stations in my received scan list, but it is primarily NJ7C and K7EK who I frequently copy at this northern midwest U.S. location. 73, Rick, KV9U WN1Z wrote: Just curious, is anyone on this list using the Digital Radio Interactive Sked Page (http://www.obriensweb.com/drsked/drsked.php) for anything other than HFLINKNET / ALE stuff? Or has anyone seen any activity there lately for other than ALE testing? Just checking. Orrin wn1z in northeast Calif. not on the Left Coast
Re: [digitalradio] help for setting pcale with FT1000 MP mark V
This has been the same problem I have with my ICOM 756 Pro 2. It scans reasonably well although it goes into split operation when you boot up the program and does not return to normal operation without manual intervention, but it can not transmit. I was surprised that no one else is using this model transceiver for ALE, or at least was willing to help solve the problem., assuming that the rig can actually operate with PC-ALE. It does fine with Multipsk. One wonders if there really are hundreds or thousands of ALE users as has been claimed. 73, Rick, KV9U slamat ali wrote: Dear All I try to use pc ale with my ft 1000 mp mark V. I already can scan my frequency however i have hard time to ptt my radiousing Cat. Are there any one can help me. Got a little couch potato? Check out fun summer activities for kids. http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=48248/*http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=oni_on_mailp=summer+activities+for+kidscs=bz No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.476 / Virus Database: 269.11.4/935 - Release Date: 8/3/2007 5:46 PM
Re: [digitalradio] help for setting pcale with FT1000 MP mark V
Thanks for your comments, Steve, I understood that it did support the ICOM 756 Pro 2, including CAT control, and was told by someone in the ALE world that I needed to check the CAT box which I of course did. Maybe I missed it, but I did not realize that this particular rig can not even operate at this time with CAT control, because if I did, I would not have spent quite so many hours trying to get it to key with PTT CAT:( I don't have any hardware PTT plans at this time as other programs work reasonably well and it simplifies the cabling requirements. What I understood was that the current program is defective with setting up the split function properly. It sets it up the split when you boot the program, not when you scan, and it does not return to non-split mode either when you stop scanning or when you leave the program. My understanding was that this will be fixed in the new version, although it is still in Alpha at this time. Your list of the many different rigs is very helpful and this kind of information needs to be easily located on ALE websites so that there is no misunderstanding of what a given supported rig can or can not do at any given time. It doesn't make sense to me why this would not be heavily promoted. As far as activity, I suppose it depends upon your definition. I monitored for several hours today with scanning with the ICOM 756 Pro 2 and heard the following: KK7IF VE2FXL WD8ARZ KM4BA LU8EX VE6OG Of course there can be other areas of the world and those with better antennas who may be able to copy more test signals and calls.Most of these were soundings but some appeared to be calls. I don't know if you actually can receive any messages being sent by others when in this scanning mode, but I have not actually printed anything like that. Again, it seems that it is difficult to find information of this kind on the internet and I rather expect it to be very openly available and very clear and concise. Steve Hajducek wrote: Hi Rick, I have replied to your comments many times on these matters: 1. PC-ALE as released does not specifically support the PRO2, the next release will. For now if you are not interested in ALPHA testing the next release, its the use of the GENERIC ICOM interface and DTR/RTS for PTT. It works for everyone else that has a PRO2, I can't see why you should have any problems unless you have something out of the ordinary configured. 2. As hard as you may find it to believe, there is a lot of ALE activity on the Amateur Bands. Sincerely, /s/ Steve, N2CKH
Re: [digitalradio] help for setting pcale with FT1000 MP mark V
Steve and those interested in the ICOM rigs for ALE: I had asked Steve: I am using the default hex address 64 with CAT PTT selected. And he responded with information on the new Alpha version: For the new ALPHA version of PC-ALE you still need to select CAT PTT if that is your desire, I have coded CAT PTT for all make/model radios where supported. - - - - - I must have misinterpreted what he said, but to me, this means that if you still need to select CAT PTT which definitely is my desire, then it was available earlier as well. Especially since someone else confirmed this a while back that I needed to check the right box. Sorry that there was this unfortunate miscommunication or lack of knowledge on someone's part. With new software coming out my hope is that we will be able to control the PTT CAT which is a mandatory issue with me as I just will not use software that can not support this feature since the top digital software has been doing this for some time and I suppose you get spoiled. I do consider the fact that the PC-ALE software could not go into split when you scanned and return to normal operation as a defect or at least a shortcoming when the new software is going to correct that. Steve, you must be in marketing in your day job to claim this is not even a fix:). Just as an example of what can happen, if you are using your rig to do ALE scanning and forget about the split operation,and I have been doing a lot of this lately, you may be operating illegally when you switch to another software program, such as Multipsk, if you do not remember to return the transceiver to normal operation!! This actually happened to me on Friday so it is not something theoretical:( HFlink does not seem to have all the information that I need, nor have I had much luck in asking, thus I have been asking in the larger digital group. I have been thinking about the possibility of forming an ALE related group which does not have an agenda and will be more open to problems and questions. Even then, I have been a bit surprised that almost no one other than the regular ALE folks, have tried to assist or even have ever mentioned their experiences with ALE, and nothing yet on the single tone modems. Maybe over time, there will be a critical mass of operators so some of these digital modes can be explored? I know that I want to try them out to see if they really can compete with existing modes. Most recent ALE scanning from 1617 Z to 1836Z with lowest frequency 40 meters and highest frequency 12 meters and some stations received multiple times and bands: K7EK AF6 to KQ6XA KB3FN to KF4IN NOCALLSIGN NJ7C VE2FXL KF4IN KQ6XA VE2FXL to W9WIS EA2AFR Maybe try and call some of these or see if anyone is around. I am still not sure if you see connections when you monitor because thus far I have only see soundings or someone that appears to be calling to someone but no apparent response. Have I got that right? 73, Rick, KV9U Steve Hajducek wrote: Hi Rick, At 07:01 PM 8/4/2007, you wrote: Thanks for your comments, Steve, I understood that it did support the ICOM 756 Pro 2, including CAT control, and was told by someone in the ALE world that I needed to check the CAT box which I of course did. Maybe I missed it, but I did not realize that this particular rig can not even operate at this time with CAT control, because if I did, I would not have spent quite so many hours trying to get it to key with PTT CAT:( I don't have any hardware PTT plans at this time as other programs work reasonably well and it simplifies the cabling requirements. The PC-ALE versions that have been out for years provides support for any ICOM radios address, baud rate etc. and SPLIT VFO operation via the GENERIC ICOM interface, but not CAT PTT ever, originally PTT was only RTS or DTR as in the past for one thing CAT PTT was not common in radios and hardware PTT it was much more reliable than CAT PTT. Also, most all of the radios with dedicated digital ports do NOT support the use of CAT PTT via those ports. Any, I have updated PC-ALE for the next release with CAT PTT for all radios that support it. What I understood was that the current program is defective with setting up the split function properly. It sets it up the split when you boot the program, not when you scan, and it does not return to non-split mode either when you stop scanning or when you leave the program. My understanding was that this will be fixed in the new version, although it is still in Alpha at this time. No defect, nothing to fix, for ICOM radios only in the past and via the GENERIC ICOM interface only, you could enable SPLIT VFO all the time to defeat those pesky PA spectral purity relays during Scanning. In the current PC-ALE in ALPHA testing I have applied a new approach similar to that which I developed for MARS-ALE where for any radio that supports SPLIT VFO
Re: [digitalradio] help for setting pcale with FT1000 MP mark V
Steve and group, 1. I really have no knowledge at all about MARS-ALE so I have no reference to this. I suspect most of us are this way, but there are a number of MARS operators and perhaps they would look at this differently. 2. But that brings up an interesting question: What really is the difference between MARS-ALE and PC-ALE? 3. And maybe more importantly, why would there be a need for different programs that are not openly shared? 4. It might be interesting to have one of those voting surveys to see how many hams are now moving toward PTT control via the rig computer interface rather than via a separate PTT line. I won't buy any rigs anymore that can not do PTT control. I still have my old TS-440SAT which I ran on digital modes decades ago, but then I started using VOX on the Ten Tec Pegasus (not satisfactory to me) and now have the ICOM rig and swapped my Peg for a Ten Tec Argonaut V that I think will key up for digital modes with the RS-232 serial port. 5. In terms of split operation being changed, it is welcome. We will have to differ on the politically correct way to phrase it. I have done some split operation since I have been a ham for a fairly long time. But I am a bit uncomfortable toward this kind of operation as those hams are using up a rather large amount of spectrum. I realize that in most cases, it is done because there is just no alternative due to different rules in the three regions. 6. If it is not possible to monitor the connected stations, then it does appear that there could be some legal issues with Part 97 and this will need to be changed to have a listen mode. 7. I really appreciate your help, Steve, and I am sure others on this group do too. If you support something that is really going to be successful, it is much better in the long run to be open and inviting to others and they will want to participate if there really is a perceived benefit. 73, Rick, KV9U Steve Hajducek wrote: Hi Rick, At 02:38 PM 8/5/2007, you wrote: Steve and those interested in the ICOM rigs for ALE: I had asked Steve: I am using the default hex address 64 with CAT PTT selected. And he responded with information on the new Alpha version: For the new ALPHA version of PC-ALE you still need to select CAT PTT if that is your desire, I have coded CAT PTT for all make/model radios where supported. - - - - - I must have misinterpreted what he said, but to me, this means that if you still need to select CAT PTT which definitely is my desire, then it was available earlier as well. Especially since someone else confirmed this a while back that I needed to check the right box. Sorry that there was this unfortunate miscommunication or lack of knowledge on someone's part. In PC-ALE you actually need to check a box for CAT PTT. In MARS-ALE if RTS or DTR are not checked for PTT then CAT PTT is by default selected, thus you see my mind set in my wording. With new software coming out my hope is that we will be able to control the PTT CAT which is a mandatory issue with me as I just will not use software that can not support this feature since the top digital software has been doing this for some time and I suppose you get spoiled. It may be mandatory with you Rick however the bulk of all Amateurs that I have had contact with over the years to include myself do not use CAT PTT for digital ops. I do consider the fact that the PC-ALE software could not go into split when you scanned and return to normal operation as a defect or at least a shortcoming when the new software is going to correct that. Steve, you must be in marketing in your day job to claim this is not even a fix:). It can't be a fix when it was not designed to do anything other than be in SPLIT VFO all the time if the user selected SPLIT VFO now can it? You may not realize it, but the majority of all radios designed for ALE are basically always in duplex operation as you need to program in both an RX and TX frequency and often a mode for each, although many just use a common mode, this is also true of most Military, Commercial and Marine grade HF SSB transceivers, even many Amateur transceivers are like that when if comes to computer control, e.g. FT-600 and Ten Tec Jupiter and Pegasus. So when G4GUO started to provide SPLIT VFO for ICOM radios as they were at the time the most popular make being used for ALE and it was known that it would hold off the pesky PA relays for a number of models, being in duplex all the time when selected was rather natural. Don't forget, the tool asks you for both RX and TX frequency and mode in setup. Just as an example of what can happen, if you are using your rig to do ALE scanning and forget about the split operation,and I have been doing a lot of this lately, you may be operating illegally when you switch to another software program, such as Multipsk, if you
[digitalradio] Experiences from users of MIL-STD-188-110
When or how do you use the FS-1052, Appendix B modes? My current understanding is that FS-1052 is a subset of the MIL-STD-188-110 modem and you can then select the default speeds and maximum speeds, etc. Isn't this completely legal as long as you set the minimum and default for 75 bps and the maximum at 300 bps? If these modes are as good as has been promoted at the currently illegal speeds here in the U.S. ( 300 bps), they should work quite nicely for the slower speeds up to 300 baud, since the slower speeds are going to have the most robust signals possible with these modes. It seems very odd to me that we are not hearing any of this on any digital groups and yet the ALE linking group is recommending to the ARRL that we use this in place of developing new modes. Can those of you who are using these modes tell us more about them and your experiences? Particularly throughput speeds and robustness compared with other modes? 73, Rick, KV9U Steve Hajducek wrote: Hi Andy, It is the same 8FSK modem, however it uses shorter bursts for calling and sounding and there is a PSK burst mode as well which uses the MIL-STD-188-110 modem for generation. /s/ Steve, N2CKH
Re: [digitalradio] Experiences from users of MIL-STD-188-110
I am hoping that the new PC-ALE version will be out so that we can try this with my ICOM rig. By the way, was looking at the various K3UK helpers and worked N2SLB on CW using the SKCC Helper. Almost worked an Olivia DX station listed on the Digital one but a German station beat me to it:) Tom, KC9ECI is a somewhat local ham who I understand was a major player in starting SKCC. 73, Rick, KV9U Andrew O'Brien wrote: Rick et Luc, I have set mine to no more than 300 baud to make sure I am legal below 10M, let me know if you want to sked. Of course, with ALE...we should not need to sked, just call me :) Andy On 8/6/07, *Luc Fontaine* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Well I would like to do more tests with that mode when conditions will be good. Would like also to try at 300 bps. Luc VE2FXL - Original Message - *From:* Andrew O'Brien mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *To:* digitalradio@yahoogroups.com mailto:digitalradio@yahoogroups.com *Sent:* Monday, August 06, 2007 2:19 PM *Subject:* Re: [digitalradio] Experiences from users of MIL-STD-188-110 Luc , VE2???, is also playing around with this. Bonnie talked me through the up and I was able to make a link with Luc under fairly poor conditions. I will be happy to do some tests at 300 baud or less. Has anyone tried it at higher rates on 6M ? Andy K3UK On 8/6/07, *Rick* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Andy, What software do you suggest? If PC-ALE will be able to key the PTT line via CAT interfacing with an upcoming new version, this should work for me with my main digital rig which is the ICOM 756 Pro 2. But if I understand it correctly, I could use my Ten Tec Argonaut V, although I don't normally have the fans plugged in since I mostly use this rig for QRP CW and for general monitoring. Since you can select the baud rates, if you work below 10 meters here in the U.S., you can just set the maximum rate at 300 bps and both the minimum and default values at 75 bps. For stations who are close together, say 30 miles, with modest antennas, or much farther with gain antennas, this should also work up to 1200 baud on 10 meters and higher on 6 meters and up. This won't give you an accurate lower band HF experience, but might give you some feel for how well (or not) the modes perform. Isn't anyone else trying out these software programs with MIL-STD-188-110 and can give us some feedback on their results? Is it due to lack of interest, or getting it to work with your equipment? 73, Rick, KV9U Andrew O'Brien wrote: I have done some playing around with this Rick. Let me know if you want to try a QSO. Andy K3UK No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.476 / Virus Database: 269.11.6/938 - Release Date: 8/5/2007 4:16 PM
Re: [digitalradio] help for setting pcale with FT1000 MP mark V
I have a homebrew COM serial to CI-V interface. This is the simple two transistor design that is commonly written up in interfacing recommendations. One of the designs has a separate PTT connection and only in the past few months have I read for the first time, the claim that you can use PTT simultaneously with rig control. In the past others have indicated that you must use separate serial ports. That can be a lot of ports if you try and key CW, RTTY, rig control, and PTT. I understand that the expensive multimode controllers do this by using virtual com ports through a single USB connection. There is enough room in the minibox for me to install another keying line with a very simple one transistor key, similar to what we used to build for CW keying in the old days of DOS. I would have to add yet another cable from the interface to the rig. I have a great deal of RF feedback, especially from my nearby 80 meter dipole, that I have had to wring out by wrapping cables about 20 turns on 1/2 x 7 ferrite rods. I believe that the permeability has a mu of 125. Recently I was wondering if it might be possible to use some inductors in the minibox to do this. It seems that ICOM's interface has some chokes in their design. I read on the HRD Interfacing document that one suggestion is to put a 1 uH choke in series with a 100 pF bypass capacitor but I have not tried this. Anyone else had luck with this? - - - Historically, amateur radio was considered self regulating. You can not be self regulating unless you know what is going on with the on air transmissions. Many, many, hams and SWL's monitor the ham bands. I monitor 99% of time compared to transmitting and I am sure that many hams do something similar, if not to the same degree. Recently, the FCC has used the term self-policing in sending warning letters, to wit: The Commission generally relies upon the Amateur Radio Service to be self-policing.? or a past comment from FCC: A spokesperson for the Commission stated that since Amateur Radio operators are supposed to be self-policing that this new move should not pose a problem. You can not do this if you can not monitor the airwaves, it is that simple and is about the most commonsense approach one can take. Right now, there are those who are encroaching on our 10 meter spectrum in a blatant manner,such as at 28.085 AM, as ten meters is having what appears to be a pretty good opening today. They are also transmitting above the 28.120 PSK31 watering hole on 28.154 AM voice ! What is so ironic is that we can not transmit there on voice but others do it on a daily basis. Now for the big picture, imagine that they were using digital voice or other digital modes that we could not monitor. Is the signal legal or not? We may not be able to tell unless we have self regulation (self-policing to use the FCC terminology). 73, Rick, KV9U Steve Hajducek wrote: I don't know where you keep getting this need for 2 serial ports to do hardware PTT from Rick? If that is your choice fine, but is not a requirement. Please read my previous post to Jon today for my comments that cover this subject matter. Nothing requires the actual application used by the Radio Amateur to be able to decode the data transmissions of a third party Rick, when you are linked and you can decode, that is all that counts, any other monitoring is not your concern as far at Part 97 is involved regardless of what your opinion of the spirit of Part 97 may be. However if you have the time and interest to decode and listen to everyone's QSO's then there are plenty of free PCSDM based tools about for ALE and even other modes in commercial offerings ( both PCSDM and dedicated hardware modem) that support most everything that you can make use of in your pursuits to even include those PACTOR modes you wish to monitor if you want to spend the money. /s/ Steve, N2CKH
Re: [digitalradio] Experiences from users of MIL-STD-188-110
I see Steve's point, even though he did not just tell us the baud rate. I have been doing a lot of hunting around trying to find and understand the single tone waveforms used in MIL-STD-110. They don't often mention the actual baud rate because it appears that it is always 2400 baud. And maybe that is all the time? One source that I found helpful, was a Norwegian doctoral dissertation on Adaptive Turbo Equalization which made the background information a bit more understandable since he worked through some of the examples. With 188-110B at the slowest 75 baud rate here is the calculation to confirm the symbol (baud) rate: fa = Rc x Q x Rf x fs fa = data rate @ 75 bps Rc = code rate @ 1/16 or .0625 Q = bit rate per symbol @ 1 Rf = frame pattern efficiency 1/2 or .5 fs = symbol (baud) rate 75 bps = .0625 x 1 x .5 x fs 75 = .03125 fs 75 /.03125 = fs fs = 2400 baud It seems hard to believe that this stuff can actually work, but until we get the rules changed for text baud rate to at least 2400, we won't be able to use this technology here in the U.S. on the HF bands as the lowest band we can operate 2400 baud on is 6 meters which allows 19600 baud. But it certainly can be tested on this band with hams that are close enough to try it out. Especially, noteworthy would be the AWGN on 6 meters with little QRM and QRN so you should be able to get a good feel for how well it works down into the noise since you could easily compare it to other modes. This is made even easier these days since we have more rigs that can work on 6 meters. Anyone doing that and who is willing to report on their comparisons? 73, Rick, KV9U Steve Hajducek wrote: In the U.S. ( correct me if I am wrong) which you are located, 300bps for MIL-STD-188-110 is not legal for data on HF, nothing is due to the symbol rate. Anyhow, what ever, who ever, where ever does using MIL-STD-188-110 within the ARS, the standard 1800hz PSK carrier and 2400bps symbol rate necessitates a 3Khz BW, so if you are not at least at 2.7Khz IF BW, the results using the standard modem settings will be poor and the higher the data rate the worst the results under perfect channel conditions, add in QSB and the like and you get the picture. /s/ Steve, N2CKH
Re: [digitalradio] PSKMAIL ?
