[digitalradio] Re: A new concept in digital mode band plans- reducing the number of tongues in the tower of Babylon

2010-03-24 Thread jhaynesatalumni
I think it's fair to discuss, which is to say question, whether
military standard ALE is the best thing to use on amateur
frequencies.  It's good to make use of existing standards when
they fit the situation, but military radio is not amateur radio.
With our crowded bands, and with amateur radios that are stingy
on the bandwidth, maybe we would be better off using something
like Patrick's ALE-400.

Jim W6JVE




[digitalradio] Re: New subject: FSK clicks

2010-02-28 Thread jhaynesatalumni


--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, Wes Linscott  wrote:
>
> The EPC PSK125 contest was in operation.  Is that possibly what you were 
> seeing/hearing?
> 
> Wes W1LIC
Well if PSK125 signals are clicky then that's just as bad as if
it's FSK.  However I was able to copy one or two of the clicky
signals as FSK RTTY.  Didn't try on all of them.




[digitalradio] New subject: FSK clicks

2010-02-27 Thread jhaynesatalumni
I was just listening on 80M - some kind of RTTY contest is on - and
I hear a bunch of normal-sounding FSK RTTY signals, and some that
are awfully clicky, like key clicks except it's FSK.  I wonder what
those guys are doing wrong.  Having the speech processor turned on,
perhaps?  Or too-rapid switching between mark and space?  Please
listen when you get a chance and see if you hear what I'm hearing
and if you can guess what is causing it.  On the waterfall it shows
up kinda like an overdriven PSK signal, but that shouldn't matter
so much for FSK.

Jim W6JVE



[digitalradio] Gtor

2010-02-23 Thread jhaynesatalumni
I guess I'm hearing a Gtor QSO right now, because every now
and then I get a screen message DATA: comp=Huffman, block=1
and that sort of thing.

but I also get CONNECT (greek)  TO (greek)
and DISCONNECT (greek)  FROM (greek)

never have seen any intelligible text.

This is on 3585.5 KHz and has been going on since about
0230Z here in NW Arkansas.



[digitalradio] Re: GTOR- has anyone tried this?

2010-02-23 Thread jhaynesatalumni
I think I have it working, but haven't heard any
signals or tried to contact anyone yet.  What works
is that if I punch CONNECT the transmitter gets keyed
and I can hear signal bursts going out on the sidetone.
And I guess I am receiving audio because I'm getting a
bunch of garbage on the screen with noise input.

Is there a procedure for calling CQ?  Or do you have to
have a definite call sign you want to connect to?
I assume that's what goes in the box that by default
contains GTORTOCALL



[digitalradio] Re: ROS Advantage- mode ranking

2010-02-22 Thread jhaynesatalumni


--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "John Becker, WØJAB"  wrote:
>
> Not really Jim
> I for one never stopped using the old machines.
> Therefore never had to bring em back out.
> It's the only way I do RTTY here.
> 
> John, W0JAB
> 
Cool!  I have a lot of TTY machinery out in my "baudy house" but
none of it is on the air right now.  I switched to sound card
RTTY back when K6STI's RITTY software first came out.  At my
request he did make available a cleaned-up Baudot output on one
of the connector pins so I could drive a Real Teletype printer
from it.






[digitalradio] Re: Curious sound card modes question -

2010-02-22 Thread jhaynesatalumni


--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "John"  wrote:
>
> Thanks Skip,
> 
> Unfortunately, this really does not get to the crux of my question(s). I 
> understand how an SSB transmitter works, but that is not really what I am 
> after.
> 
> What I am driving at is if like this. If I use DM780 to run some version of 
> digital mode via an SSB transceiver, it uses a tone or series of tone 
> modulation/shifting to create the output of the transmitter, and not one 
> single mode is called "spread spectrum" output, but is called FSK or PSK, 
> etc. Now, we get into the aforementioned discussion regarding ROS, and 
> suddenly, still via the microphone input of the same transmitter, those 
> shifted frequencies are now called "spread spectrum" instead. I am having a 
> great deal of difficulty understanding, other than the author happened to 
> call his scheme "spread spectrum" in his technical documentation.
> 

That's a good question.  If we run RTTY with 850 Hz shift like we
did in the old days, has that turned into spread spectrum?





[digitalradio] Re: GTOR- has anyone tried this?

2010-02-22 Thread jhaynesatalumni


--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "sholtofish"  wrote:
>
> 
> I tried some connects with Andy and Skip and can confirm the sound card 
> version of G-TOR works with a real G-TOR modem (my KAM-XL). Throughput got up 
> to 200 baud and of course no errors due to the ARQ.
> 
> The GUI is basic on the sound card program and not particularly intuitive but 
> it seems that sound card G-TOR is possible on Windows.
> 
> 73
> 
> Sholto
> K7TMG
>
That's really interesting.  I had no idea there was a sound card
modem for G-TOR, and of course G-TOR has seen very little use since
you always had to have a Kantronics TNC to use it.  Maybe somebody
can write up how to operate the sound card version.



[digitalradio] Re: Something to consider about external automatic antenna tuners

2010-02-22 Thread jhaynesatalumni


--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "Dave 'Doc' Corio"  wrote:

> However, there is one thing the tuner will NOT do. It will not remember
> any band or frequency, until the transmitter is keyed.
> 

Well, sure.  The only thing going from the radio to the tuner is
the antenna cable, so the tuner has no way to know that you
have changed frequency on the transceiver.  Whereas a tuner
built into the radio, or one made for the radio you have and
connecting to the radio with a control cable, can get frequency
information from the radio.  But the third-party tuner only knows
you have changed frequency when you tickle it with some RF.




[digitalradio] Re: ROS Advantage- mode ranking

2010-02-22 Thread jhaynesatalumni


--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, Alan Barrow  wrote:
 
> I've also observed a significant power mindset with many RTTY ops.
> Bigger is better.
> 
This pretty much comes with the territory.  I've been in RTTY since
the late 1950s, and I just remembered recently that back then we all
ran lots of power - had to, to get good copy.  I used a home-built
500 watt transmitter for a number of years, then switched to a TMC
rig with a KW linear amplifier.  Used that until the AMTOR mode
came along, and then I got a TS-940 and used that barefoot and other
radios in the 50-100 watt class ever since.  And I don't do much RTTY
anymore, but then nobody else does either except the DX guys and
contesters.




[digitalradio] Re: ROS Advantage- mode ranking

2010-02-22 Thread jhaynesatalumni


--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, Dave Ackrill  wrote:
> 
> Otherwise why so much RTTY on the bands? Even AX:25 is getting a bit 
> long in the tooth now, but people still struggle on with it...

My belief is that all the RTTY is largely from contesting and DX
chasing.  Those two operations have two things in common: they
benefit from very fast turnaround, and the operators don't care
much about the high error rate.  Other modes like PSK31 have a
longer turnaround time because they transmit for a second or so
before and after the keyboard text, while RTTY is immediate and
that translates into more contacts.  The operators don't care
much about all the errors because they already know what they want
to see.  They already know the call sign of the other station, and
they already know the signal report will be 599, so if the mess
on the screen looks like their call sign and QSL that is enough
to consider it a contact.  Then I guess there are a few people
bringing old mechanical Teletype gear back to life and using it for
rag-chewing for old times' sake.

Jim W6JVE



[digitalradio] Re: ROS, legal in USA?

2010-02-21 Thread jhaynesatalumni


--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "n9dsj"  wrote:
>
> Hi Jim,
> 
> Actually CHIP worked ok, especially on the low bands. The Virginia NTS net 
> used this and still may.

Worked OK, but I didn't think it worked as well as or better than
other modes that were more popular.

Jim W6JVE





[digitalradio] Re: ROS, legal in USA?

2010-02-21 Thread jhaynesatalumni


--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, KH6TY  wrote:
>
> I agree Dave, and Chip64 was abandoned over here on the same basis!
> 
I remember trying Chip64 without worrying about whether it was
legal.  I got the impression it was abandoned just because it didn't
work very well compared to some of the other modes that came out
about the same time.

Jim W6JVE




[digitalradio] Something to test

2010-02-20 Thread jhaynesatalumni
It would be interesting to try to find out how much ROS
interferes with other modes when it operates on top of them.
That is, if you had a RTTY or PSK or Olivia or some other kind
of QSO going, and a ROS signal started up in overlapping
bandwidth, does the ROS signal tear up the other-mode QSO,
or is its dwell time on any one frequency too small to have
much effect?

Jim W6JVE



[digitalradio] Re: Digital modes band plans.

2010-02-20 Thread jhaynesatalumni


--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, bruce mallon  wrote:
>
> I remember several spredsprectum people commenting that they didn't care if 
> they obliterated legacy modes.
>  
They didn't happen to be in the BPL networking business, did they?




