Hi Gary, >>>>> On Wed, 2 Sep 2009 22:57:28 -0500, "Gary Wescom" <wescom at wildblue.net> >>>>> said:
> I just wanted to float this idea by everyone. If it is of some > interest, great. If not, only a few digital bits wasted. > While testing fldigi and flarq we found the flarq Plain Talk feature > very handy. It made coordinating our testing very easy. We were > running BPSK250. For running flarq, high data rates are good. > Hitting enter after typing a line of text causes flarq to send that > line and switch back to receive. It was similar to running vox on > SSB. When we screwed up and lost flarq Plain Talk communications, we > would switch over to fldigi keyboard-to-keyboard operation. After > Plain Talk, that felt a bit clumsy. Keyboard BPSK250 operation is a > bit silly. fldigi is screaming away sending the idle pattern while > infrequently a keyboard character sneaks out. > I don't suppose that idle time mattered for what we were doing but it > brings up the idea I've had. How about putting a feature in fldigi so > that it could be switched to an operating mode where pressing the > enter key causes what is in the transmit panel to be sent and then > automatically drop back to receive. This would allow a kind of Plain > Talk operation within fldigi. You can already do something like this, though not using the Enter key as in flarq. 1) In receive mode, type a line of text followed by ^r 2) Press Ctrl-T. The text up to and including the ^r is transmitted and erased, and fldigi goes back to receive. In the meantime you are typing the next line and so on. Remember that fldigi will pause transmission whenever it encounters the text cursor, so that must always be positioned past the text you want to send (and the ^r). > What I have in mind for this is net operation. Much of what goes on > in a net is basically one line transmissions, or at least often should > be, when real traffic is not being passed. I am picturing net control > having a few macros to run things while net check in could be done > with short on/off transmissions. Simple one liners in PSK250 take > less time to transmit than it takes me to slide the mouse cursor to > the transmit button. Things run a little slower in other modes but > mostly we will be running the fastest mode that provides reliable > communications. Whatever we can do to shorten needed transmission > time during an active net should be an advantage. > Transmission identification is an issue in this kind of operation. > What I think would work best is for each of these Plain Talk style > transmissions to start with an automatic header consisting of a CR/LF > to start the text on the left side of the screen, the transmitting > stations call sign, a colon, a space, and then the transmit buffer > text. It might sound a little cute to format a transmission like that > but for minimizing transmission time for net operation with several > stations on frequency, it might allow things to move along quickly. It is easy to prefix every line with some text. You would put that text in a macro and press the correct F-key at the beginning of each chunk of text you are sending. -- 73, Stelios, M0GLD.
