Hi Skip, I'll jump in here to answer. I believe Joe works during the day.
On the day of testing Joe's message refers to, we were practicing running a fldigi/flarq style network for EOC to EOC operation. The PA guys have done a great job with the fldigi/wrap operation so we thought we'd try something a little different. We were using macros for burst transmission in fldigi. That works just fine for us testers when using fldigi with higher speed modes. Where the confusion may be coming from is that we are thinking in terms of having to teach non-digitally experienced hams to use NBEMS during an emergency situation. We look for ways to use those people effectively for passing tactical traffic on short notice. For that, simpler is better as long as it is still effective. We accidentally discovered how convenient it was to have full time Plain Talk operation while running a net with multiple stations. We had been using the burst transmission macro method on fldigi to coordinate operation. When it came time to send a message using flarq, two stations connected with flarq and coordinated with each other using Plain Talk. The rest of us could keep track of what they were doing by watching the raw transmissions in the fldigi window. Gradually we found we tended to make all our text comments via the Plain Talk transmit line since hitting enter sends the line even without a connection. It worked for us but sometimes it was a little confusing depending upon how flarq segmented the text line for transmission. Just for the heck of it, two more of us also connected to each other. That meant there were two fairly idle connections operating simultaneously. That is probably not something we would want to do on a regular basis but we were testing after all. We noticed then the Plain Talk messaging scheme does not care what connections the messages are coming from. All plain talk text showed up on all connected flarqs. That was really handy since now we didn't have the problem of mentally reassembling the segmented text on fldigi window. Of course, then we discovered that we did not no for sure who transmitted what. We began manually inserting our callsigns in each text line. Once we had a chance to think about what we were doing, we all came to the conclusion that we could make even better use of flarq if it had the option to display unconnected Plain Talk lines and use the callsigns already available in the message header show them in the text. Our thinking was that once we had a transceiver set up and operating with fldigi and flarq, we could fairly easily teach someone to chat back and forth with Plain Talk and connect and disconnect when traffic is passed. Keep in mind that the radio side of thing is only part of the teaching problem. We also have to deal with the different file directories and file types involved, plus how traffic is handed off to and received from the rest of the EOC staff. Anyway, this is a long story but sometimes I think it is necessary to give a little of the background to know why a subject comes up. This thing about the unconnected Plain Talk operation and callsigns in NOT a make or break thing. It is just one of those ideas that comes up during testing. While there are several of us here in Missouri that like the idea, I bet there are others groups that may not care for it. Now for the rest of the testing. FLDIGI and FLARQ rock! We had an especially good day for testing. We were on 3585 during the mid morning hours and then later in the afternoon. Our NVIS path distances varied from 30 miles to over 150 miles which we felt was a good sample for Missouri regional operation. What made this day so good was that thunder storms were moving over and between our stations, providing plenty of strong QRN plus we experienced some deep QSB in the afternoon. Conditions were bad enough that MFSK32 was very poor. Our best operation, believe it or not, was with BPSK250. During our checks using fldigi and keyboard operation to find a good mode, we pretty much had to give up until we went to BPSK250. Keyboard to keyboard was much better and were able to pass messages with flarq very well. I think we were all operating with our jaws on the table top. BPSK250 was not supposed to work under these conditions. The Gettysburg Address went through during very heavy QRN and QSB in 91 seconds. I think that says a lot for the fldigi and flarq software and BPSK250. We did notice a quirk with DominoEX though. Keyboard to keyboard operation was about the same as with MFSK but when we tried to use it with flarq, we noticed that none of the ARQ special characters (<soh>, <eot>, etc.) were displayed in fldigi during receive. Of course, flarq connects did not work. Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Gary - N0GW ----- Original Message ----- From: "hteller" <[email protected]> To: <counsil at rollanet.org> Cc: <fldigi-alpha at lists.berlios.de> Sent: Monday, October 26, 2009 3:28 PM Subject: Re: Flarq Plain Talk, E-mail Items > Hi Joe, try this: > > Select macro set 4 in fldigi. > > Create a macro for F9 that is labeled "Myself" and make the macro <K0OG>. > Create another macro for F12 that is labeled "Send" and make the macro > <TX><RX> > > To "chat" in fldigi without flarq or Plain Talk: > > 1. Press F9 > 2. Type what you want to say, for example, Not all hams are radio > amateurs! > 3. Press F12 to transmit what you want to say with <K0OG> appended to > the start of the text and automatically return to receive. > > The advantage in using a macro to "Send" instead of pressing Enter, as > in a chat application, is that you can add CRLF's such as: > This is line one > This is line two > This is line three > > and fldigi will transmit it that way. > > Is that what you want to accomplish? > > 73 Skip KH6TY > NBEMS Development Team > > > Joseph A. Counsil wrote: >> Dave, >> >> Several of us just ran a loose "net" using Flarq, and found that during >> a roundtable it was very confusing using the plain-talk. It would be >> good if each line in the plain talk window were preceded with the >> sender's callsign, something like <K0OG> to identify the sender. As a >> temporary help, I copied "<K0OG>" and would just Ctrl-V to paste it >> prior to each line I would type. >> >> Also, I received an e-mail message but it did not show up in the >> NBEMS.files, nor any other directory structure I could find. We are >> still working on trying to figure that out - maybe I have something set >> up incorrectly? It would be nice to have a menu item or button in Flarq >> to open the received e-mail and received-files directories. >> >> I'm running AX, Windows XP Pro SP3. >> >> Several of us in Missouri and possibly in Kansas will try some things >> again at 2:00 PM, 3.585 MHz if anyone would like to drop in. >> >> 73, >> -Joe- >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > fldigi-alpha mailing list > fldigi-alpha at lists.berlios.de > https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/fldigi-alpha
