Ladies and Gentlemen, I come to you as the greenest novice in all the world when it comes to 'digimodes' with a tale of just how easy it seems to work RTTY with the K3 and the standard K3 Utility program. No sound card is required. Yesterday, I was looking for additional bands and modes to work ST0R in South Sudan, he is difficult enough to work from Northern Europe and of course everyone wants the new country even DX Honour Roll People need this one.
Sometimes the beginner is blessed or stumbles into good fortune. Reading Fred Cady's, KE7X's "The Elecraft K3", I followed the simple steps on pages 75 through the middle of page 77 to configure my K3 on 21 MHz for FSK D and RTTY operation. With the K3 connected to my PC using the RS232 cable and using the Utility the Terminal tab was clicked. I clicked RTTY and placed a few simple messages such as my call sign a couple of times and in another message my call, 599 599 TU. I was by now copying ST0R on the terminal and already operating up 2 kHz. Well, to my shock ST0R came back to me on my first call. He was probably not too busy at this time; I do not think the digital modes have as many people so it is perhaps a bit easier. I am in the ST0R log so it all worked just fine. I believe you can type messages in the lower box and send them by hitting transmit, they show up in red in the upper box as transmitted so you can differentiate your material from that received which is black. Okay, I have admitted to being very green so please do not throw stones at this old goat who has been in the hobby for 51 years but I am amazed. I did not even know the signal report should be 599 until copying ST0R for a while. The feeling that came over me was like that when as a novice I got up at 3 AM and managed to work Oklahoma on 40M CW from Northern Virginia. At 67 such feelings do not often occur. I send this both to complement Elecraft and KE7X. Perhaps there is another soul out there who is interested in working ST0R on RTTY but who has never tried it. I suspect that PSK-31 may be as easy but have not investigated this so far. The P3 is also proving very useful but not required for tuning in other stations when using the waterfall display. 73 Doug EI2CN ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html