[digitalradio] BUXCOMM Rascal for the Icom IC-746 - anyone with experience?
Hi Dave, sorry you been having so many problems. Yes you are correct, that is, with the Rascal GLX all you have to do is connect the soundcard cable, Mike in, sound out, from the Rascal to you soundcard. The other end of the Rascal go's to you computers comport and give PTT and FSK. The third cable go's to your ACC1 jack on the back of the 746. That is it! Yes the ACC1 provides audio in and out. So you can run RTTY with FSK, RTTY with AFSK, SSTV, Voice Keying and you will have audio in for CW receive but you have to use your own CW interface to key the rig. My Rascal and the ones at my club station just lays on the floor behind the desk as there is nothing to do with it, no knobs or adjustments. During the RTTY Roundup a couple of weeks ago, we made 1149 Q's on rtty with the IC-775DSP/KW with the RASCAL and no RFI. Why so cheap? Remember all the interface is a few wires, 2 audio transformers and a couple of opto-isolators for PTT and FSK. You could build the whole thing for less that $10.00. My webpage give the diagram that the Rascal uses. 73 and good Luck Joe K0BX --- Dave Corio [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Joe, thanks for the info! What puzzles me is that I sent an email to Buxcomm asking specifically for an interface that would let me run FSK on my 746, and all they suggested was a simple cable. Is that Rascal all I need, or is there something I'm missing? It sounds as though I can just plug one end into my PC, and the other into the ACC1 jack of the 746, and that will give me FSK keying. Is it really that inexpensive and easy? I don't really care about CW, as I have an interface already that does that. Do you know if the Rascal also picks up the audio output from the ACC1 to send to the PC? Thanks loads for your reply and information! 73 Dave KB3MOW [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: As far as I can determine the BUXCOMM GLX Rascal is the same for the 746 and 756 series. You should go to: http://www.commparts.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=8products_id=130236 http://www.commparts.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=8products_id=130236 and get this one, plug it in and be working FSK in less than 10 minutes. I am using the BUXCOMM GLX Rascal on our clubs IC-775DSP, IC-756PRO2 and IC-756. At home I am using one on my IC-706MK2G and IC-756PRO3. All worked the first time and all with FSK for RTTY and AFSK for PSK31 and voice keyer. It is a no brainer. Using MMTTY for rtty is far better than any of the terminal unit like the PK-232. AS far as CW is concern. The Buxcom GLX Rascal does not do CW. Computer send CW uses pin 4(9 pin) or pin 20(25 pin connector). It is easier to just build up a one transistor interface for CW keying. You can find the circuit in many places or on my website at: http://www.qsl.net/k0bx http://www.qsl.net/k0bx and look under cw keying. I hope this helps. Joe K0BX No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.17.4/643 - Release Date: 1/21/2007 5:12 PM
Re: [digitalradio] PSK and Yeasu ft-101
Hi Bernie, Thanks for the info Does the transformer have to be a 600 ohm, I have some junk boards here I may be able to scrounge a few from, but not sure of their value. And yes I could use one of them 4N35's I would gladly pay you for it. The schematic you refered me to was one I was looking at. The radio is very stable after about 45 min. I allready have the line in to the computer set up and using digipan. 73 Bob KC9GMN - Original Message - From: ve3fwf To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, January 22, 2007 7:22 PM Subject: Re: [digitalradio] PSK and Yeasu ft-101 Have a look at http://www.geocities.com/n2uhc/interface.html This is the opto-isolated circuit I initially built for my HW-100 and it works just fine with the ICOM radios. The above circuit should work on your FT-101. The important thing is that the rig should not drift. While a jump of 50 Hz is OK on SSB, it will cause loss of signal on digital. You will be able to spot a drifting problem by watching the signals on the waterfall. I can send you a 4N35 if you can't source one locally; I'm fairly certain I have some spares. Radio Shack used to have 1:1 600 ohm transformers but I don't know if they still carry these anymore. Good luck and join the fun on digital. 73, Bernie - Original Message - From: Bob To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, January 22, 2007 7:18 AM Subject: [digitalradio] PSK and Yeasu ft-101 Hi Gang! I am fairly new here to this group and have been reading some of the posts. I would like to know if anyone here is using a older rig like mine, a Yaesu FT-101 Z and running PSK31 mode, and what kind of interface they are using. I have seen several schematics for homemade interfaces and am unsure which would be the best to use, I have a 1.8 GHZ computer and a sound card in it. Thanks Bob KC9GMN -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.17.4/644 - Release Date: 1/22/2007 7:30 AM