I am genuinely surprised that there are PSKmail servers here in the U.S. It shows that there is some interest. I can not get Linux OS to work with my equipment at this time, but keep hoping that as it improves, particularly the X11 support for wide resolution monitors, that it will become possible to use it successfully. There is not enough movement toward Linux at this time by the average person, nor by hardly any other hams. Maybe a few percent, but that is not enough to make it practical to use for emergencies. If PSKmail was cross platform, it might even be somewhat competitive with other e-mail platforms on amateur HF frequencies. I know that I would be extremely interested. I would be even more interested though in something that would work more robustly on the lower bands, would be perhaps a bit wider, but kept under 500 Hz in width. 73, Rick, KV9U Darrel Smith wrote: Rick, Check here http://pskmail.wikispaces.com/PSKmailservers for the list of servers. I have VE7SUN running on 10.148Mhz on the west coast. Darrel
Re: [digitalradio] A Beginner's Look at Ham Radio's Digital Future with Jeff Reinhart, AA6JR
Pasternak's claim of ham radio capabilities in only 20 to 25 years seems to be based on fantasy. There are physical limitations to power levels and antenna size that would make a wrist audio/video communications device impossible for long range use such as we do with amateur radio. What likely will happen is that commercial systems will have audio/video with broadband but will operate for very short distances via RF and then mostly operate through the internet. The parallel here is that once this is available, hams are not going to try and duplicate such a system, just like what happened with packet radio once the internet e-mail system proved to be so superior. Even with the potential for emergency use, the packet systems are mostly shut down with very little interest except for a few who do APRS. Reinhart's claim that the soundcard voice is not equal to vocoder chip quality seems not that true from what I have heard. I have heard canned tests of AOR and have heard actual on the air use of DV with WinDRM and it seemed about the same. Some claim slightly better performance with WinDRM over AOR in terms of the critical S/N issue. Where he is on target is the need to develop standards. If each digital protocol can not communicate with other similar digital modes, then it will be hard not to have separate islands of activity. I appreciated his comment that during emergencies, simple works best. He did admit that DV is not a weak signal mode and need lots of signal to work. He claimed an S5 signal might be needed but that can be very misleading on a noisy band and what you really need is a good S/N ratio. He did take the position that there would be a very slow transition to digital and that we needed more sunpots for better propagation. Ideally, new technology should work better than existing technology for it to replace the old and what better time than when you have the most difficult propagation? My take is that unless there are breakthroughs in physics, digital voice will not become popular on HF since the analog technology works so much better for weak signal. And most of what we do on HF tends to be weak signal. It is possible that the legacy mode on HF voice in 25 years, could be DV, not unlike what happened with ACSSB in the past on VHF voice. Just because something is new does not necessarily make it competitive with existing modes. I would have preferred that the presenters give a fair assessment of where we are now and what was feasible with what we know now, rather than the pie in the sky approach that they chose to use. Especially since they were targeting new hams who may now be expected to have very high, but likely very unrealistic, expectations. 73, Rick, KV9U Mark Thompson wrote: A Beginner's Look at Ham Radio's Digital Future with Jeff Reinhart, AA6JR http://www.therainreport.com/rainreport_archive/rainreport-8-30-2007.mp3
Re: [digitalradio] PC Monitors for ham use?
I have seen some multi screen shacks. In fact, I think one ham has 5 screens for various functions, some of which are dual screens with one computer. My idea was to keep things a bit simpler so I wanted only one screen that was at the right distance for my limited eyesight accommodation. In fact, I have some computer glasses which have a large upper area set to the screen distance and the lower for reading distance. It makes a huge difference for me compared to trying to see the screen with the center of my trifocals. Progressive lenses have a very small sweet spot for a given distance so I have not gone that route either. My 22 Samsung 225BW works well with either Windows XP or Vista as long as you insure that the screen is connected to and turned on when you boot up the computer as it has to detect and set the screen parameters. Otherwise, it can look as bad as it does with Linux OS and that is completely unacceptable to me. Other advantages of a large widescreen is the ability to play widescreen movies to match the screen size (larger) and it makes it easier to bring up two documents you are working between and drag and drop as needed. The one downside is that you don't necessarily have more real estate to work with, it is just wider and because of that, you make not see as many lines of text in a document as you would with a 4:3 monitor. As you probably have noticed, almost all the monitors sold now are widescreen. Same trend with notebook computers. 73, Rick, KV9U Andrew O'Brien wrote: Any thoughts on a wide screen PC monitor versus a standard screen? I'm thinking of adding a 21 inch wide screen. Andy K3UK
Re: [digitalradio] Re: PC Monitors for ham use?
Hi Brian, If you are using a large size monitor, you won't really lose a lot of text since the monitor screen real estate is physically larger than many of the smaller 4:3 monitors. Compare a 19 4:3 running at 1280x1024, to a 22 wide screen 16:9 which typically runs 1680x1050. Your vertical is still larger than the previous monitor although I think there could be a smaller size pixel. Of course, one thing you can not do with LCD monitors is make the fonts larger by using a smaller resolution like we did with CRT monitors. And the operating system drivers must be able to handle the widescreen monitor. This should be no problem with MS products but my experience with Linux has been very disappointing. [As I side note, the latest 7.10 Kubuntu, Tribe 4 (or 5?) that I downloaded today still does not support the Samsung 205/225 SyncMasters.] I am thankful that we can use the control - plus and minus keys to temporarily adjust font size in many documents as I have difficulty with some smaller fonts. Some monitors are intended to rotate sideways and you could use them to view a full document, however, I wonder if the 22 size monitors would be excessively large unless you wanted to see the entire page larger than lifesize? The real estate on my 22 monitor is 11 3/4 high and 18 1/2 inches wide. This enables me to place two pages side by side at almost full size and view most of both pages. I wish this had been available in the past when I used to be a consultant who did a fair amount of document development and needed to compare docs and cut and paste, etc. 73, Rick, KV9U Brian A wrote: Rick, I am really bothered by loosing still more lines of text with these wide screen beasties. The present OS's are like Stephen Kings Langoliers. They eat away at available screen real estate. Any way to turn them 90 degrees and also rotate the windows display screen so that a full page can be displayed? Brian/K3KO
Re: [digitalradio] PSKMAIL ?
I don't plan on tying up one computer for one mode during an emergency event. We just went through a pretty major disaster situation here in SW Wisconsin in the past week, with the 1000 year rain event. (Back in 1965 we had the 100 year event and we thought that was bad). With the hardened communications infrastructure, for the most part it was not a communications emergency, so there would have been no need for emergency e-mail, but they did call out ARES/RACES for non communications support. There is a LOT more to operating a communications mode than just turning on the computer. And digital communications typically add a great deal more complexity to the equation. Consider that we have had two attempts to demonstrate Winlink2000 during exercises, but each time something went wrong and we could not get it to work via a VHF telpac. Our local needs are primarily tactical and text digital modes are limited in supporting that need. DV might be OK, but that would be something to consider maybe a decade or two from now. Maybe much longer. 73, Rick, KV9U Leigh L Klotz, Jr. wrote: 1. Stick CD into computer 2. Reboot How much simpler can it get? On Sun, 2 Sep 2007 4:19 pm, Rick wrote: I try to keep in mind that when I am looking at new technology solutions that can be used for emergency communications, it has to be as simple as possible and is used by many others so that we can interoperate.
Re: [digitalradio] Mixed modes regardless of bandplan in an emergency?
Maybe theoretically, but if you don't do this on a regular basis, doing it first at the beginning of an emergency is just not a good time. I would like to see this available for those of us who think it would be VERY helpful. A good example is when someone asks for help with xyz mode. If you could get on voice and talk him through it, like they do with SSTV/FAX operation, we would really add a lot to improving our digital experience. I still think that if you are sending text in digitized form, such as a PDF, .doc file, maybe even a word processed text file, it should be treated as a FAX and should be allowed on voice frequencies. Should I ask the FCC for clarification on this? Has anyone else ever done this or know of anyone who has and was told no? 73, Rick, KV9U Andrew O'Brien wrote: -Go for the changes and then lobby our Division Directors to get the ARRL to accept some mixed mode/content areas, especially for emergency use which is my main interest area. 73, Rick, KV9U Rick, can't we already do that in an emergency ? Andy K3UK
Re: [digitalradio] Re: Mixed modes regardless of bandplan in an emergency?
Steve, I would agree except for one important consideration namely that no one is trying this. Sure, if it was going on regularly, it might be better not to ask. Or do you have some inside information where hams are sending docs and other files that have text on the phone/image portions of the bands and feel uncomfortable in getting a reading on this from the FCC? If the FCC said that this would be OK, within reason, don't you think that more hams would be trying this approach? I know that I sure would. After all, if you send a document with an image, is it text or is it image? Or do you need to send the text down in the text digital part of the band and the separate image in the voice/image part of the band? Personally, I think that the rules are not reasonable. 73, Rick, KV9U Steve wrote: I think it would be best not to ask. Some things are purposely left out of Part 97, to give us flexibility for experimentation purposes. Many of the Amateur band plans are voluntary agreements, often known as Gentlemen's Agreements We are known for self regulating/policing to ask FCC intervention makes us appear that we can't do that. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Re: [digitalradio] PSKMail Help
Also, in the help department, is there anyone who has had success in getting an ICOM 756 Pro 2 working through rig control on the fldigi/PSKMail programs? I tried a few months ago when I was using Linux for a while on one of my computers, but now I recall never actually getting this particular model to work with either RigCAT or Hamlib. I don't know when you are supposed to use one over the other, but when I attempt to run it under RigCAT, it defaults to an ICOM 746 Pro with no functions working. When I try to set it up under Hamlib, as an ICOM 756 Pro 2 using a baud rate of 19200, it shows an error on the bottom Get Mode: Hamlib getMode error, so it does not seem to be able to communicate with the rig. I am using the Radio Shack USB to COM serial port adapter and in Windows it works flawlessly with many programs over the years and defaults to COM 4. I am entering /dev/ttyUSB3 in the Device box which should match this virtual COM port location. I have tried many others, but no luck either. 73, Rick, KV9U Tony wrote: All, Is it possible to run PSK-Mail from a Knoppix Live CD? If not, how does one use PSK-Mail with a Windows OS? Thanks, Tony - K2MO
Re: [digitalradio] pskmail_puppy for windows
Hi Rein, Can VESA support wide resolution monitors? I can not get either Xorg or VESA to run X properly on my 22 Samsung 225BW monitor, but it can be used good enough to get by in testing things. The big problem is that I have found no way to get the rig control software to work. This must work flawlessly in order to use an ARQ mode. Is there any place you can point us to in order find out how to make this work from a Live CD? Not much information on the fldigi site. 73, Rick, KV9U Rein Couperus wrote: Vesa works here, Xorg has a problem. 1024x768 is a good resolution. Rein PA0R Announce your digital presence via our Interactive Sked Page at http://www.obriensweb.com/drsked/drsked.php Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [digitalradio] pskmail_puppy for windows
Thanks for saving me from some fruitless testing with the QEMU approach. I have to have rig control in order to work with my ICOM rig. It is not possible to key the VOX with ICOM rigs that are wired to the rear DIN connectors. I would not be willing to use any modern software that does not handle PTT via CAT control because tearing everything down and rewiring it for a different set up and then reversing that to use my regular software is not really very practical. Multipsk running through DXLabs Commander and of course HRD/DM780 operate superbly this way. I need the rig control for logging, ALE, etc. I think that the use of the Live distros are mostly to find out proof of concept for those of us who are primarily Windows users. We are not afraid of Linux, per se, but a Live version means you can not multitask the regular software and either set up temporarily for the one program, or dedicate a separate computer. Even then, I found out that this is not always a good solution either as you typically want to connect your HF rig to one computer and wire it one way only so it is always operational. It is the software that needs to be designed to work with the users needs. To not meet that need for the long term would rarely bring success. Am I understanding you correctly that even though the Puppy Live version shows the rig control buttons, they are not possible to become operational without bringing in hamlib software from one of the Linux depositories? In a practical way, this would seem to me that you would need to install the program to do that and could not use the disk in a live form. If you use the Mandriva Live version, is the rig control software on the Live disk and fully operational? Is there anyone who can confirm that this works? 73, Rick, KV9U Rein Couperus wrote: Hi Rick, the QEMU emulator only emulates a simple Cirrus Logic GD5446 Video card with vesa extensions. I am no QEMU specialist, only a simple user, and I have to my XYL's windows PC to test this software :) The puppy windows version does not need rig control. In the pskmail client the frequency is set manually (memory channel), the PTT can use VOX. Fldigi has PTT output (interface configuration), but I have not tested it as I am not using it on either the ORION, the FT897D or the K2. The rig control software (hamlib) is contained on the PSKmail-live_2007 live CD which is based on Mandriva. But when you envision using a live CD I would prefer the pskmail_puppy CD over the windows QEMU solution... It boots super fast and runs like lightning... I made the windows solution for people who are afraid of linux and don't want to reboot. :) 73, Rein PA0R Announce your digital presence via our Interactive Sked Page at http://www.obriensweb.com/drsked/drsked.php Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [digitalradio] Pskmail............... lack of stations
I have to agree with John on this. When you have 90%+ using MS OS's, some old ones and some newer and some very new, the other OS's struggle to compete, and that means Apple and Linux. And my recent posting on the HFDEC group outlined some of my difficulties with trying the QEMU, Live version, and VMWare approaches to running Linux on another OS. Probably not the best approach compared to native mode applications that work well on the OS they were designed for. Linus is not a bad OS. It is also overrated and the more I used it the less impressed I have become. And I have spent a huge amount of time with it, trying well over a dozen different varieties in the past 5+ years . Every time I attempt to use Linux it either has one or more little problems that don't quite work just right. The reality is that in order to compete with MS, there has to be a compelling reason to discontinue using what you are used to and switching to some other OS. There just is not a compelling reason at this time that I can see. I thought that Vista, being even more bloated, and with incompatibilities, might cause some to move away from MS. And a few have or will, but not many because the OS is not too bad to work with. Since the OS comes with the computer, the cost to the end user is close to zero. Linux, although theoretically can be close to zero, often is much more expensive if you value your time knowledge and purchase of new materials (books especially) to help in the learning curve:( I still enjoy following the progression of Linux on a daily basis and still feel that there will be more adoption over the next decade or so. Even with a MS-OS version of PSKmail, there is no guarantee that it will become popular since it is competing with two other e-mail systems available to radio amateurs. The one thing that PSKmail has over all other e-mail systems, is that it is a decentralized approach to accessing the internet. Winlink2000 requires highly centralized control and permission from that authority to set up a server. In fact, they have only a few servers that can operate on HF, and it may not be easy to access one when you need it. And it requires the expensive and proprietary modem from a single source. The HFlinknet system will not be quite so controlled but will not be something you can set up without permission either. For casual use my view is that this is not a problem, however, for serious emergency use, with maximum flexibility, PSKmail offers the amateur community a way to set up a less invasive system, using sound card technology that allows any ham licensed for a given frequency band, to install and make a server available on an ad hoc basis. I believe that is an important attribute. And down the road, there would be nothing stopping the use of the open MIL-STD/FED-STD/STANAG protocols for higher speeds. It is possible that even the U.S. could someday use the high speed single tone modems on HFwith a change in FCC regulations. And maybe they really work well on HF, even with what seems like impossible waveforms. 73, Rick, KV9U John Bradley wrote: I guess, from my point of view, PSK mail won't really take off until it is written for windows as well as Linnux. Despite the linnux user's best efforts, there are still a bunch of us windows users who have no interest in Linnux, having tried it briefly and found it too difficult to use, and are not prepared to climb the learning curve. Would be more than interested in beta testing a windows version, and prepared to dedicate a broadband internet connection and a station 24/7 John VE5MU Announce your digital presence via our Interactive Sked Page at http://www.obriensweb.com/drsked/drsked.php Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[digitalradio] HFLinkNet