[digitalradio] Buglet in ROS

2010-02-19 Thread jhaynesatalumni
A minor but annoying problem I'm having is that in Windows XP
it keeps maximizing the window without being told to.  I haven't
found for sure what triggers it, but just now I am monitoring
and a ROS signal came on and a second or two after the initial
tone the window maximized itself.

Yup, just happened again, started receiving and about 1 second
into the transmission it maximized the window.

Jim W6JVE




[digitalradio] Re: RTTY and mode selection on radios

2010-02-19 Thread jhaynesatalumni


--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "John Becker, WØJAB"  wrote:
>
> RTTY  "should"  be used in the LSB mode regardless of the band.

Well thats when you aren't using the FSK mode for RTTY; the FSK
mode does put it into LSB.
>  
> I don't use software for RTTY so I cant tell you a thing about that.
>
Users of software for RTTY have come around to using USB regardless
of band, just for the sake of uniformity.  In that case they use
a reverse shift switch in the software to make the signals come out
right side up.



[digitalradio] Re: RTTY and mode selection on radios

2010-02-19 Thread jhaynesatalumni
If the radio has RTTY as a mode, as does the TS-940 for
example, it means (1) there is an input on the back where
you put in a baseband signal and FSK comes out the antenna,
and (2) for receiving it will use a narrow filter and 
center the filter up around 2.2 KHz.  (By "baseband" I
mean the actualy RTTY signal at 45.45 baud, as would come
out of a Teletype keyboard.)  In the case of the TS-940
and other radios there is a misfeature that in SSB mode
you can't get the narrow filter switched in; you have
to use RTTY or CW mode to get the narrow filter.

The main reason you want the narrow filter is to suppress
strong signals that are in the IF passband of the radio but
not in the middle of the signal you are trying to receive.
Such signals will affect the gain of the receiver through
AGC action, so that the level of the desired signal goes up
and down as those off-channel signals come and go.  So you
want the narrow filter to have the AGC focus on the signal you
are trying to receive.

The reason the receiver puts the filter up at 2.2 KHz in the
FSK mode is that in olden days FSK signals were translated to
audio, originally at 2125 and 2975 Hz, later changed to 2125
and 2295 when 170 Hz shift came into use.  So if you were
using a typical RTTY terminal unit for receiving its input
frequency range would be up there.

Jim W6JVE






[digitalradio] Re: RTTY decoding

2010-02-17 Thread jhaynesatalumni


--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, Sven  wrote:
>
> Hi,
> I' ve searched the Internet for RTTY decoding methods and found the following:
...
> Are there other known methods and who knows something about or can explain 
> the above decoders ? How do they perform in a noisy environment ?
> 
I'm far from expert and up to date, but let me reveal how little I
know.

The original concept for FSK was to use a separate filter and detector
for mark and space and combine the outputs of the two detectors by
taking the difference or by running them into oppositely-poled
windings of a polar relay.  This was worked on by Schmitt of Teletype
and by Armstrong about the same time.  Presumably they were unaware
of each other's work.  Both of them hoped that noise would affect
both detectors equally and cancel out.  Carson of AT&T showed that
this hoped-for effect would not work, although he may have missed
that the two-frequency scheme has an advantage over make-and-break
keying because the transmitter is transmitting all the time; hence
the transmitted power is higher with FSK than with make-and-break.

Armstrong went on to develop FM as we know it, with a limiter
followed by a discriminator.  The next incarnation of FSK reception
used the same principle.  FM systems have a threshold property:
with SNR above threshold they improve the SNR in the output signal,
and with SNR below the threshold it gets even worse in the output.

A professor at MIT proposed using positive feedback aound the
input filter and limiter.  This has the effect of sharpening
the threshold.

In the 1960s some hams got interested in returning to the
limiterless two-tone schemes.  Some of this was probably a
revival of Armstrong's hope, unaware of Carson's rebuttal.
I only became aware of the Armstrong and Carson material in
the last year or two.  In two-tone systems there is a definite
advantage if the transmitting station is using "diddle" as this
gives both detectors some signal to chew on all the time; there
are no long pauses when only the mark signal is present and
the space detector forgets how strong its signal was.

Work continued on terminal unit designs as new ICs came along,
such as the phase locked loops.  There was also a scheme that I
don't know if anybody ever tried, called frequency feedback.
This uses a VCO heterodyned with the input signal and controlled
by the discriminator output.  It does not phase lock, but
reduces the apparent shift of the signal so that a narrower
filter can be used ahead of the discriminator.  L-C filters
gave way to active filters and then to switched-capacitor
filters, the latter making it easy to vary the center frequency
of the filter to accomodate odd shifts and arbitrary audio
frequencies.

There may have been some work done with DSP using some of the
DSP-engine development kits that I am unaware of.  Then about
1996 K6STI announced his RITTY program, using the ordinary
486 or Pentium PC with a sound card to do DSP.  One of his
innovations he called the "digital flywheel".  This took advantage
of the constant character rate, if the sender was using diddle
or was sending from a file, to lock to the character rate and
use matched-filter detection.  He continued developing and
improving this software for the next four years or so.  I
believe he achieved about the best that can be done for FSK
reception.  He pulled the product off the market when some
people cracked his copy-protection scheme and also when the
original sound-card PSK31 software came out and was offered free.
Today you find the vast majority of rag-chewers have switched
from RTTY to PSK-31 because the latter usually performs better
for a given SNR.  RTTY continues to be popular for contests and
DX because of its more rapid turn-around and because you don't
care that much about errors when you already know pretty much what
the other station is going to say to you.

I'll confess I don't have any idea what algorithms the various
RTTY demodulators are using today.

Jim W6JVE




[digitalradio] Re: Comparison of RTTY software sensitivity

2010-01-22 Thread jhaynesatalumni
Now I don't know about TrueTTY, but MMTTY has a number of things
you can play with in terms of the filtering and detection, so I
wonder if we could get some comparisons of those - or at least
tell us what the setup was when it was tested.

Jim W6JVE




[digitalradio] Re: Comparison of RTTY software sensitivity

2010-01-22 Thread jhaynesatalumni


--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "Vojtech"  wrote:
> 
> Both yours and Alex's graphs show superiority of TrueRTTY and MixW. I wonder 
> whether TrueRTTY is doing synchronous detection. This is what I plan to try 
> when I retire, hi.
> 

There used to be the K6STI RITTY program which does synchronous
detection.  I wish we had a comparison of it with some of the
modern RTTY software.  Trouble is, RITTY requires a DOS
environment and a SoundBlaster ISA sound card, and you don't
find those much anymore.  And it's no longer on the market.

I was really excited when it came out, because I had wanted to do
synchronous detection for a long time.  However it didn't appear
to be all that helpful, maybe a db or two.

Then PSK31 for the sound card modem came out and most of the 
rag chewers switched to that from RTTY.

Jim W6JVE



[digitalradio] Mystery signal on 75M

2010-01-11 Thread jhaynesatalumni
I was listening on the top end of 75M this afternoon about 4PM
CST and heard a strange wideband signal, sounded a little bit like
rushing wind.  Brought up a digital waterfall and found that it
extended from 3990.15 to 3997.85.  The waterfall display was rather
blotchy, suggesting some internal structure, tho I'm not clear on
how many carriers might be present or what their spacing is.

I was beginning to suspect the neighbor's cable TV box which has
put noise on some other frequencies, but then the signal went away
about 5PM CST.  I've heard the signal before, but didn't note
the times and spectrum.  This is in NW Arkansas.



[digitalradio] Re: CSS to release The PK-232 25th Anniversary Software CD

2010-01-09 Thread jhaynesatalumni


--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, Mark Thompson  wrote:
>
> CSS to release The PK-232 25th Anniversary Software CD

> A pre-order price of $139.95 is available at the CSS online store at 
> http://www.cssincorp.com. 

What a deal!  Just the thing to run on your 8088 PC.



[digitalradio] Re: Dxing and long winded digital ops

2009-12-27 Thread jhaynesatalumni
I would love to have rag chews with DX stations, but in fact
I just about never answer CQs from DX stations because they
seem to automatically assume that I'm only interested in bagging
a DX QSO for DXCC or something and they terminate the contact 
right away.

Jim W6JVE 




[digitalradio] Re: what's the latest on WINMOR

2009-12-21 Thread jhaynesatalumni


--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "aa777888athotmaildotcom"  
wrote:

> Just send to your Winlink account. That would be your calls...@... However 
> note carefully the spam control features that are in effect at 
> http://www.winlink.org/help. You may need to add "//WL2K" to your subject 
> line.
> 
> Waiting mail is automatically transferred when you connect to a Winmor RMS 
> server station.
>

Thanks to Yahoo that callsign@ address got obscured, but I would
guess it is callsign at winlink dot org.  Do I have to register with
winlink to have that work, or does it just happen?

