It is precisely because of the sound card that we no longer buy expensive boxes, cards, etc.
When I got back into ham radio in 1980, it was not long before I found that I enjoyed the digital modes. When I moved from our first farm back to the "city," I was very surprised to see one local ham who I had known when I was first licensed back in 1963, who was operating RTTY ... but on VHF! I had no idea such a thing was done. We had a regular local group with a regenerative repeater. Most of us used very simple TU's along with homebrew loop supplies to run our Model 15's, 19's, 33's, etc. I made a homebrew XR chip design I think I have discussed before, that was really only decoding one tone on RTTY to my Model 15. Then enter the computer and everything changed. I used a number of different types of interfaces, including the Commodore 64 MBA-TOR software, the Kantronics UTU, the AEA CP-1 plus the BMK-Multy software. Then I had to make the big decision. Would it be HAL or SCS? I went with HAL, and spent what would today be probably around the price of the SCS boxes. HAL had serious problems trying to clone Pactor with their first attempt with the P-38 card. It never worked right for me as it would link and then drop the link with no warning. They kept promising they would fix the software and I was basically being an Alpha tester for them as they sent several "updates." But they never worked for Pactor. Clover II was OK, but even that mode could not handle the weak signals that we now can handle with sound card modes. I eventually gave up on them, returned their defective digital hardware/software solution and only was given back 80% of my money due to their "restocking fee." Needless to say HAL is NOT on my list of approved vendors! And since I had sold all my other equipment to partially pay for the HAL product so digital HF modes were off line for a number of years. It was not until sound card modes became available that I ventured back into the digital HF world. In the meantime, packet radio had peaked and was dying out as a networked system. Today things are quite amazing to me, considering the quality of freely available software (not just digital or even ham software, but in general with the movement to free and open source) and the new modes. It is the best time ever for those of us interested in this kind of technology. You never run out of things to do. As far as corn, we stopped growing it some years ago, although our small 150 acre farming operation does have a corn base. There is still some subsidies for that but with the markets the way they have been, there is no LDP anymore for corn farmers. Judy, N9LGV, and I still handle a small number of dairy heifers each summer on what is now a strictly grazing farm. Even at the peak, we generally have no more than 100 head of dairy cattle here during the grazing season. Typically we will have some very small weaned calves that do require grain as well as pasture, then some breeding age heifers, and we do promote bringing in dry cows if they are not close up which as you probably can imagine is a problem with shipping. We no longer direct market our specialty beef products to the public, but of course we have them for ourselves and family. We do still sell a few pumpkins and berries, that sort of thing, but no farmer's markets anymore. We have worked out a pretty good arrangement for pasture based farming and if you or others stop by we are always happy to give you a tour. I have had several dairy farmers stop by that I have met via the internet discussion groups (I still co-moderate the Grazersedge yahoogroup) and one was from Washington and most surprisingly one was from NZ. So you never know who you might be able to meet in person someday:) 73, Rick, KV9U John Becker, WØJAB wrote: > Yes you must buy a box to play the mode. > What did you do before the sound card? > Maybe watch your corn grow. > > As far as the email comment, I can tell you have > not seen to much if any of the pactor or packet > traffic of late. Just going on what other have said. > > John >