Re: [digitalradio] PSK Modes
Please allow me to make some comments based on research done here in San Antonio. As some may know, SouthWest Research Institute is located here in San Antonio and has done work on high baud rate modes with very poor SNRs. Also they are part of the current project that is flying a space craft passt Saturn or Jupitor going to Pluto. Note that the project and space craft were launched after Pluto was demoted. There research has shown that a tone/carrier with more than 8 phases is going to be very hard to detect and that in fact to get it to be error free, the decode time may be as long as using a simpler mode with ARQ. They showed one case where it took 4 seconds to decode 1 second of transmission. There is really great potential in OFDM types of modems if bandwidth is not a concern. However, if we want to keep the bandwidth under 500 Hz, then you are going to be limited to the number of tones you use, the baud rate, gaurd band, etc, etc. There are notes about brick wall filters and of course tone shaper filters, etc. One solution suggested to me was that each tone be individually shaped/filtered before transmitting and then each tone have an individual brick wall filter before it is decoded. I believe that there is not going to be one mode or mode configuration that works well on 3-30 MHz...we will probably have several sets of configurations or perhaps even one optimum configuration for each band or set of conditions. The more options you have that you can adjust of the fly or that can be used adaptively the better off the mode will be. Someone (perhaps all) needs to keep technical notes on what modes work best on what band. Also, we need to come to an agreement on what mazimum bandwidth and user throughput we want as well as how robust and how sensitive we want the mode to be. My personal belief is that we go for 500 Hz wandwidth, 400-800 WPM user throughput 99.9% error free and work down below a 0 dB SNR (0 to -5 dB) on a poor CCIR channel. Put your thinking caps on and make your wish list. 73 CLU, Walt/K5YFW KV9U wrote: Some of us did try Chip modes when Nino first came out with them, but they did not seem to perform as well as existing modes. I really implore to our treasured programmers to see if they can come up with some modes that can compete with Pactor modes. Especially some ARQ modes that can work on MS OS. We know from Pactor 2, that a raised cosine shaped pulse is likely a very good basic waveform. Then for the most robust mode, a two tone DBPSK modulation is used and as the conditions improve, the modulation changes to DQPSK and then with further improvements to 8-DPSK and even 16-DPSK for maximum throughput when conditions are very good. This is what enables Pactor 2 to send about 700 bits per second at the peak speed and do it in only a 500 Hz wide span. We know this can be done at the higher speeds under good conditions with sound card modes since SCAMP was even faster than P2, although a much wider signal. The problem with SCAMP was that it had no fallback position. Pactor 3 is runs an occupied bandwidth of about 2.4 kHz, but raw speed is over 2700 bps. Instead of 2 tones, P3 uses up to 18, separated by 120 Hz and modulated at 100 baud DBPSK or DQPSK. SCS has some fairly detailed data on Pactor 3 at: http://www.scs- ptc.com/download /PACTOR-III- Protocol. pdf http://www.scs-ptc.com/download/PACTOR-III-Protocol.pdf I wish someone could explain why we can not have a sound card mode that is roughly the same as Pactor 2 at least. Even if there was no ARQ at first. And how different is Pactor 3, than what the SSTV hams are using everyday? Aren't they using OFDM with QAM? If you recall what Tom Rink said back in 1995 on the TAPR HF SIG: As mentioned in the introduction, PACTOR-II uses a two-tone DPSK modulation system. Due to the raised cosine pulse shaping, the maximum required bandwidth is only around 450 Hz at minus 50 dB. ASK, which was also tested in the early stage, provided poorer results in weak conditions compared with a higher DPSK modulation, as different amplitude levels are more difficult to distinguish in noisy channels than more phase levels. Additionally, ASK increases the Crest Factor of the signal. For these reasons, it is not used in the final PACTOR-II protocol. Basic information on these items can also be found in the first part of this series. Although not ASK, doesn't QAM employ amplitude changes as part of the modulation scheme? What happens if you use a multitone DPSK? It seems to a non-engineering person like myself, that a lot of what P2 and P3 are made up of are really a series of PSK100 or PSK200 tones (carriers). Isn't Q15X25 a similar modulation scheme? It even runs at 83.33 baud rather than a minimum of 100 baud such as P2. Why did it not work as well as P modes? Or is it because it has no coding such as Reed-Solomon block coding or Viterbi