Jim W6JVE



[digitalradio] Re: what's the latest on WINMOR

2009-12-20 Thread jhaynesatalumni


--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "aa777888athotmaildotcom"  
wrote:
>
> There are now 4 beta RMS server stations on the air. I've transferred mail 
> to/from the real world through one of them. 

I've sent mail from radio to Internet through a couple of them.
What do you have to do to send mail in the other direction?




[digitalradio] Which is a better rig for digital work?

2009-12-13 Thread jhaynesatalumni
FT-1000MP or TS-850S with DSP-100?

Jim W6JVE



[digitalradio] Re: 7036kHz Digital ops

2009-11-28 Thread jhaynesatalumni
But it's not ARRL vs. IARU in this case; it's FCC versus the
rest of the world.  7070 is not in a phone band in the U.S., but
is in some other countries.  If it were in a phone band in the
U.S. then U.S. hams would not be able to operate digital modes
there.



[digitalradio] Is there a convention for stereo phone plugs?

2009-11-27 Thread jhaynesatalumni
I've never known if there is a standard for whether tip or
ring is left or right channel.  And is left or right normally
used for the computer DSP radio software?



[digitalradio] Re: Mail/File Tranfers on HF: Some Reflections on Winmor, PSKMAIL, FIdigi, and ALE.

2009-10-13 Thread jhaynesatalumni
Thanks for the fine review.

It seems like the main thing WINMOR wants to add is the ability to
switch the data rate on its own, going faster when conditions are
good and slowing down when they are bad.  This is something Clover
tried to do, but apparently was imperfectly implemented and hasn't
been worked on in years.

So maybe we need to ask the fldigi developers for some hooks into
the program that would allow changing modes on the fly, perhaps
using RSID to let the receiving station know what is going on.

That makes me wonder about PSKmail, which I haven't tried yet.  I
see a message just after yours that someone's server is going to 
be running THOR.  I wonder if I could be trying all day to connect
to a PSKmail server and failing because I don't know which mode
it is expecting.  Is there some provision for using RSID and
beaconing to announce its presence and the mode it expects?




[digitalradio] How does one get started with pskmail?

2009-10-07 Thread jhaynesatalumni
Is there a document?



[digitalradio] Why so much interest in WINMOR?

2009-10-01 Thread jhaynesatalumni
Seems like people are falling all over one another to
participate in WINMOR testing, yet we have other ARQ schemes
that aren't getting exercised at all.  I don't understand it.

Jim W6JVE



[digitalradio] Re: An open letter: W1AW and 80m psk31 interference

2009-09-24 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, Rik van Riel  wrote:
> In my opinion, the why isn't nearly as important as the fact that
> we have a problem on the band nowadays.  The fixed frequency psk
> kits have been built and cannot easily be changed to another
> frequency.

Easily changed by changing the crystal I guess, but then people
have to decide which frequency to use for the crystal.  Or
substitute a VFO.  So it seems we have color TV to blame for
the fact that there is only one usable frequency on the 80M band.
It's just a happenstance that the color TV frequency is in the
CW portion of the 80 meter ham band.  The amateur way has always
been to QSY to get away from interference, rather than assigning
exact channels to various users.  I just don't have much sympathy
for hams who marry themselves to a particular frequency because
the crystal for it happens to be lying around everywhere.

As for whether W1AW should listen before transmitting - I don't
expect many of the QRP rigs that are stuck on that frequency
are audible in Newington.






[digitalradio] Re: An open letter: W1AW and 80m psk31 interference(A dissent)

2009-09-23 Thread jhaynesatalumni
Maybe I haven't been paying attention, but what is it that
makes 3580 a sacred gathering place for PSK?  Why isn't it
070 like it is on some other bands?  Why can't we just QSY
to get away from W1AW?




[digitalradio] Re: Best Software

2009-09-02 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "vrygood10"  wrote:
>
> Hello All,
> Is there any software out there that will identify and display
> all hf digital signals..
> I can identify some of the signals but there are many I can not..
> 
> Norman
>
If you're talking about amateur signals, then the advice given in
response to your question is good.

If you're talking about digital signals in general, well, there is
some expensive SWL stuff like Hoka and Skysweeper.  There used to be some 
modems such as the Universal Radio M-7000; and you can find those on ebay 
sometimes.



[digitalradio] Re: More RSID - PLEASE!

2009-07-25 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "Ed Hekman"  wrote:
>
> I was monitoring PSK on 20 meters today with DM780 V5.0 Beta when a window 
> pops up in the lower right corner of the screen that says, "MFSK32 
> transmission on 2632 Hz.   Click here to select."  

I guess I could go read the manual, but, Simon, what is the criterion
for the software to make such an announcement?  I mean, the band
might be full of various kinds of transmissions, so how does it
decide which one(s) to announce?

Jim W6JVE




[digitalradio] Re: Zapped PCs, data recovery, and Windows !

2009-07-25 Thread jhaynesatalumni
Even though you cannot in general boot a computer with a C: drive
from a different computer, the BIOS should tell you if it sees the
drive.

After a lightning strike a month or so ago I had two computers
dead.  Each of them had two hard drives.  I was able to learn
from the BIOS that the C:  drives were both dead, but the other
drives were still usable - and they had all my important stuff on
them.  However this shows the hazard of having your backups on
one computer and the live stuff on the other - I could easily have
lost both the live stuff and the backups at the same time
if the two slave drives had not survived.

I'll have to figure out a better way to keep my backups safe.

Jim W6JVE




[digitalradio] Re: QRV ALE-400 ARQ chat mode -- 14074.0

2009-07-03 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, Rick W  wrote:
>
> It seems that there are only a handful of hams who have any interest in 
> ARQ modes for chatting.

I guess I'm one of that handful, but right now I'm working my way
back from some lightning damage that killed two computers, among
other things.

Jim W6JVE




[digitalradio] Re: WTD a baudot to ASCII / ASCII to Baudot terminal program for PC not sound card

2009-06-30 Thread jhaynesatalumni
Google for  rtty12git's in BASIC and comes with the source.




[digitalradio] Re: Manual for Hal ST-8000A

2009-06-25 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "Ken LoCasale"  wrote:
>
> Does anyone know where I can get a manual or copy for an, st-8000a?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> ken - wa4mnt
>
You can order a copy from HAL, and if anybody else publicly offers
you a copy then HAL is likely to jump on him about the copyright.



[digitalradio] Re: Spotted on Usenet: running HRD under Linux with Wine

2009-06-24 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, David  wrote:
>
> Hi Mike.
>

Trouble is, I'm not Mike - I just cut and pasted Mike's message
from the other group.  So we need other resources to learn how
he did it.




[digitalradio] Spotted on Usenet: running HRD under Linux with Wine

2009-06-23 Thread jhaynesatalumni
From: m II 
Newsgroups: rec.radio.shortwave
Subject: Ham Radio Deluxe on Linux

It took a while to get it working right. there was a lot of fiddling
with the 'Wine' setup.

http://encyclopaedia-galactica.org/screenshot.png

This thing has enough bells and whistles to last a lon, long time.





mike




[digitalradio] Re: New version of Mixw

2009-06-15 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, chas  wrote:
>
> Rick W wrote:
> > What is the attraction of MixW now that we have so many other multimode 
> > digital programs that are freely available with one program even open 
> > source and cross platform?
> > 
> > 73,
> > 
> > Rick, KV9U
> 
> Rick, nearly all members of Texas Army MARS and Region 6, are using 
> MixW.  idly curious, what else is out there that can even almost 
> compete with Nick's software??
> 
> look and feel is not a consideration but what else has all the 
> features of or even is better than, MixW?
>
No, let's get back to Rick's question and ask what it is about
MixW that you find to be superior to everything else out there.
I downloaded a trial version of MixW long ago and wasn't impressed
enough to want to go further with it.  What am I missing?

Jim W6JVE




[digitalradio] Re: backup

2009-06-11 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "Simon \(HB9DRV\)"  wrote:
>
> FWIW with the exception of laptops I always run RAID 1 (mirror). I've had 
> disks die but never lost data as a result in far too many years of coding.

Note that RAID is protection against a disk failure, but not against
some other kinds of mishaps.  If you, or your computer, should
accidentally delete or scribble on some files it will corrupt the
RAID copies equally.  So it's good to have backup copies that are safe
from that kind of destruction.




[digitalradio] Re: Olivia

2009-05-02 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "Siegfried Jackstien" 
 wrote:
>
> i like the ida of automatic changing of the modes . would act as pactor 
> 123 .

But the reason Pactor can do that is that the sending station is
constantly getting acknowledgment packets that tell it how the
last sent packet got through, or did not.  We would need a wrapper
around Olivia or PSK that would send signal-quality responses so
the sender could adjust its speed.




[digitalradio] Re: Olivia

2009-04-30 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "Simon \(HB9DRV\)"  wrote:
>
> Would not WINMOR be an option here?
> 
Well, except that WINMOR seems to be single-mindedly a message
passing mode.  I wish there was some layering so that the modulation
means and the error correcting means and the message passing were
separable.  Of course adapting to varying conditions means some
communication down through the layers, changing the modulation
scheme when error control indicates that is needed.