The HFlinknet is an attempt to provide e-mail capability over HF using the existing open ALE protocols. The initial phase has a group testing SMS messaging to work out the bugs. A key concept is interoperability, even with the closed Winlink2000 system and ability to work with hardware and software set up for ALE. Members of the group are not supposed to discuss things with others. You have to accept the quasi-secret policies, and you have to be very careful what you say or your posts will be blocked. But first you have to be a member of HFlink to even be involved with HFLinkNet. Terms and Conditions of membership: 1. Only for licensed amateur radio service operators who are MEMBERS OF HFLINK http://hflink.com/group. 2. Members agree not to share HFLINKNET information with others outside the group. 3. Members agree to report and exchange all problems, support, and bugs directly to the HFLINKNET group only. 4. Members agree NOT to make direct contact with the software authors for support, comments, or questions. All questions and comments will be posted only to this group forum. I do most of my posting on the open discussion groups instead of on the ALE forums. Also, the HFDEC (HF Digital Emergency Communications) yahoogroup is a safe place to comment since your posts will not be blocked for differences of opinion. My hope is that as the technology matures, different groups will adapt ALE to fit the needs of their own systems. For example, we have a definite need here in our area with communication over too long a distance for practical VHF and we are hoping that with increased upgrades to General/Extra, that more hams will be willing to participate in HF NVIS operation. While this has to be voice for tactical use, having the additional capability of digital messaging and e-mail could be very helpful. Also, signaling others with ALE. And we would not have to scan since we would be on 75/80 meters for our area. Since we don't have adequate ARQ sound card modes at this time, ALE may fill that void. If it really turns out that 8PSK 2400 baud signals can work with amateur power levels and modest antennas, then we would be very pleased. It may be years (decades?) before the FCC changes the rules and allows these high baud rate modes. Then again, maybe not. I still think that they might interpret the rules to allow us to try it on the voice frequencies where there does not seem to be any baud rate limitation. 73, Rick, KV9U Walt DuBose wrote: The key...a change in FCC regulations. There are commercial modes that have a user throughput of over 2000 WPM with ZERO errors and can provide 100% copy at a -12 dB or better SNR...but they don't run in a 3 KHz channel either. BTW Rick, what is the HFlinknet system? Walt/K5YFW Announce your digital presence via our Interactive Sked Page at http://www.obriensweb.com/drsked/drsked.php Yahoo! Groups Links
Re: [digitalradio] The decline of Olivia and DominoEX
From my perspective, perhaps some of the reasons are: - Some digital programs only support a few modes, but typically they are all going to support PSK31 and RTTY - As new modes are developed, they are invariably going to be compared to the existing leaders and need to have some compelling new advantages. - At first many of us are curious and want to try out the mode to see how it performs (or not). But after a few months, it may be found to have certain undesirable traits compared to the baseline modes (even though it may also have some desirable traits). - Most new modes do not seem to have significant improvements over existing modes if you take the tradeoffs into consideration. Does the new mode have adequate keyboard speed like PSK31? Is it an efficient, narrow mode, or a wide bandwidth mode that may not have a large advantage? Is it easy to tune in and tolerant of not having to be exactly on frequency? Does it have much latency (the time it takes to quit sending the data)? Looking at specific modes: - RTTY for contesting due to having low latency and ability to have the quick turn around that contesters require and adequate speed of 60 wpm with 45 baud RTTY. Other modes, including PSK, do not do well in that environment - PSK31 for most chats. Speed about 40 wpm, can handle more ISI than RTTY, very sensitive, very narrow mode. - Olivia is relatively slow and in order to have the more robust protocols is relatively wide with the 8 tone/1000 Hz mode which has a speed just under 60 wpm so is incredibly wide compared to PSK31 but with better throughput. Many of the Olivia modes are under 30 wpm and even under 20 wpm! Can handle polar flutter. - MT-63 has good speed, but not very sensitive and has the wide bandwidth, hard to tune with weak signals, but can handle severe interference and ISI with a fair to good signal. Has very significant latency after the data is entered until it is all sent. Typically over 6 seconds delay, but very good at handling selective fading. - MFSK16 has very good weak signal capability, narrow bandwidth, slow baud rate very good tolerance to . Difficult to tune in and can not tolerate much frequency error. - DominoEX seemed like a good mode, and excels at handling ISI with slower speeds as needed, easy to tune in, good speed for the baud rate with the 18 tone IFK, narrow bandwidth, but surprisingly can be affected by the ionosphere quite severely. A real eye opener is the experience of Rein, PA0R, when he attempted to use other protocols than PSK for PSKmail. I think he was surprised how poorly the MFSK/IFK modes worked compared to faster baud rate PSK. In fact, PSK125 seems to work very well with an ARQ mode. - CHIP modes were mostly experimental and did not perform well at least at the 300 baud rate, not very sensitive, prone to errors, modest speed considering the baud rate. - THROB and THROBX, with the very slow speeds can go deeper into the noise with an multitone FSKsignal but at the speeds competitive with PSK31, perhaps not that much of an improvement in performance. Consider that after all these years, with their third change in modems, SCS designed the Pactor 3 protocol to: - keep the symbol rate at 100 baud instead of switching between 200 baud as done in P2 - keep the constellation simpler at only 2PSK and 4PSK, not even 8PSK - avoid ASK modes which they found years ago did not work well on HF - use multiple tones that can be dropped off when conditions get rough in order to have wider spacing 73, Rick, KV9U - Andrew O'Brien wrote: What happened? It seemed that Olivia was poised to become the third most popular digital data mode (after PSK and RTTY). Now OLivia and also DominoEX are way down in use. I think that PSK and RTTY are still number 1 and 2, JT65A appears to be number 3 followed by MFSK16 and Hell. Heck, I think you will here more ALE and PSK125 than you will hear Olivia these days. Andy K3UK www.obriensweb.com
Re: [digitalradio] The decline of Olivia and DominoEX
Admittedly, my comments had to be very brief since there are even more modes and submodes. I personally find FEC to be very helpful. Some modes, such as MFSK16 and QPSK31 include Viterbi coding as well as Multipsk's PSK63F and PSK220F In fact, with some testing with a nearby ham (NVIS on daytime 80 meters), when we use a mode where you can switch back and forth, DEX (DominoEX) being a good example, it seems to work better (fewer hits) with FEC, than to use half the speed without FEC. With DEX/FEC you give up 50% of the throughput compared with DEX without FEC, so the speed trade off is about the same either way. In previous discussions on this subject, at least one other ham felt that it was better to drop the speed rather than to go to FEC. Patrick's tests show about an extra dB of S/N tolerance for weak signals, but it seems better than that from a subjective point of view. Patrick's tests showed that when using a PSK signal, (unlike the IFK mentioned earlier with DEX) the improvement in S/N was substantial with FEC. Using the available modes in Multipsk, he calculates the S/N ratio of PSK63 at -7, but PSK63F at -12 which seems surprisingly large. PSK63F runs at roughly half the speed of PSK63 with no FEC. I am not sure if PSK modes always benefit more from FEC than perhaps FSK modes? Maybe someone else would have that knowledge? All the FEC appears to be roughly the same Viterbi encoding/decoding in Multipsk but perhaps there are some differences? Patrick rates PSK220F at the same S/N (-7 dB) as PSK63, which I find interesting. (This assumes my notes are correct). I would also very much like to see a comparison of a given PSK mode that is running under ARQ and with and without FEC. Pactor 2 uses Viterbi coding as well as ARQ and seems to have good success with this approach. Now that pipelined decoding has been a proven programming technique, it would be possible to use fairly powerful decoding which could be done during the time the next frame is being received. Having said all this, it is interesting that most hams do not use the FEC modes other than perhaps MFSK16. I suspect most just use whatever seems to work OK and is readily available and commonly used so that they have a better chance for a QSO. 73, Rick, KV9U schuetzen wrote: Rick, a big plus to me is FEC, I do not see that you mentioned that in your comparisons. to me, that is a major deficiency in an otherwise interesting report. could you supplement?? thanks chas K5DAM
Re: [digitalradio] Pskmail............... lack of stations
Hi Walt, Winlink2000 does not have an HF sound card implementation. They are possibly working on it, but it has been 2 and 1/2 years since they stopped further development on SCAMP (Sound Card Amateur Messaging Protocol) when they discovered that it would not be possible to get it to work with weak signals. I have reinstalled Vista Home Premium and installed numerous Linux variants and I would say that none of them are very difficult but Vista surprised me in that it was quite fast and easy to reinstall. The MS product is finessed a bit better and you generally don't have to worry about whether it will work with your soundcard/monitor/wireless ethernet/etc., but this is a continuing problem with Linux. As a long time MS Office user who changed to Open Office a couple years ago, I would have to say that MS Office is a slightly better product in terms of use. Particularly with compatibility since they wrote the design and made it difficult for others to reverse engineer the protocols. I use a lot of tables and so I am somewhat biased against OO which does not work as well with that one issue for me. But OO Writer does not have the horrific bug that I think was never fixed in MS Word that can trash your entire document. It does not occur very often, but can be a problem with very large hundred + page docs with complicated formatting. My understanding is that because of the difficulty maintaining the Windows programs and OS, they could never find the problem so it is likely still there. I used to make frequent backups because just making one little maneuver with multiple pages of tables in Word would trash the entire file:( But in the final analysis, when you compare free with $500 or so, I will go with OO:) 73, Rick, KV9U Walt DuBose wrote: Well Windows users have WinLink if they choose to use it. As far as Windows vs Linux, I just installed MS Vista Premium Home Edition and MS Office for Vista on my daughter-in-law's new computer and found it much harder than installing Ubuntu Linux and Open Office...I like Open Office much better than MS Office. Walt/K5YFW
Re: [digitalradio] Re: The decline of Olivia and DominoEX
Hi Jose, Do you see any difference between the convolutional code of Pactor and the Viterbi code in MFSK16 or Patrick's use of Viterbi code in his F versions of PSK and his FEC of DEX? The extra thing that SCS developed early with Pactor 1 was the ability to create a correct frame from multiple tries (what they call memory ARQ) which has a similiar effect as coding gain. With Pactor 2 and 3 they get a type of diversity gain by changing the order of which tones are swapped back and forth. This is specified in their description of the P3 protocol, but I don't fully understand this and maybe this is not easy to implement. While P2 uses DBPSK, DQPSK, 8-DPSK, and 16-DPSK, P3 only uses DBPSK and DQPSK. I think that SCS discovered through trial and error that the higher constellations are too much for good HF performance. And with P3 they only use QPSK with Levels 4, 5, and 6. Level 4 uses 14 tones, Level 5 uses 16 tones and only Level 6 uses the full 18 tones. BPSK is used at the more robust protocols of Level 3 with 14 tones, Level 2 with 6 tones, spaced farther apart, and Level 1, the most robust, with tones widely spaced and as they put it, with tones at positions 5 and 12, can be considered as equivalent to the two carriers of PACTOR-II, as they transfer the variable packet headers and the control signals. They also lock in the speed at 100 baud with P3, rather than switch between 100 and 200 baud as they did with P2. Again, I suspect that SCS discovered that the 100 baud speed was the best compromise and simplified the design of the protocol since you keep the speed the same at all times. One less thing to program? Using an asynchronous mode seems like a much better idea for sound cards and this was the approach used by SCAMP which proved how well this can work. P3's wide bandwidth means that it is not really any faster than P2 when you adjust for the bandwidth to throughput speed, or 500+ Hz BW for P2 vs. around 2400 Hz BW for P3. It seems so feasible for one knowledgeable ham to put the pieces together to create a superior sound card mode using what we already have. If it is ever proven that the wide bandwidth, high speed ALE modes using 8PSK can match P3, then those protocols could be used as an open source design, but when you look at the theoretical throughputs from various sources, they seem to suggest that these modes do not work all that well below zero dB S/N. 73, Rick, KV9U Jose A. Amador wrote: Pactor uses convolutional encoding with Viterbi decoding, which allows maximum likelyhood detection. Which means that the decoder knows, taking into account the history of the stream what symbols are likely to come next, instead of what a blind demodulator does. Interleaving is vital for HF data chennels. What else could be better? Turbo codes or low density parity codes could be added, to get even closer to the Shannon limit. But it does not mean that it will accept a narrowband channel. Latency will obviously be higher, which will not please the hard-die keyboarders. With all what it carries in the bag of tricks, Pactor III is hard to beat. A copy does not seem convenient, but why not a mimic of that? If a synchronous mode is not convenient with Windows and how it manages the timers, why not an asynchronous mode? 73, Jose, CO2JA
Re: [digitalradio] Re: The decline of Olivia and DominoEX
The SCS Pactor modems use Viterbi encoding/decoding according to the information published by Dr. Rink in the RTTY Digital Jounal in the mid 1990's: Very efficient error control coding using a convolutional code with a constraint length of 9 and a real Viterbi decoder with soft decision is applied at all speed levels, in addition to analog Memory-ARQ. Although the original Pactor protocol was FSK and the P2 and P3 modems use PSK, the memory ARQ concept should be similar. SCS does claim that P3 is more robust than P2, but at the slowest speed needed for the worst conditions (2 tone) the two modems seem about the same. I very much would like to see some real world comparisons between the ALE 8PSK2400 modems and Pactor and other amateur modes as well. When I look at the actual claims by manufacturers (often graphs based upon theoretical computer simulations) the 8PSK2400 modes do not seem to work well much below zero dB and what is even more of a concern is that they sometimes consider 2 msecs of ISI as being a high degree of ISI. It is not that unusual to have 5 or more msecs of ISI on the lower HF bands, which I understand can prevent even 45 baud RTTY signals from working. The other claims tend to show how many messages can be sent over a time period between two points with different sun spot numbers and it is not unusual to show ZERO throughput without fairly high power levels. Government/commercial sites may use power levels well above what most of us use for digital modes, typically running at 25 watts or so with a 100 watt transmitter. 73, Rick, KV9U Jose A. Amador wrote: Rick wrote: Hi Jose, Do you see any difference between the convolutional code of Pactor and the Viterbi code in MFSK16 or Patrick's use of Viterbi code in his F versions of PSK and his FEC of DEX? I have not studied those in detail. And I know about Viterbi DECODER, but, would a Viterbi encoder be the same thing as a convolutional encoder? In the PTC-II manual, they write about a convolutional encoder with constraint length of nine. But you also need to know how to take the taps. That is, to achieve a Pactor II/III compatible decoder. Other variants could be as good, but would not be compatible. The extra thing that SCS developed early with Pactor 1 was the ability to create a correct frame from multiple tries (what they call memory ARQ) which has a similiar effect as coding gain. Yes, but Pactor and P2/P3 are different animals. Plain Pactor uses FSK, P2 and P3 are variants of PSK. If it is ever proven that the wide bandwidth, high speed ALE modes using 8PSK can match P3, then those protocols could be used as an open source design, but when you look at the theoretical throughputs from various sources, they seem to suggest that these modes do not work all that well below zero dB S/N. Even P3 is affected by low SNR. It excels above + 10 dB or so. 8PSK is already in a disadventageous position compared to BPSK or QPSK. It has a smaller Hamming distance, so, it is less robust. It is already clear in Carlson and Sklar books, and possibly in a dozen or more engineering books dealing with digital modulations in communications systems. Nevertheless, hats off to the SCS team. They knew what to do, and how to code it as well. People can disagree on other aspects, but it is undeniable that it has been a well done job. 73, Jose, CO2JA __ Participe en Universidad 2008. 11 al 15 de febrero del 2008. Palacio de las Convenciones, Ciudad de la Habana, Cuba http://www.universidad2008.cu Announce your digital presence via our Interactive Sked Page at http://www.obriensweb.com/drsked/drsked.php Yahoo! Groups Links