[digitalradio] Working Asia from Eastern USA
Forgive a relative newbie if this is a dumb question: My QTH is East Cost USA (about 50 miles north of Boston). I've been working PSK31 (and other digital modes) a few hours a day for about 4 months now. I haven't once even HEARD a station in Asia or Oceania. I've had pretty good luck into Europe, and I have QSOs as far south as southern Africa (Namibia, Zambia, etc). And of course in good throughout the US, into the caribbean, and down into central and (parts of) South America. Am I simply listening at the wrong time, or in the wrong place to find Asia/Oceania? Am I doing something else wrong? Or is my setup here (TS-2K barefoot and a dipole at 60 feet) simply too humble to allow my signal to make the 6700 mile journey from Boston to Tokyo? I'd appreciate a little elmering from the list on this topic... TIA, de Peter K1PGV
Re: [digitalradio] PSK Modes
Nino, That was kind of my thought...interesting about the Chip64 decoder...I will have to study the mode more. In my post I did day that it was a 100 mile path but did not stipulate that is was all over land. Also, unless you live in an area where the ground conductivity changes a large amount over 100 miles...as in transmitting from the coast to inland, you won't generally see all that much change as the ground conductivity is gradual...except as the above case and some places in Colorado, California and Germany that I know about. Thus I normally tend to disregard loss due to ground loss/attenuation. Also, you might be thinking that the first hop of three hops ia 33 miles, the second 66 miles and the third 100 miles. Not necesarly so and generally not. The First hop might be anywhere from 10-15 miles to 35 miles, the next hop more or less than 66 miles and the third hop more or less than 100 miles. When the signal hits the ground it spladders as my old PhD in physics Elmer used to say...he maintained that it created another set of groundwaves and that groundwaves from the various hops could mix with the skywave signals and cause even worse signals that you describe Nino. REalize that this was in the 60's and his observations were from the 30's and 40's when little was really known about the ionosphere. Also there are hops between the F1 and F2 layer during the day so in fact you might have 3-6 hops before you receive the signal with only 2 being skywave hops. Very complex. The key to overcoming all this has got to be a way to know exactly which signal is the real signal. There is a system that originally used an atomic clock to track signals and today uses a GPS clock. I can't say much more about that system. (Because I don't know much more about it.) IMHO, the PSK modes have dealt adequately with the noise problem but the problems caused by the ionospheric have yet to be adequately addresses. Thanks for your input Nino. 73 All and CUL, Walt/K5YFW Nino Porcino (IZ8BLY) wrote: Walt/K5YFW wrote: if you may be receiving 1, 2 and 3 hop signals. How does this affect BPSK and QPSK signals from for example PSK31/63/125? the 3 different signals will sum at the receiver, but, having each one a different phase, the sum is destructive with the result that they tend to cancel. If the paths are stable you notice a drop in the signal strength but if paths are unstable (as it is often the case) one signal may win over the others and the phase of the PSK decoder will wander back and forth. The clock recovery is also problematic because of the unstability of the reference. Among the possible solutions to multipath there is the spread spectrum modulation (as in Chip64) where the symbols at the receiver aren't expected at a precise timing, but are decoded in a clockless manner. In Chip64 signal scope you can actually see the signal trace wandering left and rigth due to path hopping or see the ghosted trace of the secondary path. Nino/IZ8BLY
[digitalradio] PAX Activity
Will PAX2 beacon on 14.112 +1000Hz at 1 minute rate during day 23 Jan. Connect and leave a msg if heard. Any other pax/pax2 activity on HF bands? de Rich/N2JR
Re: [digitalradio] PSK Modes
If I understand it correctly, the raised cosine pulses tend to be more efficient with power, reduce the crest factor (Pactor 2 is under 1.5), and perhaps make it easier to have a cleaner signal. Just for clarification I have a question: Is QAM modulation a form of ASK? It would seem so to me but I am not sure. Otherwise, what other modulation forms fall into the ASK category? Although the SSTV modes are not automatically adaptive, there is a limited choice of number of tones, but for the most part I believe that they have found 16QAM to be about all you can get to work well on many HF circuits, particularly on the lower frequencies. I wonder how a 4-QAM mode compares to say a 4-PSK mode when up against the ionosphere? There must have been a reason that DRM uses QAM instead of PSK? Any thoughts on why? In terms of coding, it would be very interesting is to compare two multitone modems, perhaps a 2 tone and an 8 tone (similar to pactor 2 and 3) and have one with R-S and one with Viterbi and see if there is any difference on various circuits. Does anyone have information on this already? 