CLOVER had that kind of operation - trouble is that it (amateur
version) seems to lack the ability to go downhill when conditions
worsen - it's aggressive enough about going uphill when conditions
permit.  Times I have used it, it would invariably get stuck
trying to send long blocks that never made it through, when shorter
blocks probably would have been successful.

Jim W6JVE




[digitalradio] Re: popular software

2009-03-31 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "ww6aa"  wrote:
>
> i am new to dig.radio and apologize for asking a question that i am sure has 
> been answered many times, but search came up with >1000 replies.  What 
> software seems to be most popular @ this time
>
You mean today?  Or last week?

Seriously, a lot of people get started in digital radio with
Digipan and PSK31 on Windows.  Or do RTTY with MMTTY and Windows.

Then many move on to multimode programs.  I've been talking to
lots of hams lately who use HRD Ham Radio Deluxe with DM780.
Haven't tried it yet myself.  I've been using MultiPSK, which
has a pretty intimidating user interface but does an awful lot
of modes if you want to try them all.  I still occasionally
talk to people using MixW.

Then there is fldigi, which is one of my personal favorites,
mainly because it does a lot of modes and works under Linux and
Windows both.  I prefer Linux but keep Windows around so I can
run the software that doesn't work under Linux.

Jim W6JVE



[digitalradio] Re: Another "what is this mode" question

2009-03-31 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, Andy obrien  wrote:
>
> What frequency was this mode?
>
Oh, about 7073.  There was an Olivia signal nearby, which made
it easy to see that the displays were different.  Olivia looks
more random, like snowfall, whereas this signal seemed to have
a pattern to it.



[digitalradio] Re: Another "what is this mode" question

2009-03-31 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, Mike Blazek  wrote:
>
> Hi, Jim:
> 
> Might have been MFSK16?
> 
> Mike N5UKZ
> 
Nope, MFSK16 is much narrower than 500 Hz.  And I tried MFSK32
with no results.




[digitalradio] Another "what is this mode" question

2009-03-31 Thread jhaynesatalumni
I was listening to some stuff last night on 40M, and it was clearly
500 Hz wide and about 16 discrete tones, but it was not Olivia and
I couldn't find anything else that would decode it either.  Tried
Contestia and RTTYM and various settings of Thor and DominoEX.
The signals looked and sounded a bit different from Olivia - with
Olivia the spots on the waterfall seem to be more or less random,
whereas with the mystery signal they seemed to be more clustered
around a frequency a little below the center of the group.  And
seemed to have more of a pattern to them.

Jim W6JVE




[digitalradio] No FCC data bandwidth limit on HF Re: USA ham rules

2009-03-26 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "Dave AA6YQ"  wrote:
>
> Thanks.
> 
> To repeat my first question, "What's the bandwidth of an FSK signal whose
> shift is 1 kHz and whose symbol rate is limited to a maximum of 300 baud?
> Feel free to parametize as necessary."
> 
Using the approximation I just posted, treat it as a pair of
on-off keyed carriers 1 KHz apart.  For 300 baud the dot-cycle
frequency is 150 Hz, the frequency of a square wave made up of
1010101010...  So you're going to have the first pair of
sidebands at 150 Hz each side of the carrier, or a total width
of 1300 Hz, with a big hole in the middle.  Then depending on
signal shaping you'll have the higher-order sidebands in there,
the third harmonic at 450 Hz each side of the carrier for a
total width of 1900 Hz.  With random signals rather than the
square wave the general shape of the spectrum will be filled in
under the shape of the square wave signal.

Or you can answer the question experimentally by generating such a
signal with your radio and looking at the waterfall or spectrum
display.

Jim W6JVE




[digitalradio] Re: Bandwidth v Shift in RTTY ?

2009-03-26 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "expeditionradio"  
wrote:
>
> Hi Andy,
> 
> There is no simple universal relationship between 
> the "shift" and the transmitted "signal bandwidth", 

However, for the particular case of binary FSK where the
shift is wide compared to the bit rate, you get a reasonable
approximation by treating the signal as a pair of carriers
being switched on and off alternately.  For each carrier you
get pairs of sidebands.  For the worst case of a square
wave digital signal you'll get sidebands at the dot-cycle
frequency and odd multiples thereof.  So, depending on signal
shaping, the signal at 850 Hz shift will have a bandwidth 
extending over about 950 Hz with a big hole in the middle.




[digitalradio] Re: ALE musings

2009-03-04 Thread jhaynesatalumni
Rats!  I just hit the wrong key and sent an unintended
message.  Wish I could delete it.  And before that I had
written a lengthy comment which Yahoo seems to have lost.
So I'll try again.

Seems like there are several aspects to ALE

One is the notion of going through a list of frequencies in hopes
of finding one that works for the station(s) you are trying to
contact.

Another is the set of MIL STD modems, codecs, and protocols that
implement the system as we know it.

Now the frequency jumping part is something we could call "HF
Radio for Dummies" and I don't mean Dummies as a pejorative but
rather in the sense that has sold all those yellow books.  It
means you can get right to the point of communicating without
first having to learn a lot of arcane stuff about propagation
modes and times and seasons.  And even the experts are sometimes
fooled by propagation, so ALE may succeed at times when the experts
tell you it could not.

As for the MIL STD part, it's good that these things are being
standardized, and we know the military spares no expense in search
of the best communication technology.  Still, I wonder if these
modems and codecs and protocols are necessarily the best for the
amateur service, considering the legal restrictions we operate
under, the kinds of equipment we have to use, and the operating
conditions we encounter.  (Rhetorical question: Separate the
frequency scanning from the modem/codec.  What if we had
a system that could scan through a list of frequencies but used
PSK instead of the MIL STD modem/codec?)

Another aspect is the use of ALE as a communication medium in
its own right versus the use of ALE to find a usable channel
for further communication in some other mode.  Speaking only
for myself, I'm a keyboard mode operator so I don't get excited
about using ALE to initiate a contact that will be continued
in SSB voice.  And I can't see myself using ALE to establish
a contact and then saying, "let's QSY to such-and-such a
frequency and continue in PSK63."

Finally, it seems ALE is best suited to establishing communication
with a particular station, or with a group of stations having 
a common interest.  This probably affects the number of hams
who are interested in trying it.  I used to keep a weekly sked
with a friend; ALE might have been helpful to us in finding 
the best frequency to use on any given evening.  Back in the late
1950s I was in a RTTY roundtable of friends practically every
night.  ALE would probably not have been helpful then.  Some hams
chase DX, some contest, some are interested in emergency
services, some do it all.  ALE serves some of these operating
styles and not others.




[digitalradio] Re: ALE musings

2009-03-04 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "expeditionradio"  
wrote:
>
> > Andy K3UK wrote:  
> > Bonnie,  I have no doubts about automatic 
> > link establishment.  It seems like a most 
> > logical method of establishing communications.  
> > I added the rather provocative end to my 
> > earlier post because I am not sure WHY ALE, 
> > in its present amateur radio configuration, 
> > is needed .  
> 
> Perhaps the best answer to your question may 
> be in the form of questions for you: 
> Why is "CQ Contest" needed?
> Why is "You are 5-9" needed?
> Why is a repeater needed?
> Why is a weekly net needed?
> 
> The purpose is similar. 
> 
> Bonnie KQ6XA
>




[digitalradio] Re: Some More Thoughts On WINMOR and Winlink

2009-03-03 Thread jhaynesatalumni
I have a friend who years ago twisted my arm to get me into
Clover.  Back then the original Clover modem, the PCI-4000
was arguably more costly than the SCS modems in constant dollars.
We used to keep skeds and use it conversationally - he seemed
to really enjoy the quasi-full-duplex operation where we could
both be typing at the same time and our two-way communications
were going along with the ACK and NACK signals.  Eventually we
gave up on Clover, partly because we both got busy with other
things, but also because Clover seemed to have a particular
shortcoming: when the channel quality deteriorated it would
keep trying unsuccessfully to send a long block, instead of
dropping back to a shorter block that might have a chance of
getting through.  But when it worked we did enjoy the error-
free conversations under band conditions that were too bad for
the only other keyboard mode we had at the time, which was RTTY.

Jim W6JVE




[digitalradio] Possibly an important article

2009-03-03 Thread jhaynesatalumni
The new (March 2009) issue of Communications of the ACM has an
article by Guruswami and Rudra, "Error Correction up to the
Informaton-Theoretic Limit" that may be important.  I'm not
enough of a theoretician to say whether it is or isn't.

Jim W6JVE



[digitalradio] Re: Some More Thoughts On WINMOR and Winlink

2009-03-03 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "Andrew O'Brien" 
wrote:

> I assume that many people know already, but just in case there are
> some that do not, WINMOR will not be a digital mode that your can use
> for keyboard "chats" or QSOs, it is intended to allow you to connect
> to a HF Radio Message Server and unload your email formatted messages
> .