Re: [digitalradio] Sound card ARQ protocol
Very good points, Vojtech, It was my understanding that the specific permutations of the changing order of the tones was discussed in their published specifications: Similar to the PACTOR-II protocol, the digital data stream that constitutes a specific virtual carrier is swapped to a different tone with every ARQ cycle in order to increase the diversity gain by adding additional frequency diversity. Considering that in the normal state the numbers of the virtual data carriers correspond with the numbers of the respective tones, the swapped mode assigns carrier 0 with tone 17, 1 with 16, 2 with 9, 3 with 10, 4 with 11, 5 with 12, 6 with 13, 7 with 14 and 8 with 15. Tones 5 and 12 can be considered as equivalent to the two carriers of PACTOR-II, as they transfer the variable packet headers and the control signals. I assume that with P2, they just swap back and forth between the two tones. By using the pipelining feature of SCAMP, you could do some very intensive background processing of the last packet, but I suppose you want to work with the current packet and compare to the last one and the one before that, etc., if there is no CRC or other determinant that you have a good frame. 73, Rick, KV9U Vojtech Bubnik wrote: Let me describe what I learned from the documents published about Pactor. For memory ARQ to work, the frame frequency and time position and frame length must be known with a lot higher probability than the frame content. Also frame acknowledgment has to be performed with patterns of high hamming distance. If those conditions are met, the frame may be received and accumulated with the previous copies to reduce noise and QRM. To detect frame frequency and start time, special long diddle aka header with high hamming distance is used. Frame length is known implicitly. If a frame length has to be switched, both parties negotiate it by patterns with a high hamming distance, which reduces repetitions. The polarity of FSK signal by Pactor I and order of PSK tones by Pactor II is detected by the particular diddle aka header. With each frame repetition, polarity of the frame including header is reversed. Hamming distance between non inverted and inverted header is high to be sure with which polarity the frame is sent. Reversing tones of Pactor I will effectively null single tone carriers. Pactor II/III changes order of tones. Which permutations are chosen is not published, but the switching is controlled by the header for sure. HF utilizes HDLC frames, that start and end with single byte flag (0110) and all frame data are secured with CRC32. Not only data frames, but also the control frames have the same structure. If a single bit of either data or control frame is lost, the whole frame has to be retransmitted. The frame delimiter has too low hamming distance to enable memory ARQ. Frame acknowledges are equally weak as the data frames, which reduces the ability to work with weak signals. pskmail implements a protocol described by Paul Schmidt K9PS in December 2004. The protocol is similar to AX.25, only simplified (does not support shared channel, only one connection is allowed) and supporting selective ARQ, which is the biggest plus of pskmail against HF packet. Both data and control frames start with single byte frame delimiter and are secured by CRC32. I am thinking of writing a Pactor like memory ARQ modem. There is quite a lot information published about how Pactor I/II/III modems work. There is not enough detail known to write a compatible modem, but there is enough known to write something of similar performance. The problem of PC pactor like modem is system latence. I would like to try to extend the Pactor like protocol to negotiate number of frames per round. The frame length and number of frames per round would be fixed and negotiated with high hamming distance commands. This way the memory ARQ would be possible. I will see whether I will find some time for it this Winter. 73, Vojtech OK1IAK
Re: [digitalradio] So there I was -
Hi Claudio, Although there are software versions of Pactor 1 (the original FSK mode Pactor), they require using an Operating System that can control the port more directly, e.g., MS-DOS running only the one program. A friend of mine does this on an old computer and gets very good results that he claims is better than some hardware versions. The PSK modes of Pactor (Pactor 2 and Pactor 3) have never been developed into sound card modes, because of the difficulty of exactly duplicating these commercial modes, and partly because they require fairly significant computing power and at the same time require fast switching times. The only way to buy P2 and P3 is with the commercial hardware/firmware products from SCS in Germany and that is extremely expensive, even more expensive than the cost of some rigs. In the old days, many of us used Amtor and Pactor 1 for casual chats and even DXing, but the sound card modes have made that obsolete. Amtor is almost never used anymore as it also requires even more stringent switching, and other limitations. Pactor is still used for some e-mail connections although that will probably lessen if an ARQ sound card mode is developed that would replace it. 73, Rick, KV9U Claudio Ruben wrote: A rookie question: What program let use Pactor 3. Claudio-LU2VCD
Re: [digitalradio] So there I was -
Hi Steve, I don't see SCS holding anyone back from coming up with a similar system tailor made for current computers. The reason you would want to do this is to use the technologies that succeeded in working well and not reinventing the wheel that sometimes seems to be happening with the plethora of new modes tend to be similar. Having a few really good modes that most hams would readily identify as being superior, would be better than dozens of modes that are not that different. To be fair, this was a progression over the past 25 years, since computers became readily available to most hams, and that means all of us on discussion groups such as this one. We had to learn what worked and what did not, but all modes have some good and some bad and no mode will ever be satisfactory for all uses and for all conditions. After trying different modes, many hams go right back to PSK31 and the reason is that for casual keyboarding it seems to work reasonably well much of the time. While is is difficult to sort out all the terminology of the ALE standards due to the overlapping of MIL-STD, FED-STD, and STANAG, I have been working on a guide of this sort to give a little background. I did this for myself, but plan on having it available on the file section of the HFDEC yahoogroup (HF Digital Emergency Communications), as there might be others who are interested. I don't know if the 8PSK2400 ALE modems can run as well as some claim, but I would sure like to find out. Here in the U.S. we can not use the 2400 baud modems on the text digital areas of the bands, but maybe they would be legal if you sent documents with images, etc., on the voice/image portions of the bands and treated them like a FAX? After all FAX's often have only printed text material. And we can legally make the connection on the voice frequencies due to the permission of incidental tones for the signaling feature. This past week I made the decision to further research this issue but before I contact the FCC. I do have an e-mail in to Paul Rinaldo, W4RI, ARRL CTO, to see if he has any insights in these matters. Nothing heard back yet. Some concerns I have with the ALE STANAG waveforms: - When you look at the graphs of throughput to S/N ratios, they are not really all that good. Some of the ALE modes will go below zero dB S/N, (some of the newer ones) but then again, most of our newer digital modes will do that as well. And the ALE waveforms cut off sharply at say -5 or 10 dB and we have modes that are working at full speed below that point, although they do not ramp up to the very high speeds of ALE when you have good signals. - And those are often computer modeled ... not real world. In fact, one of the articles admitted that when they tried some of the computer modeled waveforms, they completely failed when used in real world tests. - At least one person who actually maintains and deploys ALE in the military is not very impressed with it as there are problems with not working that well, particularly no having good throughput such as for messaging. And these are extremely expensive modems which I understand cost around $5000. - The other issue is the paperwork claims of throughput vs. ISI. Many of the specs indicate 1 or 2 msec ISI as being robust but on the lower bands you can expect way more than that. The most ISI that I recall seeing in the specs is 5 msec. Many of us have seen cases where ever 45 baud RTTY has difficulty printing even though the signals sounded strong. My understanding is that the ionosphere can cause multipath to exceed 5 msec and even go much higher. Under those conditions I don't think that the ALE modems will work, but then again, maybe not much will work except a specialty mode such as DEX (DominoEX) which can handle extreme levels of ISI. - Finally, and I have brought this up many times before, and will continue to do so ... if most radio amateurs around the world can use high symbol rate transmissions, then where are all the results of comparison testing between these waveforms? Why do I not seem to hear them on the ham bands? Why are hams not using them on VHF? (Note: I would like to try this and now I think I have the capability to work the mode on 6 meters). How about some of the group members outside the U.S. tell us their real world experience with the 8PSK2400 waveform? Some solid numbers or comparisons to other modes? And why wouldn't the entire MARS program being using these waveforms on a daily basis since they legally can? Wouldn't it take one demo to show how well they work? 73, Rick, KV9U Steve Hajducek wrote: Hi Rick, Take any non-GUI or even a GUI OS that has been tailored down for the embedded application at hand that is running sufficient CPU/RAM and you could implement a PI through PIII solution if SCS would allow it. PII and PIII if fully documented could be done using a PC Sound Device Modem (PCSDM) solution
Re: [digitalradio] Re: So there I was -
Hi Demetre, I was not suggesting that hams would be using $5000 modems. I won't even buy the relatively low cost SCS modem for ~ $1000. The reason of course, is that we now have amateur sound card modes, and are likely to have more of them in the future, and they are for the most part at no additional cost for the hardware or software, once you buy the computer. My point was that the military and commercial users are buying these insanely expensive products and they may not work all that well:( Pactor 2 and 3 are commercial modes. It requires hardware/firmware/software that is available only from the commercial manufacturer. Same with the HAL Communications products, especially Clover 2000, which are almost never used by radio amateurs. The earlier Clover II was used by some of us but fell by the wayside as it was, quite frankly, was not that good. Even earlier was the Clover mode (Clover and Clover II were both invented by Ray, W7GHM), but that was strictly an amateur mode requiring complicated equipment and was mostly a proof of concept that then was carried over to the commercial world as Clover II, but on a DSP board instead of phase locking your frequency to a standard time signal. The sound card modes are primarily amateur modes whether MT-63, Olivia, PSK variants, MFSK16, DominoEX, etc., etc., Same concept as when we had hardware/firmware systems that adapted X.25 and used it for amateur radio as AX.25. Same thing with Sitor being adapted for amateur use as Amtor. Now we have ALE, which was primarily used for commercial purposes and is now available as a sound card mode and it is freely available and can work without the expensive hardware. If it only used hardware from commercial sources, ALE would rarely be used on amateur frequencies. If Pactor was the only new digital mode, more of us would spend the money for the hardware/firmware system, but because it is only one niche player, we thankfully don't have to do this. I abandoned Pactor (Hal P-38 card) many years ago and would never move back to hardware solutions again for amateur use. Does Pactor 3 really work well at -18 dB? I would like to see some tests that show this, but have not found much on the internet. I understand that some hams compared Clover products and presented the information at a TAPR/ARRL DCC some time back, but I never heard any details. Are you able to TX 2400 baud data modes in Greece? If so, how about testing some of the sound card ALE modes and letting us know how they work? 73, Rick, KV9U Demetre SV1UY wrote: --- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, Rick [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [snip] - At least one person who actually maintains and deploys ALE in the military is not very impressed with it as there are problems with not working that well, particularly no having good throughput such as for messaging. And these are extremely expensive modems which I understand cost around $5000. Hi Rick, This fact makes PACTOR 3 modems seem as a very cheap solution because it costs 1/5th of the $5000 and it works down to -18dB and please don't tell me about PACTR 3 modems being commercial since all the radios and computers we use today are also commercial in the same sense. No offence of course. [snip] 73, Rick, KV9U 73 de Demetre SV1UY Announce your digital presence via our Interactive Sked Page at http://www.obriensweb.com/drsked/drsked.php Yahoo! Groups Links
Re: [digitalradio] Re: So there I was -
All good points, Demetre, While Pactor modes can not go as fast as the 8PSK2400 modes, I suspect that it does compete well with those modes in real world HF conditions when in the +5 to +20 dB S/N range. From everything I have been able to find, none of the $5000 ALE modems can operate much below -10 dB and even at -10 dB, they are likely having no actual throughput. You are very correct that Clover II was not a very good mode, especially considering the price, since it was only a bit faster than Pactor I and perhaps similar in ability to operate in weak signals. Pactor II was tremendously better. Pactor 3 is a very wide mode, but it is hard to criticize such a mode when you compare it to other wide modes. I would prefer to see wide modes in the voice segments and keep the 500 Hz and narrower modes in the digital text area here in the U.S. It is difficult to see what will happen in the future as many hams are more interested on keeping modes separate and not the bandwidths. The one thing that concerns me a great deal is that the automated stations are not listening before transmitting and at least here in the U.S. are operating illegally. And they even are open about this with comments made by the administrator of Winlink 2000, that signal detection is not practical because they would never find an open frequency. This may be based upon their experiences with the SCAMP mode that they invented that clearly demonstrated a full ability to provide busy frequency detection. But the automatic users do not want to implement these technologies. The automatic ALE modes, which are similarly wide bandwidth modes ( 500 Hz), also seem to be operating illegally as I don't find a signal detection mode present. The stations that are sounding are skipping from one band to the other with short bursts on each band. Based on comments by some of the ALE proponents, they seem to believe they own a frequency, which is contrary to the FCC rules here in the U.S. As the FCC pointed out recently, all stations, even automatic stations, are required to follow the rules and MUST listen before transmitting and not transmit on a busy frequency. There is an attitude on the part of the automatic stations, that stations with operators present should not be using the automatic subbands unless they are trying to communicate with the automatic stations. The only mode that could compete with Pactor 3, at the higher speeds was the SCAMP mode at around 1000 wpm, but required close to + 10 dB S/N. If Pactor 3 drops to only a few wpm when deep in the noise, then the slower sound card modes may actually compete. The main problem is that they are not ARQ, so if a static burst or QRM blocks a character, the message is not correct as it would be with many tries with ARQ. Since Pactor 3 defaults to the Pactor 2 mode with only two tones during difficult conditions, it can not have that much throughput with many tries. But it would still work somewhat better than many other sound card modes. I have never seen direct comparisons on this other than rough graphs that have large gaps in the data. Thank you for the information on RFSM2400, as many of us suspected that it would require a very good signal to work well. Once you reach a threshold of adequate S/N, it probably works as they claim, but that may be well above zero dB. The need we have is to send ARQ data at moderate speeds above zero dB, say 1000 wpm or so, and yet have a fall back to a 100 wpm or even a bit less as the S/N deteriorates. As we found out the hard way, it is not that easy to get even a 10 dB S/N ratio on HF bands. Many of our communications on HF are below that and are borderline for SSB. But they are good for digital/CW modes down to -15 or so. 73, Rick, KV9U Hi Rick, Well it all depends on what is an amateur mode. Is it a mode which is free of charge? I wish I also had a free of charge radio and computer, but this is not possible unfortunatelly. Also the old modes such as CLOVER, GTOR etc, are not used anymore because they were not performing at all under noisy conditions (kept on loosing the link) and radio amateurs stopped using them. PACTOR 3 really flies in good conditions (5200 b/s) and performs poorly down to -18dB (theoretically) but it holds the link. As far as I know there is no other mode today that does that on HF, not even the military modes that use the $5000 modems. I personally use PACTOR 3 quite a lot and nearly everyday when I am away from home, especially in some remote island (we have 3000 of them in Greece and you are welcome to come for a holiday) in our long summers. As for the soundcard modes, I also enjoy using them but really they are very slow and they are OK for rag chewing not for file transfer, e-mail, etc. I have yet to see a decent mode that performs half as good as PACTOR 3 for file transfer on HF. They do not even have ARQ, except PSKMAIL but then again PSKMAIL uses
Re: [digitalradio] Re: So there I was -
The only mode I have ever used that comes close to the feel of Clover II, is the new ALE FAE mode. Currently, it is a non-standard form of ALE and only available on Multipsk. But after you make the connection, you don't have to switch back and forth. I did not have good luck with the mode working with a nearby station that I do tests with on HF. Additional testing would be helpful. Also, is anyone else testing this mode? Any results to share? 73, Rick, KV9U jhaynesatalumni wrote: Yet I have one friend who it is hard to interest in any of the newer modes because he loves the quasi-duplex nature of Clover.