73, Rick, KV9U Jose_Angel Amador Fundora wrote: We know from Pactor 2, that a raised cosine shaped pulse is likely a very good basic waveform. That is for saving bandwidth, mostly. It might allow better decoding, as well. Pactor 3 is runs an occupied bandwidth of about 2.4 kHz, but raw speed is over 2700 bps. Instead of 2 tones, P3 uses up to 18, separated by 120 Hz and modulated at 100 baud DBPSK or DQPSK. SCS has some fairly detailed data on Pactor 3 at: http://www.scs-ptc.com/download/PACTOR-III-Protocol.pdf I wish someone could explain why we can not have a sound card mode that is roughly the same as Pactor 2 at least. Even if there was no ARQ at first. I don't know if the least complex of it all is ARQ...most likely, the rest is harder to implement. Yes. A key requirement is having the highest distance between constellation points to have an edge against the noise (or QRM). That's why, in DRM, the FAC uses 4QAM, as it allows to send the reduced but very important info it conveys. But the MSC must use 64QAM, because the amount of data to be sent does not allow otherwise in the least bandwidth. What happens if you use a multitone DPSK? It seems to a non-engineering person like myself, that a lot of what P2 and P3 are made up of are really a series of PSK100 or PSK200 tones (carriers). Isn't Q15X25 a similar modulation scheme? It even runs at 83.33 baud rather than a minimum of 100 baud such as P2. Why did it not work as well as P modes? Or is it because it has no coding such as Reed-Solomon block coding or Viterbi convolutional coding? Certainly...all those tricks add up, and most likely, in a non proportional way...I cannot assure it by heart, but is very likely. One of the gains of the code used in pactor modes is using convolutional encoding with Viterbi decoding. The Viterbi decoder, knowing the history of what has been sent, as the convolutionally coded stream depends on what has been sent previously, makes a soft decode of what is the most likely symbol transmitted. RS coding, after deinterleaving, on the other side, may allow to recover erors WITHOUT retransmission, which may save more bandwidth than what is wasted on the FEC overhead. Also, P2 and P3 avoid the edges of the channel to have the least amplitude and delay differences between carriers. That's why a reduced version of Q15X25 is being more succesful in holding the link. 73, Rick, KV9U 73, Jose, CO2JA __ __ __ __ Correo enviado por ElectroMAIL. Facultad Eléctrica. CUJAE Dominio: electrica.cujae.edu.cu
Re: [digitalradio] Working Asia from Eastern USA
Hi Peter, I'm just west of Philadelphia and I had the same problem for a few months until I discovered a number of noice sources within my QTH. I finally powered down the house except for my receiver and attached a dB meter to the audio output and set things up on an idle frequency so I was just reading idle noise. Then, I powered up each circuit breaker one at a time watching to see if there were an increase in the readings. If a particular breaker had a noise generator on it's line, I could see an increase in dB reading. In the end, I found that there were eight different sources of radio noise polution in my QTH ranging from my router, printer, one computer, all TVs (one when turned off) and my DVR. Now I can hear Asia Pacific along with the rest of the East Coast where they used to be down in the noise. Hopefully, your problem is that simple to identify and correct. 73 Russ WA3FRP -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tue, 23 Jan 2007 10:05 AM Subject: [digitalradio] Working Asia from Eastern USA Forgive a relative newbie if this is a dumb question: My QTH is East Cost USA (about 50 miles north of Boston). I've been working PSK31 (and other digital modes) a few hours a day for about 4 months now. I haven't once even HEARD a station in Asia or Oceania. I've had pretty good luck into Europe, and I have QSOs as far south as southern Africa (Namibia, Zambia, etc). And of course in good throughout the US, into the caribbean, and down into central and (parts of) South America. Am I simply listening at the wrong time, or in the wrong place to find Asia/Oceania? Am I doing something else wrong? Or is my setup here (TS-2K barefoot and a dipole at 60 feet) simply too humble to allow my signal to make the 6700 mile journey from Boston to Tokyo? I'd appreciate a little elmering from the list on this topic... TIA, de Peter K1PGV Check out the new AOL. Most comprehensive set of free safety and security tools, free access to millions of high-quality videos from across the web, free AOL Mail and more.