The part of this I know, but don't completely understand, is -
there is going to be some kind of modem, and some kind of codec,
and some kind of ARQ protocol on top of that, and then the
application that sends and receives messages as part of Winlink
or Paclink or whatever.  Is there something unique about the
modem that makes it better than some of the others we are now
using for keyboard chats as well as for the Winlink application?
Same for the codec?




[digitalradio] Re: on another note

2009-02-26 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "W5XR"  wrote:
>
> I'm asking. :)
>  
> Bob, W5XR.

O.K.

For START-STOP synchronization to work the receiving shaft (selector
or distributor) has to stop between characters.  The Morkrum Co.
(ancestor of Teletype Corp.) had the sending and receiving distributor
shafts running at different speeds, so the receiving distributor
completed its rotation part way through the STOP pulse and was
held there until the next START pulse.  the STOP pulse was the
same length as all the others, so it was 7.0 unit code.

Western Electric had built some teleprinters of their own, and
in theirs the transmitting and receiving distributors were on the
same shaft.  So to give the receiver a chance to stop they had to
stop the transmitter between characters.  They did this by adding
a relay to operate the transmitting distributor clutch.  At the
speed they were running at the time,  something like 45 wpm,
the relay added a delay in milliseconds that was equal to 0.42 of
a pulse duration.

When Western Electric discontinued making their own teleprinters
and started buying from Morkrum they insisted on interoperability
with the W.E. machines.  Morkrum didn't want to use a relay in
the transmitter clutch, so they simply elongated the STOP segment
on the transmitting distributor to 1.42 times the length of the
other segments and changed the shaft speed to keep the pulse
duration the same.  So we got 7.42 code; and this continued as
speeds were increased and after the Western Electric equipment
had all been phased out.

Western Union didn't have the problem of interoperability with
old Western Electric designs, so they insisted on 7.0 unit code
because of the slightly higher speed that gives, roughly 65 wpm
instead of 60.  For many years Teletype had to make equipment
that could transmit either way, by supplying the appropriate
transmitter cam and gear.  The printers all had no trouble copying
7.0 unit code.

At 100 wpm, 7.42 unit code gives a speed of 74.2 baud.  At some
point the U.S. military decided to round that up to 75 baud,
and then to standardize on speeds that are 75 multiplied by a
power of two, so we got 75,150, 300, 600, 1200, etc. for our
terminals and modems.

For some reason Europe standardized on 50 baud and 7.50 unit code;
I can only assume that some equipment manufacturer had trouble
with a unit-length STOP pulse and needed extra time to get the
receiver stopped.




[digitalradio] Re: on another note

2009-02-25 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "Patrick Lindecker" 
wrote:
 
> A synchronous RTTY under Windows is possible with a standard symbol 
> synchronization (with or without a PLL which can be seen as the
"digital 
> flywheel"). However, the stop bit (1.5 symbols) complicates all as
it is not 
> an integer multiple of the symbol length.
> 
> Now, RTTY must be supposed to be asynchronous to be compatible with
all RTTY 
> apparatus and programs. Let's work on more modern modes...

I did some work earlier with "compatible synchronous RTTY" using
7.00 unit start-stop code, to make it easier to synchronize.
Even mechanical TTY machines can easily receive 7.00 unit code.
I built a transmitting converter that would send the 7.00 unit
code, and insert fill characters (LTRS or FIGS) if there was
no input character available when one was called for.  Another
ham was working on the receiver - I don't know if he ever got it
working.

Then years later K6STI did his "digital flywheel" and he said it
didn't matter that the character length was not an integral
multiple of the bit length so long as the character length was
constant.  Which required transmitting "diddle".

But I fully agree about more modern modes.  Last night I was copying
a couple of RTTY stations, pretty good copy except for QSB, and
one of them was using 1KW and the other using 500W.  And back in
the glory days of RTTY we were all trying to run that kind of power.
I have a big TMC kilowatt transmitter gathering dust out with all
the TTY machines.

There is an amusing explanation for why TTY uses a 7.42 unit
code (in the U.S.) but I'll forbear to tell it unless someone
asks.

Jim W6JVE




[digitalradio] Re: on another note

2009-02-25 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "Vojtech Bubnik"  wrote:

> Patrick, I have a proposal for one low hanging fruit project. How
> about to receive RTTY in a synchronous way? I believe most SW really
> generate precise synchronous RTTY, where the only variable is the
> unknown stop bit length (mostly 1.5?). If the stop bit length is being
> estimated or selected from menu, one could receive RTTY synchronously
> and greatly increase sensitivity of this legacy but often used mode.

It's been done, in the K6STI RITTY software some years ago.  Not that
it couldn't be done again.  K6STI was selling his software and pulled
it off the market when users began stealing it.  Also it was basically
DOS software, and that may have been a necessity considering the timing
vagaries of multitasking operating systems.  There was for a time an
implementation of Pactor-I in RTTY, later taken out.

What K6STI did was something I had been dreaming about ever since the
vacuum tube and heavy metal days of RTTY, so I was tickled pink that
he did it.  I had a few arguments with him about the dynamics of the
"digital flywheel" as he called it; but he's the expert and I'm not.
As things turned out it did not greatly increase the sensitivity -
it was good for a db or two and that was about all.

One neat thing he did, that I wish other RTTY software writers
would do, was to output cleaned-up Baudot while receiving, so
that one could drive a TTY machine from it, using his software as
sort of the ultimate T.U.

Jim W6JVE




[digitalradio] Re: Harmonic of some Sort on 20mtrs, includes a Computer Power Supply Interference Issue.

2009-02-24 Thread jhaynesatalumni
It can be awfully helpful at times to have a portable
battery powered shortwave receiver so you can listen to
the interference while you are walking around, and with
all your AC power shut off.




[digitalradio] Re: on another note

2009-02-23 Thread jhaynesatalumni
Something I forgot to mention earlier in suggesting a Pentium with
sound card might be usable as a dedicated DSP engine - the K6STI
software absolutely required an ISA SoundBlaster.  If we want to
define a new DSP engine we need some higher level of abstraction
to be able to cope with hardware that becomes unobtainable.

This is also a problem with other kinds of DSP engines out there -
sooner or later you can't get the DSP chip and the A/D and D/A
chips that you can today.




[digitalradio] Re: on another note

2009-02-23 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "Rud Merriam"  wrote:
>
> First, I would not dismiss sound card modes. I think there is much more
> that can be done with them. One of the main issues IMO is that they
> don't (1) adapt to changing band conditions, and (2) don't utilize FEC
> as much as is possible. (We also might need much better sound cards.
>

I would say that adapting to changing band conditions and utilizing
FEC as much as possible are not inherent limitations of sound card
modems, but are simply artifacts of the higher-level protocols.
There's the modulation scheme layer, and the encoding layer where
the FEC is applied, and then an adaptive layer that comes in 
where the sender gets feedback from the receiver that things are
not going very well and something else should be tried.  Now this
layer may call for a change down in the modulation scheme layer,
to use something more robust and slower when things are not going
well, and to hop up to something faster and less robust when
conditions permit.

I think you're right too about the quality of sound cards.  What we
get with onboard sound or with the low-priced add-in boards is the
lowest grade the consumer will accept.  You can't blame the
manufacturer for providing that when the consumer will accept such
junk - I mean if all you are going to use it for is to listen to
loud, intentionally-distorted rock music then you aren't going to
care much about signal to noise ratio or linearity.

You can find some sound card evaluations on the web; and some have
been discussed on this group.  There are really good ones, but
then the prices are up there with the dedicated DSP engines like
the SCS modems.  The challenge is to find one that is good enough -
and considering all the noise and crud of the HF channel maybe it
doesn't have to be very good to be good enough.

The big win for sound card modems is that everybody has one already,
and that lots of people are writing software that can use them,
so lots of experimentation is going on.  We've already got dozens
of digital soundcard modes that nobody uses because they have not
attracted enough attention or shown enough superiority over others
to make people want to use them.
  
> Second, further gains could be made using external DSP boards.
> These are not that expensive today.

What we are talking about here are products that have their own
DSP processor and memory and A/D/A conversion, and you can
download the firmware that runs the DSP from a PC.  The advantage
seems to be that the DSP processor is not getting interrupted by 
all the other activity that is going on in the PC; and the receiver
can maintain synchronism with the transmitter over a long period
of time.  This is presumably important for some modulation and coding
schemes - they can spend as much time as they want getting
synchronized initially, and then they don't need to spend much
effort to stay synchronized afterward.

The problem we all realize is that there is no single DSP engine
out there that we have all agreed to use and therefore people have
an incentive to write software for; so it remains a niche activity.
I recall this is where PSK was before the sound card software was
developed - it ran on a dedicated DSP engine and so few people had
them that there was little incentive for others to get them.

