Rick wrote: > It was very difficult to actually use the frequency due to many other > stations transmitting on top of the server and my signals.
What! You were on the frequency first and someone transmitted over top of you? Don't they always "listen first"? ;-) Therefore, we must be very grateful for Rein's decision to stay in the area with the other "automatic" stations, even if his signal is narrow and could go elsewhere. However, it might be feasible to operate PSKmail in the guardbands between Pactor-3 station assigned frequencies with less QRM. I think that Pactor-3 seldom uses more than 2100 Hz bandwidth, but the "channel" is 2500 Hz wide. I hope all future mailbox operators will be just as considerate. An automatic station is unable to QSY, even if it could hear that it was interferring with an ongoing QSO, because it is necessary for it to remain on a published frequency in order to be contactable, and besides, there is nobody present at the automatic station in order to shift frequency. How long do you REALLY expect the Winmor "busy channel detector" to stay enabled! 73, Skip KH6TY http://kh6ty.home.comcast.net ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick W To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Saturday, March 21, 2009 7:51 PM Subject: [digitalradio] PSKmail QRG and features/issues Of course, about 1 minute after I sent the message, I discovered the information on the center frequency and it is as I had hoped. But ... Wow! Just tried out some of the PSKmail features and find it very interesting. Once I realized that the Ping command will bring up any of the servers that can hear you and tried it, the latency is about zero. Almost instant response from a human perspective. Then no problem connecting to the server that I kicked up. This is better than any other mail system I have used in the past. Issues/Suggestions: - It was very difficult to actually use the frequency due to many other stations transmitting on top of the server and my signals. - on the 30 meter band here in Region 2, the 10.140-10.150 area is quite busy with the wide bandwidth modes that must operate here in order to follow the band plan and FCC requirements for wide band. For example, one of the two tones of a Pactor station covered the PSK250 tone and then a MIL-STD-188-141A 8FSK125 transmission had its uppermost tone obliterating anything that tries to use a narrow mode centered on 10.148. In fact, at one point all three of us were trying to us the same frequency! - since PSK250 is just about right at 500 Hz in bandwidth, wouldn't it be more appropriate to keep PSKmail in the 10.130-10.140 area which has the band plan already designed for modes up to 500 Hz wide? We do need to keep away from the commercial?/government? RTTY station located around 10.130. - here in the U.S. stations that are operating automatically on HF can operate anyplace within the RTTY/data portions of the bands as long as the server stations only transmits when interrogated by a human operator on the other side. And I think I am correct that this is the way PSKmail works. - the other issue is the pulling of fldigi's receive frequency too far from the center frequency. I am skeptical that PSK250 is the best mode for any but good conditions since it is not very sensitive (- 2 db SNR). It will be a tremendous benefit if we can use modes such as DominoEX that would not require AFC. 73, Rick, KV9U Rick W wrote: > What should be the set frequency? If the listed frequency of the server > is 10.148, does that mean the center frequency? Therefore, if you have > the center frequency set at 1500 Hz audio, you would put the rig at > 10.146.5 USB dial frequency? > > 73, > > Rick, KV9U >