[digitalradio] Pactor modes vs. sound card modes
The reason that the Winlink2000 owners do not want busy frequency detect is that they invented a particularly effective version of such a mode and found that they would have extreme difficulty finding a wide enough bandwidth to operate. The signal detection circuit would be reset to standby until a clear frequency was available. A human operator is always going to be on one side of the circuit for semi-automatic operation, but it does not insure that the hidden transmitter effect would not occur since the human operator would not be able to hear what the robot station can hear. In the past, there were complaints about the packet forwarding stations. These stations were mostly fully automatic, by which we mean they had robots at both ends with no human intervention. I believe that this is also true of other automatic forwarding systems, such as Aplink and Winlink, both of which have been discontinued for many years. Most HF packet BBS auto store and forward systems have also been discontinued as well. The Winlink 2000 system went primarily to using the internet and does not currently have the capability to operate without internet, except in a special case where a local group gets permission to set up a local hubbing PMBO server. Then you can at least communicate between stations that can reach the PMBO, but you can not forward to other servers. My understanding is that they are working on changes to their system to eventually allow forwarding to other servers via RF, instead of the current internet only system. While there is currently no sound card mode that can do exactly what P2 and P3 can do, the SCAMP mode proved that you could use a very basic waveform, e.g, RDFT, not necessarily optimized for HF use, and get it to send messages amazingly fast. It really was an enormous breakthrough because it proved it could be done. But unlike P2 and P3, it had no mechanism for weaker signals and the programmer simply gave up on further development and then did not publish the sourcecode either. I am probably in the minority who believe that this has been a major loss to the amateur community, but imagine if this was a programmer who was not working with the Winlink2000 owners and was interested in furthering messaging and willing to work with others to develop a serious ham to ham communications mode as well as provide internet e-mail capability as needed by setting up an ad hoc server anyplace that internet service could be obtained. At this time the only system that can do this is PSKmail, although at a very slow speed and may or may not be practical, particularly due to running under Linux at this time. When I look at the computer simulations done by Rick, KN6KB, the SCAMP inventor (using an average of ionospheric conditions) he shows: At the best conditions of +10 dB, P3 at 225 cps, SCAMP 97 cps, P2 50 cps, P1 20 cps, MT-63 20 cps At +5 dB -- P3 ~ 150 cps, P2 ~ 40 cps, P1 20 cps, MT-63 20 cps At zero dB -- P3 ~ 66 cps, P2 ~ 25 cps, P1 20 cps, MT-63 20 cps At -5 dB -- P3, P2, at or below 20 cps cps = characters per second As you can see, P1 is about the same as MT-63 (20cps at the wider 2000 Hz mode). He claims that his simulation showed that MT-63 and PSK31 failed at just below zero dB, but I don't know how he could possibly come to such a conclusion. The point of all this is that a sound card mode can definitely be competitive in speed with P2, although much wider, and still be reasonably competitive with P3. And it is not difficult to imagine that a new mode, that is similar to P3 would be very practical to do as a sound card mode. The basic building block is a multi tone PSK OFDM kind of mode that drops off tones if it needs to be more robust, and uses some basic control signals between the stations to determine how many tones and what modulation constellation should be used. The SCS development of P3 suggests that ONLY DBPSK and DQPSK should be used and the baud rate kept at or below 100 baud. This gives you ability to withstand polar flutter better than slower baud rates, and yet the multipath may be able to be corrected by using a coded modulation. Maybe improved Turbo codes instead of Viterbi? The only other way would be to go to a single tone modem, such as the military/governments tend to use with an extreme baud rate with compensating codes. I think a key issue here is to come up with a compromise baud rate and not change it. P3 could have had higher rates like P2, but they chose not to do this. I think that is due to their finding that switching baud rates can be counterproductive. G-Tor from Kantronics could do 100, 200, or 300 baud and I have heard would spend way too much time figuring out which baud rate to use. But as you say, for keyboard use, the sound card modes work well. 73, Rick, KV9U Demetre SV1UY wrote: First off PACTOR 3 supports DCD control so it can listen before it transmits. Now maybe the Winlink people
Re: [digitalradio] ARQ FAE
Nothing heard here in midwest U.S. but am calling CQ in FAE mode with Multipsk at 1800 Z. 73, Rick, KV9U Steinar Aanesland wrote: Hi all, I am scanning 14.109 and 14.112 with multipsk in 141A mode. Is the someone out there who wants to try to contact me in ARQ FAE ? 73 de LA5VNA Steinar Announce your digital presence via our Interactive Sked Page at http://www.obriensweb.com/drsked/drsked.php Yahoo! Groups Links
[digitalradio] Comments from ARRL on digital modes
For those interested, I had written an e-mail to Paul Rinaldo, W4RI, ARRL CTO, and asked several questions on the legal and practical implications of digital modes. I posted this information, with my questions and his responses on the HFDEC yahoogroup. 73, Rick, KV9U
Re: [digitalradio] Re: Busy Detectors
Robert, I have brought this up many times, but there are new people that may not be aware of the SCAMP (Sound Card Amateur Messaging Protocol) testing that we did several years ago. I spent many hours with this technology and I can tell you that it is an outstanding program. I am not sure why the software author thought that RDFT was going to operate down close to zero dB. Some of us pointed out that it was not reasonable considering that the Linux source was used by other programmers to develop the first SSTV programs and we knew that they required signals well above the noise. Unfortunately when the program did not work as well as expected they completely abandoned it (and us) and worse, had timers to insure that the software would self destruct so that no one else could use it or share it with anyone. To say that I was appalled is putting it mildly. At the time that SCAMP was developed, the common wisdom (that is often not that wise) said that you could not do what you also claim can not be done, with detecting and responding to many different waveforms, and within a given bandwidth, and at a certain level, and that it could be adjustable. SCAMP proved them wrong. Steve Ford, WB8IMY, who is now QST Editor and long time digital promoter, and others such as myself, were able to get the software up and running and made connections through one of the three SCAMP HF servers that were then available. The timing feature (like throwing dice) is basically the same concept we use in networking such as ethernet to reduce (but not completely avoid) collisions. It is an excellent feature but could be changed any way you wanted, assuming you had a better way. Even if modulation stops within the passband, it does not necessarily mean that the frequency is no longer in use, it could mean that the other station is now transmitting and can not hear the signals. But if a human operator is on one side with a modicum of ability to detect a busy frequency, and the robot side has some kind of ability to detect a busy frequency, then you don't have the main issue of the hidden transmitter problem (unless maybe some unusual one way propagation). Bottom line is the busy frequency detection has been invented, it works well, and no one should be arguing about whether it can work. What they should be doing is either trying to implement it from the developers code, or if they will not share with the amateur community (has anyone asked?) then try and reinvent it. Because our bands are relatively small for the number of users, particularly during certain times, it seem very unlikely that we will be able to find bandwidth for automatic operation where there is no requirement (as their currently is) to insure that you are not intentionally interfering with an ongoing busy frequency as has been recently suggested. I certainly would not support such an idea considering that the technology has made it unnecessary. 73, Rick, KV9U Robert Thompson wrote: On 9/17/07, Dave Bernstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Has this been widely tested by third parties on a large number of differing HF channel conditions? The hard part isn't the *busy* channel detection, it's the *clear* channel detection. As long as *clear* channel detection (Clear to Send) generates so many missed transmission opportunities, people will disable it. After all, it's the one change that will dramatically improve their message delivery throughput, so barring a gun to the head, why would they *not* disable it?
Re: [digitalradio] Re: Busy Detectors
Thanks for your clarification of the GPL use in this case, Rud. The reason for expecting Rick to GPL the code is because he said that he was going to GPL the code. Pretty clear cut. 73, Rick, KV9U Rud Merriam wrote: The SCAMP testing only used the RDFT executables, not the original source code modified or included in other programs. The GPL does not apply to their use. Specifically from the GPL COPYING.TXT accompanying RDFT: In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License. SCAMP was an aggregation, not a derivative work. RDFT is a set of command line utilities that take a file, process it, and creates a .wav file. The .wav is transmitted and received using the OS media player. RDFT takes the received .wav, processes it and generates an output file. Rick used those command lines combined with other utilities he wrote. All this is available from the TAPR DCC proceedings where Rick published his work. Further, how can you insist a developer do a general release on an experimental or research project? This is especially true when the project did not reach fruition, i.e. a general release. I have a number of half-baked projects on my system. I would hate to have to release them simply because part of them used GPL code. Most would be misleading because they did not accomplish their purpose. Some would be embarrassing for various reasons. Rud Merriam K5RUD ARES AEC Montgomery County, TX http://TheHamNetwork.net
Re: [digitalradio] Re: Busy Detectors
To the best of my recollection, any signals within the passband would prevent a transmission. Even fleeting ones like voice SSB, but it was not as affected by wide band noise as much, even static crashes. I don't know if it was more than what you ask, but I will say that most reasonable hams would be quite impressed with the ability to not transmit except on a clear frequency. 73, Rick, KV9U Robert Thompson wrote: Specifically, if someone was already holding a SSB QSO (one of the more difficult standard cases), would it successfully hold off until they abandoned the frequency before initiating its own traffic? It's well known that modes that concentrate their energy into a relatively narrow bandwidth are easy to detect compared to noise-distribution modes. SSB is somewhat difficult, as it tends to spread the energy in a way that tends not to peak when integrated over a one or two second window. What I'm trying to find out is if the algorithm was just a standard windowed fft (with possibly a few flourishes like automatic thresholding) or whether it was something fundamentally new.
Re: [digitalradio] Re: [hflink] ARQ FAE
The 8FSK125 mode is quite an old mode now and from what I have been reading, commercial/government will eventually move away from that particular waveform in order to standardize on the other newer designs. Because it has one tone that frequency shifts to 8 locations at the rate of 125 baud so it has 3 bits per baud or 375 raw bps rate. Actual throughput is much lower due to repetition of three times when calling. Compared with most other modes we hams use, I do not view 8FSK125 as an optimum mode for signaling purposes since it is not very robust, can not work very much below zero dB S/N, and is extremely wide. But the reason that it is wide, is due to its commercial/government origins in channelized operations where you have a specific channel width available so they designed a waveform to fill the channel. Pactor 3 is another commercial mode that was specifically designed to use the full width of a typical SSB transceiver bandwidth. The maximum raw throughput is 3600 bps since it has 18 tones running DQPSK at 100 baud for each tone, spaced 120 Hz apart. Thus 18 tones x 100 baud x 2 bits per baud for quad psk = 3600 raw bps. The actual maximum is 2722 bps due to control overhead, but then they use compression so that plain text typically can go through at speeds just exceeding 5000 bps. You would have to ask the Pactor 3 users just how often it actually runs at Level 6, the fastest speed, but I would expect a very stable ionosphere with at least +10 dB S/N or more. Not easy to do this, even with base stations and modest antennas and 100 watt rigs. Pactor 3 drops off tones as needed to match conditions and at Level 4 drops to 14 tones but still with 4PSK. At level 3 it stays with 14 tones but then drops to 2PSK but always with 100 baud. Then at Level 2 it drops to 6 tones and at Level 1 only 2 tones, similar to Pactor 2, but with much wider tone spacing which gives it somewhat more robustness according to the manufacturer. At the slowest speed, it is only running 2 tones x 100 baud x 1 bit per baud = 200 bps. So, at the slower speeds there is nothing all that different from DBPSK100 except it has two tones. The overhead control bits take a large percentage of the throughput so that the Net Data Rate is only ~ 77 bps at the slowest (most robust) speed. As you can see, if hams were able to develop a program that can use several levels of multiple PSK ARQ tones to meet the different conditions and operate reasonably fast in poor conditions and very fast in good conditions, we would have a mode comparable to Pactor 3. 73, Rick, KV9U Demetre SV1UY wrote: But isn't 375 bps too little for 2khz width? Pactor 3 does 5200 bps for 2.4 khz width and 1200 bps for 0.5 khz width. I think that if PACTOR 3 can do it, there has to be a way for ARQ-FAE to do a bit better than 375 bps. OF course I'm no expert but 375 bps? Unless there is some misunderstanding somewhere. But 2 Khz for 375 bps is a wast of bandwidth I think. 73 de Demetre SV1UY Announce your digital presence via our Interactive Sked Page at http://www.obriensweb.com/drsked/drsked.php Yahoo! Groups Links
Re: [digitalradio] re: ARQ FAE
Most of the radio equipment that hams use today are commercial products. Of course some do home brew them as well, and some, such as myself make many other devices (active antennas, meters, QRP rigs, interfaces, crystal calibrators, etc.) from various parts, some even recycled:). But even those home brew items mostly use commercial parts. The commercial modes are those that are intended to be sold on the commercial market. They are made specifically for that market and are not made for amateur radio use and don't tend to work well for what we are doing, which is mostly slow keyboard to keyboard between human operators. For example, you do not see any narrow modes for sale commercially that are readily available for hams to use, e.g., PSK31, MFSK16, Throb, DominoEX, etc. And then there are variants of the commercial modes that are primarily intended for ham use, such as when Sitor was adapted to Amtor, X.25 was adapted for packet AX.25, and recently when the ALE 8FSK125 mode was adapted as a modified ARQ mode as FAE in the Multipsk program. These programs are not intended to be sold as a commercial product. The interest, and to a certain extent, the ability of those who have been writing programs for amateur radio has been primarily for keyboard modes and not for serious emergency communications or high throughput ARQ modes, nor automatically adaptable modes that can adjust for conditions. I am not sure if it is a good idea to be using the ham bands for personal e-mail access since there really is not enough room to be doing this for more than a very few hams. If the average ham decided to do this, we would have serious problems. Look what happened to even the much wider (but short range) packet networks which eventually could not handle the amount of traffic going through and became nearly unusable for multi-digipeating for conversational purposes. I do support the development of the high speed HF modes for emergency use and for networks that frequently exercise this capability. If you don't use it for some other purposes, it won't be built and it won't be working when you need it. But we need to be careful about developing commercial use. I appreciate your comments about Pactor 3 as this is some good information that lets us know that it can often operate at Level 4 using the DQPSK waveform with 14 tones, thus the 14 x 100 baud x 2 bits per baud = 2800 raw throughput. If it is forced to move to the next lower speed it drops in performance by half since at Level 3 it drops DQPSK and moves to DBPSK, but still using the 14 tones which gives you 14 x 100 baud x 1 bit per baud = 1400 raw bps which is less than 600 bps before compression. Even at the next lower level, at level 2, where it drops to only 6 tones with DBPSK, that gives you 6 x 100 x 1 bit per baud = 600 bps raw. They show the net bps at just under 250 bps. This is still a good speed and with compression should nearly double for many types of text. It should work well below the noise but it would be a wide bandwidth mode. Since the tones have mostly double the spacing of 240 Hz instead of the normal 120 Hz spacing, this should make it more robust. The slowest mode has extremely wide spacing of 720 Hz for only two tones or 2 x 100 x 1 bit per baud = 200 but with about 77 bps raw net throughput plus compression bringing it well over 100 bps and should be as robust as anything we now have for a keyboard mode (except much wider). With the DSP power of today's computers, we can have competitive modes with Pactor using sound cards. After all, the Pactor box is basically a dedicated computer with the equivalent of a sound card to send the tones to the rig. Because it is a real time kind of system, it is much easier to provide exact timing for switching speeds but we don't need to do that. 73, Rick, KV9U Demetre Valaris - SV1UY wrote: As for PACTOR 3 and how it works, I think that Rick KV9U has already given you an explanation. I must add that the good thing about PACTOR is that it can adapt very fast to conditions and decrease or increase it's speed/packetsize accordingly. I think that if a programmer could improvise a mode that does exactly that, then he will have hit bull's eye on digital modes. Now I am not sure why you call PACTOR a commercial mode. All the radios we use are also commercial? since we have to pay for them?. Also our laptops are commercial as well? Noone complains using them even if they have Windows (a proprietary OS). I do not think that condeming anything is going to go away. Can we make something similar or even better? This is the challenge. Let's try to make a fast digital mode similar even to PACTOR 2 which does 1200 bps on a 0.5 KHZ channel by taking lessons from this commercial mode. Indeed when conditions are good, PACTOR and especially PACTOR 3, really flies (even when I use it with my FT-817, a radio which I paid for, just like my
[digitalradio] ALE yes ... or no?
in throughput was exceptionally noticeable. Bottom line is that for now, the only ARQ sound card mode with modest throughput, and with better than a weak signal, and the full character set, FAE seems like a good choice. The main trade off is the wide bandwidth for the level of throughput. So longer term, I think we can expect improvements for what hams need, which is somewhat different than the clear channels that government/military typically have. 73, Rick, KV9U expeditionradio wrote: Rud k5rud wrote: My recent readings indicate that the ALE standards are _NOT_ good for ham use because the military is not power limited. They can attain good SNRs because of this. Hams are not able to do this. Hi Rud, Sorry to be blunt, but your opinion about ALE standards is simply wrong. :) Hams have already been using the ALE standards with excellent success for years. You can easily view the signals that hams are currently communicating with via ALE on a minute-by-minute basis at the ALE Channel Zero website: http://hflink.net/qso ALE Channel Zero reports the Bit Error Rate and SNR figures of merit for each transmission of ham radio ALE activity in North America. It is expanding to other parts of the world. If you transmit a scanning ALE calling signal at any hour of the day or night, in the North America coverage region, you have a 90% chance of being picked up by an ALE HF station, and showing up on the web reporting system. Most of the ALE stations you will see are running about 50W ERP, and some are using 100W transceivers into resistively-matched broadband antenna systems. The mobiles and portables are using similar transceivers without amplifiers. I operate portable at 20W or 50W on ALE with good success. Here at the bottom of this solar cycle, I have no problem communicating with other ALE stations on HF with a whip antenna, low dipole, or random wire. The ALE standards work fine. In fact, almost every major HF transceiver manufacturer in the world sells a transceiver with embedded ALE in it. You will not find any other interoperative digital calling and messaging standard that has been adopted so widely on HF. There is great strength in the ALE standard, simply because it is ubiquitous. So, instead of watching from afar, why not put your readings away for a while, and get some practical experience with ham radio ALE on the air with us? :) Just try a scanning ALE system for a few weeks. It's free... and you might just find out how well it works once you get it running. Other than ALE, we don't see another HF all-band 24/7 method for calling and messaging available for hams. Bonnie KQ6XA
Re: [digitalradio] ALE yes ... or no?
John, As I was preparing an assessment of my experiences last night with Sholto (that I published on the HFDEC group), I needed to look up the URL for the 30 meter spotting website and noticed that Sholto was monitoring on FAE this late morning/early afternoon. So I tuned up on his QRQ of 10.137 and had no trouble connecting with him again. We did further testing of several other modes as you suggested and it was all quite interesting. There is no comparison to actual testing on the air in the real world. I am not planning to do soundings anymore because after giving it some serious thought, I have come to the conclusion that Part 97 rules here in the U.S. do not permit this kind of activity. It just is not practical to be listening on each of the frequencies, before you sound and the software has no protection for the prevention of QRMing on-going contacts. I am planning to contact the FCC about a number of rules issues and may include this issue. Is it possible that you can connect with PC-ALE and send ARQ messages once you are linked? It probably does not have the incredible power of the Multipsk program which not only includes the ability to operate in a quasi-duplex manner, but it can also allow you to instantly (and I mean instantly) to another mode if you are using the R-S ID TX and TX features. Pretty amazing. I really don't see the selcal feature of ALE to be all that important for amateur use. This is not some new thing as we have had this for decades with selcal and autostart RTTY. How many used that? Not many. I see this as a niche kind of thing for a small subset of digital operators and possibly some hams involved with emergency communications. What we do need desperately is a sound card mode that enables us to handle messages both as one to many and as ARQ one to one linked. At this time, Multipsk seems to be the only program that has that ability. It is a crude waveform, it isn't very fast for its bandwidth, it can not change speeds or parameters to meet conditions, but it will work for some messaging. We need to go much farther, probably with a new adaptable mode approximating Pactor 3 and that seems to be the direction that the initial request for input from ARRL. By the way Paul Rinaldo, W4RI will be presenting the results of that ARRL survey at the DCC and as soon as the event has finished I promise to have the full document available in the HFDEC group's file section. From what we have been hearing, RFSM2400 may not be a very adequate mode for weak signals so I wonder if that mode will develop further for amateur use outside the U.S.? (Not legal within the U.S.). The e-mail messaging of the HFLink group, while not the most practical right now, does enable users to send short (very, very, short) messages to the internet as a proof of concept. I have routed messages to my County EC for example to demonstrate the capability. The long term plan is to expand this to full e-mail capability as they improve the software. Their system is apparently connected to the Winlink 2000 servers for some reason that escapes me, and should add more e-mail users to the ham bands since the entry cost is drastically lower using sound cards instead of $1000 modems. Down the road, my hope is that we will have sound card systems that are open source, can connect directly to the internet with a server software but can also connect to peer stations, and be competitive in speed and robustness with Pactor. 73, Rick, KV9U John Bradley wrote: Rick; please let me know where you and Sholto are using FAE ARQ, since I would like to come amd play,too. On the subject of ALE; in my humble opinion some operators have become too focused on ALE, forgeting that ALE is the means to establish which stations available, and the best frequency to communicate from A to B. Once these are established, then other modes can be used to effect the actual communications. Patrick's 141A software allows both soundings and data movement through ARQ FAE, while PCALE seems to be highly overrated in it's ability to do anything other than pass 1 line AMD messages between stations, and it's sounding and scanning abilities. Unfortunately , it would appear that little progress has been made to make PCALE more effective, by expanding the number of radios with which the software will work (anything other than Icom can be a challenge) . MultiPSK has undergone some significant improvements in the same period. Currently PCALE has the ability to pass single line messages to the internet email system, which is interesting , but relatively useless from a communications point of view. MultiPSK may be able to develop that capability as maybe RFSM2400 might , and that would be a great step forward as an alternate mail system to winlink. The ideal mode would be something like Olivia, but self adjusting due to conditions
Re: [digitalradio] ALE yes ... or no?