If the SCS products were (are?) open to third-party development,
so that others might write PSK or MFSK or Olivia modems to run
on them, perhaps we would all buy them and quit using the sound
cards.  I don't think it's realistic to expect SCS or any other
vendor to spend their own money to add popular modes to their
products, esp. when the sound card versions are out there for free.
There once was the HAL PCI-4K DSP modem developed for Clover but
later adapted to run RTTY and Pactor-I.  Clover was once used
for message-passing systems as well as for conversational operation.
I don't know how relatively good or bad it was as a modulation
scheme compared to some of the others.  It seemed to me that a
main drawback could have been remedied - it seemed to get stuck
trying to send a long block when conditions were too poor and
for some reason it could not fall back to sending short blocks
which might get through.

There also once was the K6STI RITTY software that was designed
to run under DOS and for a while could run Pactor-I as well as
RTTY.  This leads me to wonder if a suitable DSP engine could
be made from a PC and a sound card but not running a general
purpose operating system.  Maybe FreeDOS is a candidate for
the operating system, or maybe we just need a single-minded
loader that can load and run a single PC program and communicate
with another PC over Ethernet or USB or even RS-232.  The
other PC running a conventional OS would handle the higher-levels
of protocol and the user interface.

Jim W6JVE





[digitalradio] Re: Comparison of Performance of Digital Modulation in the Presence of adjacent QRM

2009-02-17 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "Andrew O'Brien" 
wrote:
>
> FYI, anyone have the full articel ?
> 
> Andy
> Comparison of Performance of Digital Modulation Techniques in the 
> Presence of Adjacent Channel Interference
> Milstein, L.   Pickholtz, R.   Schilling, D.   
> Univ. of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA;
> 
> 
> This paper appears in: Communications, IEEE Transactions on
> Publication Date: Aug 1982
> Volume: 30,  Issue: 8
> On page(s): 1984- 1993
> ISSN: 0090-6778
> Current Version Published: 2003-01-06 

I'm trying to understand what that means - Publication Date Aug 1982,
Current Version Published 2003-01-06   That seems to say that if I
go to the library and look up IEEE Transactions on Communications
I will find it in the Aug 1982 issue; and that there is a version
published almost 10 years later that is somewhere else.

Jim W6JVE





[digitalradio] Re: Recent MFSK16 DX

2009-02-17 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "Graham"  wrote:
>
but with the stability of modern rigs I dont see  why the 
> original mfsk should not make a come back ?

The only time I had trouble with MFSK16 and frequency drift
was when I was using the Elecraft K-2 radio with its 100W
amplifier, and before installing a frequency stability mod
they developed.  Never had any trouble after that.




[digitalradio] Re: HF packet

2009-02-05 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, Mark Milburn  wrote:

> Yes, there are a LOT of repeats when the bands are poor.  Signal
strength is not the only criteria.  I don't have a technical
background to explain it or even understand it, but there are plenty
of days when a signal of S7 will be solid copy..and other days when it
will not. 

Part of the problem is that at 300 baud the bit length is only
3.3 milliseconds.  You can have multipath echoes that smear the
short bits even when signals are strong.  (That's one reason why
110 baud ASCII never caught on with hams, and even 75 baud Baudot
can be dicey.)




[digitalradio] Re: Digitalradio on Facebook

2009-01-23 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "Briggs Longbothum" 
wrote:
>

> Andy, I'm not convinced at all that this is a good idea.  I hate to 
> sound naggish and I do applaud you efforts with the good of the group 
> in mind, but I've had a raft of bad experiences 

I agree - one of my old friends from green-key RTTY days nagged me
to join Facebook, so I did, and immediately turned off all the things
that would cause it to send me email, and I never remember to log
into Facebook when I have so many other things to read on the net,
so it has been of zero value to me.




[digitalradio] Re: FlDigi version 3.10 need some help

2009-01-21 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, Russell Blair
 wrote:
>
> I down loaded and installed ver.3.10 and for the life me I cant get
to work the (Compute 2.5Ghz,1.5gig of ram windows XP Pro SP3) SB
soundcard. I cant get the program to show any audio, even thou the
program shows my soundcards, but I see no waterfall audio.

Sometimes you have to open the Windows volume control and
fiddle with it - some things may be turned off or turned down
low.

I've also had funny things happen when I turned on the check
box in fldigi that lets fldigi control the volume.  That's in
one of the tabs for the sound card.

Then sometimes you have to fiddle with the two numbers near the
lower left corner of the screen that set the signal level range
and the minimum signal level.

Jim W6JVE





[digitalradio] Re: Information Please re Reading the Radio for Digital Modes

2009-01-17 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "Gmail - Kevin, Natalia, Stacey &
Rochelle"  wrote:

> 
> DM780 through the sound card to Kenwood TS-480S/AT, in the data socket.
> When I start DM780 and look at the screen, waterfall I see the data
mode, in this case PSK31 on 14.081.5, but the radio is showing 14.080.
> I remember when I first was using PSK31 I could see other stations
within the window of the waterfall, they could of been on 14.082.5 or
14.080.6 and that I was able to leave the radio freq alone and just
click on the other station and then make a contact.
> What I was interested in, is, should I have moved the radio freq. to
pull the station onto the 1.5Khz above the. (Don't know if I explained
that correctly)

Unfamiliar as I am with the TS-480, when you are using the data
mode I guess it is choosing a particular bandpass filter, and
probably setting the transceiver to lower sideband as well.  That
bandpass filter might be narrow, like 500 Hz.  So what you see
on the waterfall is 500 Hz of spectrum that is centered maybe
1.5 KHz below the dial frequency.  Or maybe not.

It is more usual in the digital modes to always use USB, and to
use SSB mode so you get the filter that is about 2.8 Khz wide.
Then if the transceiver dial is set to 14.080 you will see on the
waterfall frequencies above that by the amount indicated on
the waterfall frequency scale: maybe 500 to 2500 Hz, meaning
actual frequencies of 14.080500 to 14.08300  And you point and
click with the mouse to choose a PSK signal in that range.


One problem then is that if you are trying to copy a weaker signal
and a very strong signal comes on nearby the strong signal will
cause the receiver AGC to cut down the gain of the receiver, so that
the weaker signal is cut down also to where you can barely see it.
Hence you would rather have a narrower filter, such as the one you
use for data mode, to separate the signal you are trying to copy
from the nearby strong signal.  And you could tune the main tuning
so as to push the strong signal off the edge of the filter, one
side or the other, while keeping the desired signal in the passband.

> 
> Also there is heaps mentioned about NO ALC, I have set my TS-480S/AT
to the requirements for digital mode, and even dropped the input down
further.
> I was still getting some ALC when in TX. No-body said I was
producing a bad signal so I don't know if I was TXing right.
> Should I set the radio up as stated and then drop back the audio out
from the soundcard?


There are two potential problems with transmit audio level.  One is
that there might be an amplifier ahead of the gain control in the
radio - this is very typical if you are going in through the mike
connector rather than through the back panel connector.  If you
overdrive this amplifier it creates distortion products, and since
it is ahead of the gain control knob there is nothing you can do
with that knob to eliminated the distortion.  The remedy is to cut
down the sound card output from the computer, either with the
computer volume control or with an attenuator between the computer
output and the radio input.

The other problem is that PSK requires no ALC.  Many other digital
modes such as RTTY and MFSK do not have this problem as they 
transmit only one tone at a time; but PSK is effectively a two-tone
signal.  This one you can control using the gain control on the
radio, just turn it down until the ALC goes to zero.   Also you
want to be sure that any speech processor is turned off, as this
distorts the waveform too.

Jim W6JVE






[digitalradio] New fldigi 3.10

2009-01-17 Thread jhaynesatalumni
The latest fldigi 3.10 is now available on the w1hkj.com web site.




[digitalradio] Re: No audio from soundcard

2008-12-23 Thread jhaynesatalumni
This may seem too obvious, but get a pair of earphones and some
clip leads if necessary and see if you are getting audio out of
the cable that plugs into the radio.  That tells you whether the
trouble is in the computer, like something to do with the
volume controls, or in the radio like the D-mode that has been
mentioned.



[digitalradio] Re: Sunair RT 9000A Help

2008-12-12 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, Ed  wrote:
 
>I wasn't trying to "flame" you,  but I do think you might get a 
> better response on   manual_excha...@yahoogroups.com .

Or armyradios group, or perhaps hflink, which is for ALE-capable
radios, if it is that kind of radio.




[digitalradio] Re: ASCII ?

2008-10-21 Thread jhaynesatalumni
Related to the earlier question about amateur radio ASCII,
there was also the occasion when the 60wpm limit was lifted
and 100 wpm Baudot was allowed.  This too never became popular
because only the guys who had Model 28 machines could use it,
and because the shorter bit length (13 ms. versus 22 ms.)
was more sensitive to errors, both from increased bandwidth
and from multipath propagation.  I believe Navy MARS made some
use of 100 wpm RTTY.




[digitalradio] Re: QRV MT63 14106

2008-10-03 Thread jhaynesatalumni
I think it would be more useful if you would announce your
plans to be operating well in advance of the time you start
up.  I tend to read the group once a day, usually in the
morning, so what I learn from your message is what I could
have been doing last night, if I had not been busy with
other things.

Jim W6JVE





[digitalradio] Re: ASCII ?

2008-10-02 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "Jose A. Amador" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> but there was a GM - Microsoft 
> controversy that ended with a caustic reply from the GM's President
> that explained it too well.

That's interesting, because I think it was GM that is generally
credited with inventing "planned obsolescence" and the annual
model change.  




[digitalradio] Re: ASCII ?

2008-10-01 Thread jhaynesatalumni
I guess some people thought it was a Big Deal, but there were lots
of reasons why it didn't go anywhere.

I'd say the overriding one is that with 60 wpm Baudot RTTY the bit
length is 22 milliseconds.  With 100 wpm ASCII 110 baud the bit
length is 9 milliseconds.  That means 2.4 times the bandwidth, and
correspondingly more noise sensitivity.  Maybe for VHF local work
it wouldn't matter; but for HF that's a big penalty.  And we were
already running 500 watts or so to get good copy on RTTY.

Other reasons include the plentiful supply of old Baudot Teletype
machines, versus having to buy a new one for ASCII, until CRT
terminals came along.  And so many guys can't even type 60 wpm
that the ability to operate at 100 wpm wasn't interesting.  And
for rag chewing, contests, and DX, the upper case only Baudot
character set is entirely sufficient.  Of course the earlier
ASCII Teletypes were also upper case only.  And the lower cost
ASCII Teletype, Model 33, had terrible keyboard touch compared
with the older Baudot machines.  ASCII was advantageous only for
applications involving connection to computers, or for applications
requiring upper and lower case characters.  Teletype's original
up/low machines, Model 37 and Model 38, were failures; so it was
the CRT terminal business that really made ASCII practical.

Jim W6JVE




[digitalradio] Re: RTTY Dilemma

2008-09-29 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "Rick Ellison" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> It is a long standing standard that The standard for BOTH amateur and
> commercial FSK has ALWAYS been "specify MARK" with MARK being the
higher RF
> frequency and SPACE being the lower RF frequency (e.g., shift low).

I'm aware that is the de-facto standard for amateur use, was not 
aware that it is also standard for commercial use.  The U.S.
military has long used the center frequency rather than mark or
space - this was pretty annoying in setting up a MARS station 
since the center frequency is one that you never transmit.  I
suppose it is the result of using military FSK exciters such as
the O-5/FR where if you set the shift control to zero you get the
center frequency, and as you turn it away from zero the mark and
space move away from the center by equal amounts.  Amateurs
most often used diode shifters on the VFO in the days before SSB,
and thus setting the shift to zero resulted in transmitting
either the mark or space frequency (depending on how it was wired)
rather than the center frequency.



[digitalradio] Re: RTTY newcomer looking for some information

2008-09-22 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, John Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
 
> I have a couple of books on RTTY dating back to the 1960's. They talk 
> about using TU's that can decode with only the mark or only the space 
> signal. This seems pretty straightforward, since the mark and space 
> together provide 100% redundancy. I haven't figured out how to do that 
> with what I'm running, and on weaker signals I'm finding a tuning error 
> of only 10Hz can make the difference between copy and no copy.
>

Decoding with mark only or space only was something that seemed
like a good idea at the time to get improvement over the true-FM
limiter-discriminator design.  It didn't turn out to be all that
useful, because when signals are so bad that they fall below
the threshold for FM then they are so bad that you don't copy 
much anyway.  I honestly don't know much about the modern sound
card DSP decoders, but I imagine they detect the mark and
space separately and then combine the results.
 
> What do I need to do better? Are there any good recent books on RTTY? 

I don't expect to see any new books on RTTY, because it is a
technology that is pretty much as good as it is going to get.
Better performance these days comes from the newer sound card
modes.  RTTY is mostly used now for contests and DX, and the
reason I think is that it has very fast turnaround, so you can
make contacts as quickly as possible.  You don't care that much
about accuracy so long as what you see looks like what you want
to see, hi.  Also back when RTTY was the only keyboard mode we
had most hams were running quite a bit more power than is the
norm today.  500 watts was pretty standard for RTTY back then.
For general rag chewing today most everybody has gone to PSK-31.

There is some tweaking you can do with RTTY things like the
MMTTY engine, which has several different filtering and detecting
options.  Maybe somebody will speak up about how to use them
to best advantage.  You might benefit by putting on the whole 
MMTTY program and using it to learn how to take best advantage
of the displays and features.

As a 50+ year user of RTTY I hate to sound so negative about it;
but the fact is that technology has moved on.

Jim W6JVE




[digitalradio] Re: Emcomms : NBEMS v.ALE: Score one for ALE.

2008-08-31 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "Andrew O'Brien"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> I gave up on NBEMS after several hours of 20/40M beaconing.  It is a
> great application but heard NO one today.  ALE on the other hand
> proved quite active and the http://hflink.net/qso link made it easy to
> see how I was getting out.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Andy K3UK
>
Well I meant to listen for your beacons, but got busy with other
things and never got around to it.  And then, since it only sends
files, I didn't have any files I need to send to you.

Jim W6JVE



[digitalradio] Fedora 9

2008-08-13 Thread jhaynesatalumni
I noticed last night that just added to or updated in Fedora 9 Linux
are xdemorse, xpsk31, and xlog.



[digitalradio] AMTOR

2008-08-11 Thread jhaynesatalumni
I was just thinking as a purely whimsical thing, wonder if
it would be hard to use AMTOR as the communication link and
use Real Teletype machines for the keyboard and printer,
5-unit code and all.

What got me to thinking of this was that RCA used to have a
service based on their ARQ system, which used a code similar
to AMTOR but a full-duplex HF circuit, and they connected to
plain Teletype customers at both ends.



[digitalradio] Re: MFSK31 QSO's wanted

2008-07-26 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, Howard Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> I worked Tony K2MO last night on 20 meters using MFSK31 and MMVARI.
This mode seems very robust. It worked through deep fading and some
horrible noise very well.   Also, it is quite a bit faster than

I worked him too, using MFSK31 under the alpha test version of fldigi.
But copy was pretty rough and we soon gave up.
Jim W6JVE




[digitalradio] Re: Open wire feed line length

2008-07-02 Thread jhaynesatalumni
100 feet of ladder line is sort of a magic number for being
easily tunable on all the bands.  One of my friends bought
a ready-made 80M dipole with 100 feet of ladder line and a
tuner; and the instructions were not to cut much if any off
the ladder line.  I learned the reason for that later when I
ran across a web page (which I can't find right now) where
the guy has a similar antenna that he tunes by inserting
various lengths of feedline.  He has a graph showing that
100 feet comes pretty close to being a good match on all
the ham bands.

Here it is   http://www.w5dxp.com/notuner.htm




[digitalradio] Re: K2 Elecraft

2008-05-30 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, Yves Dussault <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>
> I want to use my K2 on digital modes.
> Any suggestions?
> 
Nothing very specific...I've used a K2 on digital modes.  Depending
on how old yours is, there is a modification that makes the VFO more
temperature stable, which is very helpful and almost essential if you
run MFSK as it is very intolerant of drift.  Mine has the 100W
amplifier built into the main case, and the antenna tuner in a separate
box.  Perhaps there is need for cooling improvement when using the
amplifier and digital modes.

Seems like somebody had a hack for bringing out the audio at a constant
level for putting into the sound card.  I don't have that, but did make
a modification where plugging into the speaker jack does not cut off the
speaker, so I can get sound into the sound card and still hear what I am
receiving.

Jim W6JVE






[digitalradio] Re: Multiple Digital Modes: Time to get rid of most ?

2008-04-21 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "Dave AA6YQ" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> In seeking to displace PSK31 with a better alternative, a good place to
> start is to consider PSK31's weaknesses:
> 
> A. no error detection/correction
> 
> B. simplex
> 
> C. can't convey files (messages, pictures, documents, etc.)
> 
I don't know if that would lead to a displacement of PSK31 so
much as it would an accomodation of other activities that PSK31
doesn't do well.  I mean, the lack of error detection/correction
and inability to convey files doesn't seem to bother the kind of
people who make up the majority of PSK31 users now.  Nor does
simplex.  BTW I enjoy MFSK-16 when I can find it on the air, but
the ability to send pictures is not a selling point to me.  I
don't have any pictures I want to send, and I'm almost never
interested in the pictures people want to send me.




[digitalradio] Re: Multiple Digital Modes: Time to get rid of most ?