I had very good luck testing FAE with Sholto, KE7HPV yesterday evening. The 8FSK125 waveform is a fairly old design. They would not be using FSK if they were developing a new mode. From what I have been reading, the government/commercial long term plan for the MIL-STD/FED-STD/STANAG's will replace that modulation with the single tone modem protocol. From what I can gather, the science has not definitively determined whether single tone modems or multitone modes are best for all situations. If they were exactly equal, then perhaps it would be better to standardize on the one that has the simplest design? In the ALE community it appears that the momentum is definitely toward the single tone, very high baud rate modems, using a lot of DSP to correct for errors. I would like to see more comparisons of single tone and multitone with real world tests and not computer simulations. The main advantage right now for those of us using amateur radio bands here in the U.S. is that the multitone modems, which run at a much slower per tone baud rate, are legal right now and high baud rate single tone modems are not legal and may not be legal for many years. I don't see any requests to the ARRL or petitions to the FCC to change the baud rates in the text digital parts of the bands. The high speed modems can be used to send images and Fax in the voice portions of the bands since there is no baud rate limit there. Curious that there have been no hams testing and comparing against existing modes? Does anyone hazard a guess why this is so? 73, Rick, KV9U Patrick Lindecker wrote: Hello Rick, It is a crude waveform, it isn't very fast for its bandwidth, it can not change speeds or parameters to meet conditions, but it will work for some messaging. We need to go much farther, probably with a new adaptable mode approximating Pactor 3 and that seems to be the direction that the initial request for input from ARRL. I think the protocol used by ARQ FAE (in [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) is well matched for sound cards asynchronous ARQ mode. It has also the advantage that when you have to nothing to say, you stop transmitting and don't idle uselessly as with synchronous ARQ modes (Pactor...). The disadvantage is that the protocol is slower that a synchronous ARQ mode and you must resynchronize after a silence, which leads to some tries (the asymetric timing permits to solve this rapidly). The waveform is not really a problem (ARQ FAE in general could be done using a PSK, MSK, IFK.. modulation). The problem in that case is to be sure what is the best modulation and the best bandwidth. The other big problems are: * to define the objectives (and the minimum S/N), * to define the protocol. Doing a precise protocol which plans all the possible configurations is difficult. The advantage of ALE, for the AMD part is that it is precisely defined. The TAPR Packet protocol was also well defined. So it will interesting to see what proposes the ARRL. 73 Patrick
Re: [digitalradio] ALE yes ... or no?
It could be that either I am misreading the information, or the information is too old and was superseded by a change in the proposed 3G MIL-STD-188-141B Appendix C, messaging protocol. I am referring to one of E. Johnson's documents where he writes: The use of standard internet applications (such as E-mail) over wireless transmission media (specifically HF) creates heightened technical challenges which are not met adequately by existing HF communications protocols. The existing protocols do not provide effective channel access mechanisms, and, as a result, tend to break down due to collisions and congestion under heavy network loads. The current ALE and data link standards use very different modulation formats (8-ary FSK vs. serial tone PSK), resulting in a performance mismatch between the linking subsystem and the message delivery subsystem. Current HF ARQ protocols require complicated methods for matching the waveform and/or data rate to the channel conditions. They list various BW waveforms and 8FSK is not among them as they appear to all be PSK ary forms. Do the 3G protocols still support the 8FSK125 waveform and this is used for the initial signaling and linking and then you switch over to the other PSK modes? If they do, then what is he saying in his above statement? 73, Rick, KV9U Steve Hajducek wrote: Hi Rick, Patricks FAE ARQ is an excellent protocol, it is the best example to date in my opinion of a PCSMD based ARQ protocol developed for Amateur Radio. The ALE 8FSK is not being replace by serial tone modem use for its Sounding/LQA/Calling/Linking, believe me that is not going to happen. Just what will replace ALE as we know it now will likely be AQC-ALE at some point, but that is not happening fast what will the large number standard ALE systems in use and the cost of hardware AQC-ALE systems. What has already taken place in the U.S. Government/Military and NATO world is a transition to the MIL-STD-188-110B modem and various waveforms for heavy follow on data requirements in peer-to-peer and networking where STANAG 5066 is the topology for distributed networking where you must have speed what with its HTML support, after all you for all intents and purposes talking the full Internet via HF radio with STANAG 5066 ( not to be confused with S5066 DLP). However, the good old 100wpm FEC 8FSK is still used for an awful lot of ALE signaling, remote orderwire command and control and communications just using the basic AMD protocol. It gets a lot of use for signaling application where Radio Amateurs would use DTMF, automated phone patches are a heavy user of AMD actually, the ACP193 protocol and SWALE protocol are fine examples of just what can be done with the excellent AMD basic protocol. /s/ Steve, N2CKH
Re: [digitalradio] ALE yes ... or no?
OK but how about the question I had? Are you saying that 3G will include the MIL-STD-188-141A 8FSK125 waveform as the method for linking? Or it won't? When you use the term ALE, do you mean the related MIL-STD/FED-STD/STANAG protocols, or do you mean the linking part only, particularly using the 8FSK125 waveform? When I use the term ALE, I am using it as a sort of shorthand for the whole series of protocols, some of which may be adopted by radio amateurs. When I use the term 3G, it refers to the newer protocols. 73, Rick, KV9U Steve Hajducek wrote: Hi Rick, That reference is to Government/Military HF e-mail topology which has evolved to the STANAG 5066 standard pretty much across the board, however not everyone is there yet due to costs and time to update their network infrastructures. STANAG 5066 can basically be thought of as what you know the Internet to be via your PC and ISP provider, however its done via HF radio, HF and above. ALE is what it has always been to the network topology for selecting the best ranked LQA channel for follow on traffic, that has not and I do not any time soon see that changing. It is the follow on traffic that continues to evolve whereas the Government and Military user needs speed to support the traffic load they have and thus the use of newer waveforms on MIL-STD-118-110B modems. There are many things that are dumped into 3G ALE, just remember this, if we are talking an ALE network, then ALE (or AQC-ALE) is always used to establish the link on the best LQA ranked channel. However there are also point-to-point links, backbones and networks in operation that just make use of the the high speed modems and protocols due to their particular support scenarios where either nodes are plentiful or ground wave is all that is being covered or operations are VHF+ etc. /s/ Steve, N2CKH At 10:10 AM 9/24/2007, you wrote: Do the 3G protocols still support the 8FSK125 waveform and this is used for the initial signaling and linking and then you switch over to the other PSK modes? If they do, then what is he saying in his above statement? 73, Rick, KV9U Announce your digital presence via our Interactive Sked Page at http://www.obriensweb.com/drsked/drsked.php Yahoo! Groups Links
Re: [digitalradio] RFSM8000
Les, What do you see as the advantages of RFSM2400 over the 8PSK2400 baud STANAG modems that we have been talking about recently (along with RFMS2400)? The only comment that I have heard so far is that it requires a good signal to work. Athough hams can not use these modes here in the U.S. on the text data portions of the bands, they can use them on the voice/image portions if they are sending images or fax. Curiously, I have heard no experiences with SSTV or other image operators using these modes. 73, Rick, KV9U Les Keppie wrote: Hi All Maybe some of you Digital Data movers would like to look here Les http://rfsm2400.radioscanner.ru/
[digitalradio] RFSM2400 vs. PC-ALE
Hi Les, I am not sure how helpful the numbers were, but it does show that you are able to get some packets through, which is good. Does the program offer any kind of relative S/N or other information when it is working? Or can you give us some idea of the conditions and how other modes would have fared under those conditions? Also, have you considered using the 8PSK2400 waveforms in the PC-ALE program which uses the standard protocols which appear to be functionally identical? While RFSM2400 does not have rig control for my ICOM radio, PC-ALE has this built in now so I am able to operate PC-ALE on 160 to 6 meters (with mediocre antennas on some bands). Anyone here who would like to try the faster speeds on the PC-ALE program by going to the voice/image portions of the bands and send images/fax? I realize that if you can actually use voice communication, the S/N is going to be over zero dB, but it could at least give you a feel for the capabilities (or not) of the mode, relative to other digital modes. 73, Rick, KV9U Les Keppie wrote: Hi Rick Well so far with the testing we are doing on RFSM8000 it appears to work very well - below are some transfer figures from the program using the Non-standard mode .3 to .2.7 khz wide application band in not all that good of condition - freq 10137 usb path distance approx 1000 plus klm s/n changing up and down quite dramatically
Re: [digitalradio] RFSM2400 vs. PC-ALE
If the S/N ratios are measuring above the noise, the numbers indicate a very good link. As I have found out the hard way, when we tested SCAMP, it was not easy to even maintain 10 dB above noise. I am not clear on the amount of data you are sending as it appeared to be used more as a chat mode? Or did you send large files too? Did the path drop out rather suddenly? The S/N levels seemed to be holding up quite well. If you had switched to Olivia, MFSK16, etc., do you think you could have continued communicating? The 8PSK ALE modes are the same or very similar waveforms to what is used in RFSM2400 and the advantage of PC-ALE is that it now supports CAT PTT switching which is something I expect in a modern digital program. When I use the term ALE, I am mostly referring to the various modulation schemes as one thing. I personally have minimal interest in the Link Establishment part of ALE as I don't see this as being used much except for some longer distance alerting on HF for sudden emergencies. What I do see more useful is that the modulation schemes are available as a more open standard and can compete with Pactor modes. The fastest modes in RFSM are not as fast as the fastest modes in ALE since they can go about double that speed but do require ISB I think and that will not be used on HF amateur radio bands. Again, maybe we need to change the terminology to the appropriate MIL-STD or STANAG such as we do with Multipsk calling the slow speed 8FSK125 waveform 141A? 73, Rick, KV9U Les Keppie wrote: Hi Rick Yes relative S/N reports are given for each paket - but what they relate to is any ones guess and since I have no really good test equipment that would do this cant really answer - but yes good data can still be passed with signal levels just above 0db according to what we see - and the higher the S/N R the faster speeds can be acheived as you should see from the email I sent it is adaptive in speed to the S/N R report it gets back from the receiving station If you study the logs I sent you can see it changing speed to adapt to the changing S/N R reports it gets It keeps a record of all exchanges it makes (except the actual data) in four seperate logs No I havent tried the faster Ale modes - whilst I have PC-Ale running on my computer I do not fancy it all that much Ale may well be good at finding openings at various times on various frequencies but mostly they are too poor and too short to pass much useful data anyway - and to get decent thruput of data using a comparable waveform it probably requires similar S/N R figures as RFSM8000 Using Amateur bandwith- (ie. the nonstandard mode in RFSM8000) the maximum capable speed is bits per second which is quite a bit faster than that of Ale I will attach all four logs to cover this mornings test transfers between VK2DSG and TEST4 - You can now work out if you think it works The tests were done on 7196 usb over a distance of 400 klm TEST4 was using 200 watts and I using 100 watts pep Band faded out at end with no transfer possible Regards Les
Re: [digitalradio] 30 Meter PropNet Weekend October 6/7
Is this 30 meter beacon activity legal? Can you reference where Part 97 permits this here in the U.S. below 28.0 MHz? Appreciate your help in understanding this. 73, Rick, KV9U Don wrote: Please join us to promote 30m PSK and Propagation Study on 30 meters (PropNet anchor freq= 10.1395 USB PSK +1500 and 30m PSK call freq=10.140 USB). This event will be the weekend of October 6th 7th (z 10/6/07 -Sat until 2359z 10/7/07 -Sun). Any station welcome to participate be it a PropNet PSK Beacon (tx rx) or a PropNet `lurker mode' (rx only). SWL stations or others not wanting to be a beacon (tx rx) please note PropNet has `lurker mode' (rx only) function so anyone can participate. Please go here and download and try PropNet and get on 30 meters October 6th 7th: http://www.propnet.org/ http://www.n7yg.net/propnetpsk/main.html http://www.n7yg.net/propnetpsk/download.html http://www.n7yg.net/propnetpsk/faq.html de kb9umt Don – promoting 30 meter digital activity (30m our only low power digital band) http://www.projectsandparts.com/30m/ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/30meterPSKGroup/ http://www.30meterdigital.com Announce your digital presence via our Interactive Sked Page at http://www.obriensweb.com/drsked/drsked.php Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [digitalradio] RFSM2400 vs. PC-ALE
I am convinced that the MIL-STD-188-110A and similar high speed 8PSK2400 modes are legal on the voice/image portions of the bands. Being a fairly conservative type person, my plan is to contact the FCC and get a better read out. In fact, I am working on a request for a response from FCC on several digital issues that I think should be examined. If anyone has a specific item that they would like me to ask, please contact me or suggest something on this group. Some wanted me to not ask certain questions, but it seems that it is better to ask and be told no, than to do nothing and find out later that you could have been doing something legally all along. I do want to ask about how they view the operation of automatic stations that do not listen before transmitting, particularly the ALE sounding and calling and the various mail systems. 73, Rick, KV9U Andrew O'Brien wrote: So, Rick...am I correct in assuming RFSM is legal in the USA if you got to the image sub-bands ?