2008-04-21 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "Dave Bernstein" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> I don't believe that PSK31, PSK63, or RTTY are the best that can be 
> done on HF-- but no protocol attractive enough to displace them has 
> yet been developed. 
> 
I think, too, that each has its place.  RTTY was once our only keyboard
mode.  Now it is still in use mostly for DX and contests, where the very
rapid turnaround is important and you don't care if you get a lot of
errors so long as what you get looks like what you want to get.

PSK-31 is the "new RTTY" as a general conversational mode.  PSK-63
for those who can type faster, but that doesn't seem to be very many
of us.

Olivia is really impressive under poor conditions.  If only it were
not so slow - I forget how slow it is and type up a big buffer full
and then get bored waiting for it to go out.

Feld-Hell is fun because it is quaint.

I'm still waiting to make a contact using flarq or ALE-400.
 




[digitalradio] Re: RFI-Free PCs?

2008-03-26 Thread jhaynesatalumni
You mentioned Class B for industrial applications.  Is
the intent of Class B to hold down the amount of RFI
coming out of the computer and bothering other things?
Or is it more to prevent strong RFI in the environment
from screwing up the computer?

I guess for ham radio we are concerned with both - I get
noise in the receiver generated by the computer (and all
the other assorted electronics lying around) and also
have had RF get into the computer and mess up the keyboard.




[digitalradio] Re: Vista

2008-03-26 Thread jhaynesatalumni
We conspiracy theorists can always believe that Microsoft
deliberately made Vista so bad so that there will be lots
of buyers for the next version of Windows.  Gotta keep the
revenue stream flowing.




[digitalradio] Re: RFI-Free PCs?

2008-03-22 Thread jhaynesatalumni
I agree on building your own PC.  I built one using a cheapie
case and power supply and it was pretty quiet.  So I ordered
another case and power supply, same catalog number from the
same supplier, and what came was a bit different.  The power
supply was the worst broad-band noise generator I have ever met,
even when the computer was turned off.  I've been told that
Antec makes good power supplies and boxes.

On the other problem, high noise on CB and 10 meters, I've found
that a battery-operated portable shortwave receiver is a great
tool.  I had a lot of trouble at first with power line noise.
The power company was cooperative but not very skilled in
finding it.  I could walk around with the battery receiver and
find the noise hot spots and then they could find the faulty
line hardware.

I read somewhere that your house is a high noise zone, and if you
get about 15 feet away things get much quieter.  I haven't yet
got around to trying that with the portable SW receiver.  I'm
told that even wall-wart power supplies these days generate RF
noise.  Touch lamps are known to be a bad source of noise.  One
of my friends says to turn off Everything in the house, unplug
all the wall warts, and see what kind of noise you have, and then
put things back on one-by-one.





[digitalradio] Re: FDMDV below 10MHz: LSB or USB?

2008-02-19 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, Ian Wade <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> We all know that we should use LSB for analog voice below 10MHz, but 
> what is the consensus for FDMDV and other digital voice modes below 
> 10MHz: LSB or USB?

I don't use FDMDV, but for the keyboard digital modes, after a lot
of questioning like this, the consensus seems to have settled on
USB everywhere.  And then for FSK RTTY most of the software has a
reverse check box so you can use USB and still have the tones come
out right side up (mark high, space low) in the RF signal.



[digitalradio] Re: Operating FSK RTTY in a contest ?

2008-02-12 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "Robert Chudek - K0RC" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>
> I started my RTTY career using 2125 and 2975 tones...
 
Same here, and with a pre-WW-II Super Pro receiver that would have
drifted right out the window if it had not been screwed down.  And
a transmitter of the same vintage with a VFO down in the broadcast
band and multiplying all the way up.  Operation on 20M was
practically unthinkable, even if we had not been in an extreme
fringe area for TV and even if the transmitter had not had about
18" of excess lead length in the PA tank circuit.

until those young brats started pushing the envelope (or should I say,
squeezing the envelope) with those 170 Hz tones... things were much
simpler in those good ole days... your betcha... the smell of a well
oiled machine, a whiff of ozone from the commutator, polar relays!
(hey remember them?), and the quiet roar of all that machinery
pounding out your CQ's... It was great... well, except for two
things... having your platen pounded to death at the right margin, and
coming home to find a half roll of paper behind the machine because
some smart-a** thought it was cute to auto start your machine and feed
it 15 minutes of line feeds. Yep, the good ole days...  ! ! ! 

Seems like the late Irv Hoff was especially plagued with that
problem, as he had a large fan club and a small but vocal
anti-fan club.  He worked out a scheme for the Model 28 stunt
box - I have one of the machines fitted out that way, but I
no longer remember exactly what it all was.  It involved putting
in the automatic carriage return and line feed kit, to take care
of the occasional missing carriage return.  Then it was something
like having the carriage return character also do the line feed,
and suppressing line feeds on repeated carriage returns.

Jim W6JVE



[digitalradio] Re: New ARRL HF Digital Handbook - Fourth Edition (Available October 2007)

2008-02-11 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "tremont245" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> --- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "AE9K"  wrote:
> Hi Dan
> 
> Go for the Digital Modes For Occassions by ZL1BPU, I have just 
> received this book and can't put it down. I have the other book as 
> well, which I feel is more of a primer,where as the ZL1BPU book digs 
> deeper without loosing your interest and without getting too 
> technical and loosing you.
> 
> Good reading
> 
> Trevor G8IIN
> >
It must be a great book indeed.  I looked for it on amazon.com and
all they had was a used copy priced at $92.70.!  However you can get
a new one from CQ for a lot less.




[digitalradio] Re: Robust Packet-Radio (RPR)

2008-01-11 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, Rick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Andy,
> 
> What I don't understand is if you already have a suite of modes,
Pactor, 
> Pactor 2, and Pactor 3, then why create another mode like they did?
> 
> This is not compatible with existing packet, right? So you would
have to 
> have SCS products on both ends? Then why not use Pactor modes, 
> especially the Pactor 2 mode which is of a similar bandwidth and
throughput?

Maybe not.  Seems like that say it doesn't involve tight timing
the way Pactor does, so potentially it is a mode that can be
implemented on sound cards, either by reverse engineering or by
their publishing complete specs.





[digitalradio] Re: Help files in vbdigi

2008-01-10 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "kh6ty" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>

> What do you have on C: drive that makes Windows default to D: drive?
Maybe 
> that is a clue.
> 
What I have on the C: drive is Win95.  WinXP is installed on the D: drive.

Anyway, that fixed it - I removed it using the add-remove thing, and
then used search to track down and remove everything about NBEMS,
and then reinstalled and the help files work.  Thanks.



[digitalradio] Re: Help files in vbdigi

2008-01-10 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "kh6ty" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> 
> Please try creating a folder, C:\Program Files\NBEMS, copying the files 
> there, and see if VBdigi finds those.
> 
No, it did not find them there either.



[digitalradio] Re: Help files in vbdigi

2008-01-10 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "kh6ty" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> VBdigi is looking for the following files in D:\Program Files\NBEMS 
> directory:
> 
> 
> emailsetup.rtf
> flarq.rtf
> logbook.rtf
> messaging.rtf
> vbdigi.rtf
> vbdigisetup.rtf
> 
> Do a search for flarq.rtf and tell me where it is located on your
system.
> 
That's where it is:  D:\Program Files\NBEMS\flarq.rtf




[digitalradio] Help files in vbdigi

2008-01-09 Thread jhaynesatalumni
I have vbdigi installed in D:\Program Files\NBEMS
The help files are in there but when I click on help in
vbdigi it doesn't find them.  Where is it looking for
them?



[digitalradio] Re: Mode identification

2008-01-06 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "Bill McLaughlin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
wrote:
> One I had trouble with the other day, was
> Clover, but had not heard it in so long I had forgotten what it
> sounded like.
> 
You heard a Clover signal?!  What kind of time machine do you
have there?  Heard any spark lately?






[digitalradio] NBEMS setup

2008-01-02 Thread jhaynesatalumni
I'm trying to follow the instructions in 
VBdigi under Help->Radio email setup.

I navigate to C:\NBEMS\Mail
I put the mouse pointer on the ARQout folder and
hold down the right mouse button and try to drag 
it to the menu bar at the bottom of the screen, and
I get the slashed-circle "not" symbol. (and all my
open windows get minimized).



[digitalradio] Re: 30 Meter digital

2007-12-22 Thread jhaynesatalumni
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "kh6ty" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> It is my belief that if "voice" of the same bandwidth were allowed
everwhere 
> "data" is allowed, the data segments of the bands would be overrun with 
> phone stations using DV. 

We could, for the sake of argument, use that software that translates
voice to keystrokes, transmit the resulting data as a text file, and
then at the other end play the text file into software that turns it
into speech.  Of course it wouldn't sound anything like the actual
speaker's voice...



  1   2   3   >