Re: [digitalradio] RFSM2400 vs. PC-ALE
The speeds look similar to Pactor 3 if the S/N ratios are as high as they seem to be. By the time you reach 15 dB S/N P3 should be close to maxing out at 2722 bps uncompressed, therefore throughput of around 5000 bps or 5000 wpm at maximum. The MIL-STD-188-110A (older) specification has speeds up to 4800 bps. The MIL-STD-188-110B (3G) specification adds speeds up to 9600 bps. The STANAG 4539 specifications have three waveforms include three levels: - a very robust low speed 75 bps that uses the STANAG 4415 PSK data modem waveform - a medium speed MIL-STD-188-110B waveform - a high speed waveform from MIL-STD-188-110B, Appendix C, providing 3200 to 12800 bps There are others including a QAM modem approach (Reference my ALE Protocols and Terms document on the hfdec yahoogroup site for more details). Overall it sounds pretty exciting to me as I know how well 1000 bps worked with SCAMP and I was quite surprised and pleased how well it worked with good signals. It will be interesting for you to provide us with more information with the weaker signals, especially those below zero dB S/N since that is the where the difficulty lies. 73, Rick, KV9U Les Keppie wrote: I DONT THINK YOU LOOKED AT THE FILE SIZES AND THE TRANSFER TIMES OF THE FILES LISTED BELOW READ ALL OF BELOW THROUGH FOR FILE SIZES AND TIMES TAKEN(Copied from previous email) Connecting to 'TEST4'... - 29/09/2007 - 11:19:09 AM RFSM-8000, version 0.508, user license: BETA-TESTER - 29/09/2007 - 11:19:09 AM Maximum supported connection speed - 8000 bit/sec - 29/09/2007 - 11:19:09 AM Connected to 'TEST4' - 29/09/2007 - 11:19:17 AM 'TEST4' accept FTP-requests. - 29/09/2007 - 11:19:17 AM 'TEST4' accept MAIL-requests. - 29/09/2007 - 11:19:17 AM Receiving file 'ATT00017.jpg', size 28623 bytes, from 'TEST4'... - 29/09/2007 - 11:20:10 AM File 'ATT00017.jpg' received succesfully, all time 173 sec, average speed 1322 bits/sec - 29/09/2007 - 11:23:20 AM Receiving file 'ATT00023.jpg', size 39781 bytes, from 'TEST4'... - 29/09/2007 - 11:24:18 AM File 'ATT00023.jpg' received succesfully, all time 259 sec, average speed 1225 bits/sec - 29/09/2007 - 11:28:55 AM Receiving file 'ATT00011.jpg', size 16126 bytes, from 'TEST4'... - 29/09/2007 - 11:29:40 AM File 'ATT00011.jpg' received succesfully, all time 45 sec, average speed 2846 bits/sec - 29/09/2007 - 11:30:42 AM Receiving file 'ATT00020.jpg', size 35064 bytes, from 'TEST4'... - 29/09/2007 - 11:31:37 AM File 'ATT00020.jpg' received succesfully, all time 257 sec, average speed 1090 bits/sec - 29/09/2007 - 11:36:11 AM 'TEST4' request to read download directory 'C:\RFSM8000\TRANSMIT'... - 29/09/2007 - 11:36:19 AM Request for sending file 'filelist' to 'TEST4'... - 29/09/2007 - 11:36:19 AM Sending file 'filelist', size 643 bytes, to 'TEST4'... - 29/09/2007 - 11:36:29 AM File 'filelist' sended succesfully, all time 14 sec, average speed 350 bits/sec - 29/09/2007 - 11:36:44 AM 'TEST4' request to get file 'C:\RFSM8000\TRANSMIT\#70726153230- de VK2KDK-birds and bee.jpg'... - 29/09/2007 - 11:37:47 AM Request for sending file '#70726153230- de VK2KDK-birds and bee.jpg' to 'TEST4'... - 29/09/2007 - 11:37:48 AM Sending file '#70726153230- de VK2KDK-birds and bee.jpg', size 67971 bytes, to 'TEST4'... - 29/09/2007 - 11:38:09 AM File '#70726153230- de VK2KDK-birds and bee.jpg' sended succesfully, all time 405 sec, average speed 1342 bits/sec - 29/09/2007 - 11:44:54 AM Receiving file 'ATT00017.jpg', size 28623 bytes, from 'TEST4'... - 29/09/2007 - 11:45:36 AM File 'ATT00017.jpg' received succesfully, all time 90 sec, average speed 2531 bits/sec - 29/09/2007 - 11:47:24 AM Receiving file 'ATT00035.jpg', size 32482 bytes, from 'TEST4'... - 29/09/2007 - 11:48:12 AM File 'ATT00035.jpg' received succesfully, all time 117 sec, average speed 2214 bits/sec - 29/09/2007 - 11:50:26 AM Receiving file 'Hi-Q Hat + Hot Rodz addition.JPG', size 1089463 bytes, from 'TEST4'... - 29/09/2007 - 11:51:39 AM Announce your digital presence via our Interactive Sked Page at http://www.obriensweb.com/drsked/drsked.php Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [digitalradio] Re: 30 Meter PropNet Weekend October 6/7
Don, I have looked at the PropNet software and what it seems to be doing is acting as an unattended beacon. Also, I am not familiar with any allocated digital PSK31 portion of the band. Are you referring to the the automatic subbands? From Part 97: /(9) Beacon/. An amateur station transmitting communications for the purposes of observation of propagation and reception or other related experimental activities. Isn't this exactly what you PropNet is doing? It does not seem that the receiving stations are connecting with the transmitting station but are reporting their reception through the internet. Both APRS and PropNet appear to operate as beacons if they are unconnected. This is legal on part of 10 meters and other higher bands but not on HF. They don't seem to be operating as automatic stations where they are responding to interrogation by another station. They are just sending out unconnected packets or data which would seem to be a beacon. Does anyone have insight into this and how the rules cover these modes? 73, Rick, KV9U Don wrote: Hi Rick KV9U, You bring up a good point actually and don't blame you for asking the question. First I must say my choice of words might be misleading as I see it because I used `beacon' you might have reference to part 97 section 203 on beacons: http://www.arrl.org/FandES/field/regulations/news/part97/ http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/13nov20061500/edocket.access.g po.gov/cfr_2006/octqtr/47cfr97.203.htm A beacon may be automatically controlled while it is transmitting on the 28.20-28.30 MHz, 50.06-50.08 MHz, 144.275-144.300 MHz, 222.05- 222.06 MHz, or 432.300-432.400 MHz segments, or on the 33 cm and shorter wavelength bands Again my choice of words 'beacon' is incorrect because actually a PropNet PSK Station is using PSK31 within the allocated digital PSK31 portion of the band and not only transmits but receives other PropNet stations so it is not really a beacon since a beacon as described in part 97 section 203 is described as one way communications. I think the creator and owner of PropNet Ev W2EV had stated before on the question you ask saying: Sure! We operate under the same provision that APRS does in the USA: FCC Part 97.221. Obviously, this applies only to USA stations. http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/13nov20061500/edocket.access.g po.gov/cfr_2006/octqtr/47cfr97.221.htm You might email Ev W2EV (email [EMAIL PROTECTED] or ask http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PropNET-Online/ ) to ask him for the legal run down on this but to my knowledge it is a legal activity using a legal digital mode or I would not be participating or promoting illegal operation (I think PropNet has been covered by most all major Ham Radio Mags including the ARRL/QST, CQ, etc and Ev involved with the FCC over this subject matter and to date no issues). Again I would not operate or promote this if I thought it to be illegal. I actually have operated PropNet like any other digital mode of communication where as I'm sending out my call and information and receiving others. The neat thing about this is that it's all logged in a database for propagation study and also is set to a map for real time propagation mapping so everyone can see in real time the band activity. I don't know if my response helps but its my honest understanding and thought your question needed a response. We are trying to promote more 30m digital activity and if you can prove otherwise about PropNet then I surely would not promote it. We always have our regular Thursday and Sunday night 30m PSK nights and that has promoted more activity on 30m also (of course other modes other than bpsk31 are being use too). If you have time please give PropNet a look over and you can always use just the `lurker' mode for receive only and still participate by reporting what stations/areas you are receiving. The information will be sent automatically via the Internet to the PropNet map where your location and received stations will be listed. I can't participate the whole weekend and don't expect anyone to 24 x 7 (although in 'lurker mode' you really can participate 24 x 7)but when in the shack I will be sending out my call and participating the most I can. Thanks again for the reply. De kb9umt Don http://groups.yahoo.com/group/30meterPSKGroup/ http://www.30meterdigital.com
[digitalradio] ALE QRM
After the contact, I switched over to ALE 141A and listened for quite some time in unproto mode. Later on I heard an eastern station calling the HFN, which must be the HFLink Network. This can not be an automatic station as it was outside the automatic subband. I am not suggesting that it was the eastern station since I could not monitor ALE while in Olivia mode. This frequency turns out to be Channel 21, which is one of the 40 HF channels that is claimed by the HFLink group. It is still possible for the first operator to hear a mode being used on a given frequency and then when the second operator turns it over to the third operator, and the first operator can not hear the third operator, they may incorrectly assume that the frequency is not in use. This is one of the fairly downsides to having many digital modes that can not understand the content of most other modes (except for CW and voice). Even having an identifier would not help if they do not realize that the two stations are having a QSO. 73, Rick, KV9U John Bradley wrote: Hmm unattended soundings? John VE5MU *From:* digitalradio@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *On Behalf Of *Rick *Sent:* Monday, October 01, 2007 3:28 PM *To:* digitalradio@yahoogroups.com *Subject:* Re: [digitalradio] Re: Tests in ARQ FAE I just got off the air on 30 meters with N5UNB a few seconds ago. He had called CQ on Olivia 16-500 and we had a nice QSO. About half way through it I noticed some ALE 141A centered across our live QSO. It may be that they could not hear the TX station, but I am sure they could hear me, assuming there was a live operator on the frequency. My dial frequency is 10.136.5 to put the other station's Olivia signal in my sweet spot near 1500 Hz. Even with the ALE signal over the top of the transmitting station, I saw no hits on the Olivia signal. His reading on Multipsk was around -5 S/N. 73, Rick, KV9U
Re: [digitalradio] ALE QRM
Andy has some very good points, If you are a human operator and listen on the frequency for a period of time, ideally at least a few minutes if you do not use QRL or a voice equivalent, and do not hear any other activity, you may be fairly safe in assuming the frequency is not in use. It is not 100%, of course, since the hidden station could be transmitting and you can not detect that station. Unlike voice or CW, the 12 seconds (or whatever you have the parameter set to in the program), is quite a lengthy period of time. One partial solution would be to have a shorter QRL type of mode. In fact, it could even be QRL? in CW, since that is the only mode that can be used on all frequencies that digital modes can be used in the voice/image and text digital portions of the bands. Similarly, there would have to be some way for other stations to respond immediately that the frequency is in use and that would be very difficult to do without some major design changes in our digital programs. But it could be done if it was mandated. Incidentally, this is one of the benefits of ARQ operation between two stations. A third station will hear one of the two sides of the conversation so they know that the frequency is in use, even if they can not monitor the content. Unattended operation is considered illegal by the FCC here in the U.S. and this seems to be glossed over by the proponents of these kinds of automatic modes. As the FCC enforcement folks have said that all stations must have a control operator even if they are not at the control point. Mr. Hollingsworth has stated: Furthermore, automatic control does not mean unattended operation. and also Unattended operation is not authorized under the rules. And this is referring to repeater operation which many of us think of as being basically unattended much of the time. What he seems to really mean is that even if you are not directly controlling at the control point, you are always held responsible for your station activities because you are still the control operator. But realistically, there are unattended operations. Even ARRL has uses the word, even if the FCC does not. (There is no such thing as unattended operation in Part 97.) Some may think of beacon operation as being unattended. But beacons are normally not legal under Part 97, below 28.0 MHz, even though an increasing number of stations are effectively operating as beacons if they are transmitting without a human operator present and are doing it for such things as propagation studies. 97.3(a)(9)/ Beacon/. An amateur station transmitting communications for the purposes of observation of propagation and reception or other related experimental activities. This is exactly what PropNet and part of the time what ALE is doing, is it not? 97.203 (d) A beacon may be automatically controlled while it is transmitting on the 28.20-28.30 MHz, 50.06-50.08 MHz, 144.275-144.300 MHz, 222.05-222.06 MHz, or 432.300-432.400 MHz segments, or on the 33 cm and shorter wavelength bands. There are no lower frequencies where automatically controlled beacons are permitted by licensed radio amateurs in the U.S. If the control operator is present, then it is not automatically controlled and could be legal, as long as you listen before transmitting to insure the frequency is not in use. I have developed a number of questions that I will be forwarding to the FCC for help in understanding how the rules are being applied (or not being applied?). Before doing that, I have forwarded these questions to ARRL Regulatory Branch as of this morning, for their help in understanding why there seems to be a discrepancy between the rules and what is actually happening on the ham bands as of late. Depending upon their response, I will then contact FCC enforcement and find out their understanding. If a group member believes that I am not understanding Part 97 correctly, then please point out my error(s). I have asked this several times, and except for private e-mails on the subject, no one seems to want to deal with this issue. 73, Rick, KV9U Andrew O'Brien wrote: PC-ALE , and I assume Multipsk ALE, is designed to work in attended mode for almost all applications other than two likely scenarios. 1. Soundings: This now referred to as station ID by the HFLINK web site ( http://hflink.net/qso/). I think this is a fair description, since it simply sends the callsign this is K3UK for a 12 second period (approximately). It is likely that the station's ID will be sent , once, on all HF bands over a 5 minute period, usually once per hour 2. Individual Call: A station manually initiates a call to a station but PC_ALE uses look-up tables to determine which band to start on , and moves up or down the bands until al link is found , or all bands have been tried once and the attempt is ended. This is a longer call, similar yo a voice station sending P5DX de K3UK
Re: [digitalradio] Re: ALE QRM
When ALE is is used for selcal purposes, Part 97 allows this incidental use of tones, at least in the voice/image portions of the bands. I have not heard anyone comment negatively about that. As I had brought up earlier, it is when ALE is begin used for soundings or what is really beaconing. At this time beaconing is ilegal when a station is operated automatically. The ALE proponents have been rather clear about claiming that the soundings are needed specifically for propagation purposes. There is no need to know that they station is there to talk to. Compare this to the Aplink and Winlink systems of the past and the current Winlink 2000 system of today. Those stations were standing by on a series of frequencies in case they were interrogated by a human operator (or in some cases in the past were over the air machine to machine transmissions which is no longer done). They were following Part 97 rules. Clearly, before sounding operations can legally be done in automatic operation, the Part 97 rules need to be changed. A control operator who continues to send CQ when they are not at the control point, nor are operating under auxiliary modes, who also be in violation of the rules as you so noted. If you only wait 5 seconds before transmitting on a frequency (there are no channels in amateur radio except on 60 meters where ALE and digital modes are prohibited), you would not be waiting long enough to know if the frequency is available for your use. It may be occupied. If there were two stations in ARQ operation, and the ARQ was frequent enough, you would be able to hear at least one side of the circuit. However, asynchronous ARQ modes such as FAE and longer ARQ times may not be detected within 5 seconds. Waiting only 5 seconds on any new frequency that you are just monitoring before transmitting would be considered by most reasonable hams to be exceptionally poor operating procedure at what most would consider a true lid level. 73, Rick, KV9U Robert Thompson wrote: A couple of minor comments: 97.3(a)(9)/ Beacon/. An amateur station transmitting communications for the purposes of observation of propagation and reception or other related experimental activities. ALE as is normally used, is actually operated as a selective calling and linking interface. Rather than beaconing (transmitting without being interested in responses) specifically for propagation purposes, it is primarily doing a de CALLSIGN, here I am if you want to talk to me. The much vaunted propagation aspect is actually a secondary characteristic: While it's designed to speed up links, it does so by effectively sorting the bands in order of probability of success. This is good both because it reduces congestion on frequencies that wouldn't have succeeded for a link between this particular pair of stations. If that's beaconing, so is the user who leaves his keyer sending CQ. As far as the decode and understand of a QRL response, an ALE or other automatic (as opposed to unattended ;-) station does not need to understand the response, since the presence of *any* response is sufficient to tell the automatic station that the channel is in use. Basically, the existing occupant merely has to transmit *anything* within x seconds of the QRL? and the busy detector should notice it. It shouldn't be too difficult to add a user-configured option to the common ALE software implementations that does QRL? in 5 wpm CW, then waits 10 seconds before otherwise transmitting. That way we could see if it's useful in practice rather than continuously discussing it in theory. (on the pro side, it fits the expectation of other hams; on the con side, it jams the frequency about as effectively as a short sounding does, but without actually getting the job done) There's a good chance that the ALE software could gain 99% of the advantage available by simply listening an additional 5 seconds to the channel before transmitting. Basically, just add a longer listen window to the state machine in front of all initial transmit on this frequency cases, except cases where the frequency is known by the software to have been in use for valid ALE traffic within the past minute or so (in which case any interrupted QSOs chose to set up on a busy frequency, so they are the interlopers, not the ALE traffic)
Re: [digitalradio] Busy Channel Detection
Have other ALE users found that they could not transmit on a busy frequency when using PC-ALE? (Note: there are no channels on HF amateur radio frequencies except on 60 meters which prohibits ALE and digital operation of any kind). Perhaps I have things set up wrong, but I did a basic test of this recently and my rig transmitted right on top of another station. This was a test so I had the power turned to minimum (a watt or two at most). 73, Rick, KV9U expeditionradio wrote: A few weeks ago, during the discussion about busy detectors, I described some of the different busy detect systems that are currently in use by various comm systems. Ham radio ALE operators are some of the few on HF who are actually using busy detection on a regular daily basis. These are in use with ALE for manual, semi-automatic, and automatic operation. There are two levels of busy detect normally in use with ALE. Both of these are available in PCALE and ALE hardware radios: 1. The first, basic busy detection level for ALE, recognizes ALE signals and other digi or CW signals that are mostly sine waves within the active signal occupancy range of audio frequencies. This type of busy detect is always enabled on ALE systems, and cannot be turned off by the operator. It also is used to recognize signals and frequently causes the ALE controller to pause while scanning. It prevents sounding or calls on top of other signals. If a sounding or scanning call transmission is prevented by this detector, the ALE controller comes back to the channel and tries again a few minutes later. The purpose of this is to prevent signal collisions of any type, and the listen time constant is short. 2. The second type of ALE busy detection is commonly known as channel occupancy check, polite mode, or voice detect and it detects signals that are voice-like within, above, and below the active signal occupancy range of audio frequencies. It is normally selectable on/off by the operator, and the listen time constant is long. It is good to enable it whenever a scanning call is being made. If a sounding or scanning call transmission is prevented by this detector, the ALE controller comes back to the channel and tries again a few minutes later. It is mostly used for ALE operation on the voice channels, but it has some benefit for normal non-critical or non-emergency application on the data channels also. As implemented in many ALE systems this super-polite detector tends to falsely prevent ALE transmissions very often. It can often be a royal pain in the rear end because of the close spacing between signals found on the ham bands. 73 Bonnie KQ6XA .
Re: [digitalradio] Re: jt65a is an automatic mode
Robert, The reason that radio amateurs discussing automatic operation would use the term is primarily because that is the term used under Part 97. On the other hand Part 97 does not reference the word unattended. We need to insure we are talking the same language, and not substitute euphemisms for the actual terminology that we are working with in the rules. 73, Rick, KV9U Robert Thompson wrote: It would seem that automatic is a word that provokes un-helpful discussion. Since no meaningful discussion can be held without shared terms and meanings, maybe we could consider the following definitions rather than using the nebulous and diverse automatic: Unattended: Cases where there is no operator present in any meaningful sense. (I am not implying that this is legal or illegal, merely defining terms) Multiplexed:Cases (such as APRS, certain parts of ALE, etc) where the frequency may be shared among different protocols all expecting burst transmissions and possibly implementing ARQ or other methods of surviving interference. Programmatic: Appropriate in any case where there is a protocol controlling the contents of transmissions, (as opposed to strictly-brain-interpreted methods; after all, one *could* implement a packet BBS interface in international Morse over CW. It would be programmatic since the person would have to do what the BBS expected) Most multiplexed protocols and conversations are of course programmatic. A case where this is not so would be keyboard-to-keyboard over unproto ax.25 packets. That would be multiplexed but not programmatic. Not all programmatic protocols are multiplexed: any single-user BBS interface, for example, is not multiplexed. Any criticisms or improvements needed? -- Regards, Robert Thompson
Re: [digitalradio] ALE , J65, Pactor 1 thru ?, etc.
John, About the last person on earth that I would criticize for not operating would be Dave. I have no idea how he can do what he does with the creation and support for his DXLab suite of software which includes digital software as well. It is simply amazing. But even if any ham rarely operated on any modes, but mostly monitored, they would know quite well what is going on. Proper operation is very important to some of us. And the rules that hold true in one country, may not hold true in other countries. In fact, a group such as this one can help us understand that. It was only in the last few days that many of us even knew that some hams cannot use wide bandwidth modes on 30 meters that we can use here in the U.S. and you probably can in Canada. 73, Rick, KV9U John Bradley wrote: Allrighty, then! (climbing up on soapbox) I guess I am getting a little tired of these arguments about operating correctly. We all know the rules and most of us try to follow them. Sure, we screw up once in a while but so what? We learn for the next time. What bothers me more is that the folks who make the most noise and offer the most criticism of the modes Are not those who are using them. As an example, Dave, AA6YQ, has written numerous emails on digital radio Subjects, and yet I, for one have yet to work him in any digital mode, and I have been very active for the past number of years. I have meticulously checked all my logs, and surprise! No Dave. Everyone else is there, in fact many times over: Roger, Bonnie, Andy, Rick ,Jose, Txema and the list goes on, With many that I have missed mentioning who are active in this group. Just guessing, I would think that most folks have not come across Dave in their logs. Now that is not saying that Dave doesn’t have valid arguments- some of them are. I respectfully suggest, though That you get on these modes, get active and “walk a mile in our moccasins” to fully understand the nature of these modes. Ok Dave I’ll lend you the soapbox John VE5MU No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.488 / Virus Database: 269.14.0/1046 - Release Date: 10/3/2007 10:08 AM Announce your digital presence via our Interactive Sked Page at http://www.obriensweb.com/drsked/drsked.php Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [digitalradio] Busy Channel Detection
Thanks for confirming this, Andy, When I monitor the ALE frequencies, particularly the 14109.5 frequency, I do hear a fair amount of ALE throughout the day, and sometimes other modes. I admit that the stations that I am hearing are the same ones over and over and over. Generally speaking there are maybe 20 or 30 discrete callsigns that come up. Contrary to comments made by Bonnie, KQ6XQ, she does not own these 40 channels on HF that she is claiming for ALE use only with her outrageous comment that: It is likely that anyone who says they are getting their keyboarding QSO clobbered by ALE is intentionally provoking trouble by purposely operating in the automatic sub-band, right on top of the active ALE pilot freq Others have used this frequency for wide bandwidth modes for quite some time. It was even published long before any ALE operation. Some how these scofflaws need to back off a bit and rethink what the amateur bands are all about ... which is shared spectrum. Not shared for one mode, but shared for everyone. 73, Rick, KV9U Andrew O'Brien wrote: I have found that I could NOT transmit once. This was during the presence of a strong broadcast band station in the 40M band. I then tested by sounding on top of WWV, a strong SSb signal and a strong AM signal, each time PC-ALE attempted to transmit. Thus , I conclude that I need to be present during any sounding with mouse fingers close to the pause button. That said, it is RARE that my ears detect anyone on the ALE suggested sounding frequencies.
Re: [digitalradio] On PSK31 versus other modes
Consider that voice SSB requires over 2000 Hz for reasonable quality and 2700 Hz would be better. Speaking on the air may be about 120 wpm. That figures out to around ~ 20 Hz per wpm, give or take some. For passing traffic it would be much slower though with more Hz per wpm. PSK31 is about the narrowest mode available to communicate at that speed. Even CW may be around the same bandwidth (~ 60 Hz). This allows enormous numbers of hams to set their dial frequency at one point and must move their cursor to read out or even contact or call other hams. PSK31 can be sent at an average speed of around 40 wpm in that 60 Hz bandwidth, or 1.5 Hz per wpm. If you only look at throughput per bandwidth you find that if you need high speed, robustness, and accuracy, nothing can touch Pactor 2 and 3. If you need keyboard speed, then it likely be a different story. Scaling different modes, under moderately good conditions and using Patrick's Multipsk information and some averages with ARQ modes from KN6KB's RF Footprint Powerpoint: Mode bandwidth (Hz) / speed (wpm) = Hz/wpm Olivia 32/1000 - 1000 / 24 = 42 ALE MIL-STD-188-141A - 2000 / 76 = 26 Olivia 16/500 - 500 / 20 = 25 Olivia 8/1000 1000 / 59 = 17 FAE = 2000 / 150 = 13 MT63 1000 / 100 = 10 45 Bd RTTY 600 / 60 = 10 (some will consider this narrower and with a better score) MFSK16 - 316 / 42 = 7.5 Pactor 1 200 / 600/200 = 3 ThrobX - 94/40 = 2.3 DominoEX/11 194 / 77 = 2.5 PSK31 60 / 40 = 1.5 Pactor 2 700 / 500 = 1.4 Pactor 3 2400 / 2225 = 1 If you adjust some of the numbers for conditions where the S/N is well below zero dB, then I think it would change things a bit. Some of these numbers are guesstimates so if anyone has other suggested numbers, it might be interesting. The main thing is to look at the relative comparison. But we need to keep things in perspective, since all things are not equal and a wide footprint mode for keyboarding would be difficult to justify unless it had special abilities to handle difficult conditions as some of these modes have. I could do another SWAG on this with say, -5 or -10 S/N. 73, Rick, KV9U
Re: [digitalradio] RFSM8000
John, If this modulation is the MIL-STD/FED-STD/STANAG 8PSK waveforms, wouldn't they be at 2400 baud at all times? We can not use baud rates over 300 here in the U.S. on the text digital portions of the bands, but they could possibly be used in the voice/image portions for sending images/fax. Possibly packets could be received as long as you are not linked and the program can send unconnected packets? What will be extremely helpful is for any experiences you have with data throughput vs S/N and interference. It is still curious to me that the promoters of ALE modes do not test these protocols in the voice portions of the bands. Also on 6 meters and up. There has been absolutely no measurements of S/N in real world tests on the amateur frequencies that we have heard thus far. 73, Rick, KV9U John Bradley wrote: Tnx fer the note, Howard Over the next week or so ,we should have VE5GPM up and running 24/7 on RFSM 8000, not beaconing, but ready to receive calls and transfer files. VE5TLW and I will be working on learning the software and making a little noise with same. I think we will find an alternate frequency to play on since 14109.5 is busy with ALE soundings ,and will let you know what it is. To that end would welcome input from the US ham community since this is a more critical issue south of the border than here. I THINK that you are able to use the non-standard modulation which is 2.4khz wide , as opposed to the Mil Std 188 which is 3khz wide. You should be able to copy any packets in the Packet window. Again , get some opinions from others in the US as to whether this is legal , and where in the US band plan it could be used. At first blush , it certainly has some promise. John VE5MU
Re: [digitalradio] Re: Imitating the big guys
Demetre, We only need a modem with adaptive abilities for emergency communications messaging and files plus the use of e-mail or similar message store and forward systems. For normal keyboard use such modes are of limited value and since most take up a large amount of bandwidth, are to be avoided unless you need to use it. As an example, I would not normally use 2 kHz Olivia or MT-63 for a keyboard contact as that would be very poor operating procedures. However, if the conditions warrant the need for a better mode, I can support the wider modes. So a lot depends upon your operating interests. Very few hams are involved with emergency digital communications or with e-mail at this time. If e-mail actually became very popular, my view is that it would eventually have to be banned since it would take up too much band width. Same thing for phone patching, AM DSB operation, eSSB, etc. But since these niche interests are not done that much, they should have minimal impact on the majority of operators. It is my understanding that right now, the PC-ALE software program has the 8PSK2400 modem. While it can not be used on the text digital parts of the bands, it should be useful for at least testing the capabilities on the voice/image portions of the bands. Thus far, no one has come forward with any testing results. The only results we have heard about the Russian high speed modem, which uses the same 8PSK2400 waveform, or at least something very similar, is that it does not perform all that well. It may be that the reason for silence from the ALE proponents, who have built these modems into the programs, is that they don't work very well. I have asked many times and no response thus far. FAE is basically a slightly modified STANAG modem using the 8FSK125 mode. By the way, I would like to test this 8PSK2400 modem on the voice/image portions of the bands (as required here in the U.S.) and if anyone would like to test this, please contact me privately and we can try things out. We should be able to send picture files for sure. I should mention that in addition to contacting the ARRL CTO a while back about some of the questions I have vis a vis the FCC regulations, I had a number of further questions which I plan to send to the FCC. But before I did that, I sent them to the ARRL Regulatory Information Department and advised them that I had previously sent some of the questions to the CTO. They were not able to answer any of the questions that I had and forwarded them to the CTO, and I expect a response back soon. Then I will be sending a request to the FCC to determine their position (or lack thereof) on a number of digital issues that have not been dealt with here in the U.S. and I believe need to be fully vetted. Then we will have a better idea of what we can and can not do. And what we may want to request be changed. What bashing do you see towards Winlink 2000 in anything I have said? There is a very good likelihood that some illegal traffic is being sent since it is not possible for normal monitoring of other hams and, practically speaking, this is true even if you have the $1000 modem. We do know that some fake illegal messages were sent from EU in the past to test how well the system worked to detect business type messages. I don't know how many messages get through but some apparently do. Eventually, if the offenders are caught, they are blocked from using the system. The rules here in the U.S. are no different than when BBS systems are handling similar traffic. I agree that if we don't use a system regularly, then when we need it, we won't know how to use it, or little things will not be in place, etc. and it may not work. That is really the only reason that I can support e-mail via ham radio. If it was not for the emergency component or public service, I would strongly oppose this. As far as Linux OS goes, I have not been able to get it to work with my equipment to a satisfactory manner. It has to work at least as good as MS Windows XP and Vista, both of which are good for the end user. I have tried Linux off and on for over 5 years, but truthfully, the more I have used it and tried it out, the less impressed I have been:( I am sorry to report that, because I really thought that I would like it, considering the intense hype about Linux. 73, Rick, KV9U Demetre SV1UY wrote: Well exactly! In ham radio we need a robust mode that can function in bad conditions as well as in good conditions and using only our modest 100 watts HF radios with our 2.4 KHZ filters. That is why we need a good modem that can do all that. Well I hope we can soon see some decent results from soundcard modes, which I doubt will happen soon. Also ALE for me is ALE and STANAG is STANAG. Better not mix the 2. There is also ARQ FAE, which isn't ALE either. ALE can use any mode after the link has been established, unless I'm wrong. I don't understand why
Re: [digitalradio] Re: Imitating the big guys
I would hope that we continue to be progressive and develop new modes. Are you seriously saying that you oppose further development for keyboarding? And that we should no longer develop ARQ/robust modes because we have Pactor? Several of the modes I had referred to, such as AM and phone patching are very old technology and would not be considered progressive by anyone that has been involved in amateur radio for any length of time. On the other hand, we need to use some restraint if some automated modes become so popular that they disrupt shared frequencies. Amateur radio is not like commercial frequencies, even though some of you want this to change. All automated systems have some who are using it illegally to send commercial information. To think otherwise is very naive. I am not suggesting that Winlink 2000 is any different than other similar systems, only that we have no way of knowing because they do not share that information. They have shared that it does happen and that they do, in fact, remove and block people. I am also not saying that hams should not use e-mail via radio on amateur frequencies. But I am saying that if it became extremely common and disruptive, then many of us would demand redress and I can guarantee you that we would be able to get the rules changed. In terms of Pactor IV, if you noticed Steve H.'s recent comments on that very subject, it is likely that they would move toward the 8PSK2400 single tone modulation in order to get increased speed. What did you think of the information in the single tone modem document? In terms of computer OS preferences, I like to use the one that is commonly available and well supported so that my monitor can actually show proper resolution out of the box. XP and Vista does this flawlessly, Linux can not do this yet. Eventually it should do it. I have no problem with closed and proprietary software or FLOSS. I look for value and practical use as the most important things. Almost all the applications I use are open source or at least free software, whether Open Office, Thunderbird, Firefox, Media Monkey, and many ham programs. It is a constant progression from where we were at the beginning of computers. It won't suddenly stop, but will continue to evolve. 73, Rick, KV9U Demetre SV1UY wrote: We already have plenty of narrow soundcard modes for QSOing so I don't see the need for another one. We also have PACTOR I and II for QSOs which are ARQ and robust narrow modes. Plenty to pick from. Yes OK let's ban everything progressive. I am not aware of any illegal messages in WInlink2000. The authorities in USA are able to trace messages as they pass through Internet from the PMBOs, if this is your problem, so no need to worry about this. They would have been caught by now if it was a matter of illegal activities. So really only amateur traffic passes via the Winlink2000 system otherwise they would have been caught by the authorities. Anyone who mentions illegal traffic bashes Winlink2000, and you did. Hmmm. So digital radio hams are not supposed to use ham radio for e-mail. Well good job you are not the one who decides about our hobby then. Well keep using Microsoft then (a closed and proprietary system, just like an SCS modem) and stop complaining and preaching about open systems. I like to use both Linux and Microsoft even if I had to pay for Microsoft, just as I had to pay for my SCS modem, my HF radio etc, and even if Linux is more difficult, although I find UBUNTU and KUBUNTU a breeze to setup and use.
[digitalradio] Only using wide digital modes
Demetre, What you are recommending is completely unacceptable to 99.9% of all hams. Many of us operate various digital modes, both narrow and wide and in between. In the U.S., the text digital sub bands are anything that is not the voice/image sub bands. 73, Rick, KV9U Demetre SV1UY wrote: There is only a simple and logical solution. Don't operate anything else than wide digital in the digital subbands, just like noone in their right mind operates SSB in the CW portions of the bands.
Re: [digitalradio] Re: Busy frequency detection
Guys, Transmitting SSB in the text digital sub band is illegal in the U.S. All parts of our bands except for 60 meters permit digital operation of varying kinds. If you follow the rules you must transmit SSB in the voice/image portions of the bands. Same thing with digital voice or digital Fax or image. Text digital must be in the text digital portions. There is no CW sub bands here in the U.S. except that it is prohibited on 60 meters. In terms of the importance of Winlink 2000 over other shared bandwidth, here is the Administrator's point of view: And in an emergency, you should try to hit the PMBO that additional 20 percent period, when lives are at stake? This is how it is everyday on the public system. Everyday, someone would be within that 20 percent, not receiving information that effects their safety and well-being. Try being out there in the Dark, with lightning crashing all around, over 1,000 miles from anything known and not being able to pick up your WX. That may make a difference. Or, forget about everyday. During an emergency, when it is critical to get info through, you are in that 20 percent dwell. Or, someone plops down on you just for spite (happens all the time) and puts on a big fat carrier, and you cannot get through..Tell you what, you use it on the client end as an active agent and see how long it takes you to get a connection. Fact is, it is also inherently built into the SCS modem. Should not be difficult to get that going. 73, Rick, KV9U Demetre SV1UY wrote: --- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, Dave Bernstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [snip] Winlink's continuing refusal to deploy this solution can only be interpreted one way: our traffic is more important than your traffic; if we QRM you, too bad. Or to paraphrase Demetre, stay off our highway. Do you ever transmit SSB in the CW or DIGITAL subbands Dave? I'd love to see you doing that! 73, Dave, AA6YQ
Re: [digitalradio] Re: Busy frequency detection
Demetre, Here in the U.S. there are no wide digital sub bands. In fact, in the text digital sub bands there do not seem to be any legal limits as to the band width permitted at this time. Most radio amateurs would consider a voice SSB bandwidth mode to be about as wide as would be acceptable. Since Clover 2000 never became popular on ham radio, it was probably MT-63 that was the first wide bandwidth text digital mode around 1998, Pactor 3 started to be used around 2002 and Olivia came along about a year later. Any of these modes can operate throughout the text digital portions of the bands as long as a control operator is present. Is it possible that your country differs and that is why there is this apparent confusion on your part as the the rules we must follow here in the U.S.? Automatically operated stations were required to stay within narrow sub bands. They were typically the Winlink and AX.25 BBS systems where both stations were operating under automatic control. Because of the desire to operate wide bandwidth modes automatically, the rules were modified to allow such use, provided those wide bandwidth stations stayed in the automatic sub bands. Does anyone recall when the rules where changed to allow automatic stations under 500 Hz and only responding to a query from a human operator to be located at any place in the text digital portions of the bands? But the main thing to always keep in mind is that the rules here in the U.S. are crystal clear that no one owns a frequency. It is a shared resource. Not even the stations operating automatically can legally ignore that rule but there are some who wish the rule did not exist. 73, Rick, KV9U Demetre SV1UY wrote: Then why you should transmit any other mode in the wide digital subbands and complain that you have been QRMed by wide digital modes?