Re: [digitalradio] Re: HF Digital Modes and NVIS (iow, short range??? as in 300 mi or
At 02:03 PM 1/21/2007, you wrote in part: There was no good reason to distort the tests by inserting the specialized hardware, I believe that Pactor I will run on a sound card, only Pactor II and III are dependent on rare proprietary hardware with rare proprietary software run under a proprietary OS. I'm a bit confused here. Are you saying that you need some special OS to run pactor 2 3 ?
Re: [digitalradio] PSK Modes
I'm always showing my ignorance, but what is cam. I kind of understand psk and bqpsk as my ARD9800 uses bqpsk for the carriers carrying the voice data and sst and ascii keyboarding function of the modem. Sorry to tie up the group with an elementary question that I should know. 73s, Jack wa5rop - Original Message - From: KV9U [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2007 9:55 AM Subject: Re: [digitalradio] PSK Modes If I understand it correctly, the raised cosine pulses tend to be more efficient with power, reduce the crest factor (Pactor 2 is under 1.5), and perhaps make it easier to have a cleaner signal. Just for clarification I have a question: Is QAM modulation a form of ASK? It would seem so to me but I am not sure. Otherwise, what other modulation forms fall into the ASK category? Although the SSTV modes are not automatically adaptive, there is a limited choice of number of tones, but for the most part I believe that they have found 16QAM to be about all you can get to work well on many HF circuits, particularly on the lower frequencies. I wonder how a 4-QAM mode compares to say a 4-PSK mode when up against the ionosphere? There must have been a reason that DRM uses QAM instead of PSK? Any thoughts on why? In terms of coding, it would be very interesting is to compare two multitone modems, perhaps a 2 tone and an 8 tone (similar to pactor 2 and 3) and have one with R-S and one with Viterbi and see if there is any difference on various circuits. Does anyone have information on this already? 73, Rick, KV9U Jose_Angel Amador Fundora wrote: We know from Pactor 2, that a raised cosine shaped pulse is likely a very good basic waveform. That is for saving bandwidth, mostly. It might allow better decoding, as well. Pactor 3 is runs an occupied bandwidth of about 2.4 kHz, but raw speed is over 2700 bps. Instead of 2 tones, P3 uses up to 18, separated by 120 Hz and modulated at 100 baud DBPSK or DQPSK. SCS has some fairly detailed data on Pactor 3 at: http://www.scs-ptc.com/download/PACTOR-III-Protocol.pdf I wish someone could explain why we can not have a sound card mode that is roughly the same as Pactor 2 at least. Even if there was no ARQ at first. I don't know if the least complex of it all is ARQ...most likely, the rest is harder to implement. Yes. A key requirement is having the highest distance between constellation points to have an edge against the noise (or QRM). That's why, in DRM, the FAC uses 4QAM, as it allows to send the reduced but very important info it conveys. But the MSC must use 64QAM, because the amount of data to be sent does not allow otherwise in the least bandwidth. What happens if you use a multitone DPSK? It seems to a non-engineering person like myself, that a lot of what P2 and P3 are made up of are really a series of PSK100 or PSK200 tones (carriers). Isn't Q15X25 a similar modulation scheme? It even runs at 83.33 baud rather than a minimum of 100 baud such as P2. Why did it not work as well as P modes? Or is it because it has no coding such as Reed-Solomon block coding or Viterbi convolutional coding? Certainly...all those tricks add up, and most likely, in a non proportional way...I cannot assure it by heart, but is very likely. One of the gains of the code used in pactor modes is using convolutional encoding with Viterbi decoding. The Viterbi decoder, knowing the history of what has been sent, as the convolutionally coded stream depends on what has been sent previously, makes a soft decode of what is the most likely symbol transmitted. RS coding, after deinterleaving, on the other side, may allow to recover erors WITHOUT retransmission, which may save more bandwidth than what is wasted on the FEC overhead. Also, P2 and P3 avoid the edges of the channel to have the least amplitude and delay differences between carriers. That's why a reduced version of Q15X25 is being more succesful in holding the link. 73, Rick, KV9U 73, Jose, CO2JA __ __ __ __ Correo enviado por ElectroMAIL. Facultad Eléctrica. CUJAE Dominio: electrica.cujae.edu.cu Announce your digital presence via our DX Cluster telnet://cluster.dynalias.org Our other groups: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dxlist/ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/themixwgroup http://groups.yahoo.com/group/contesting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wnyar http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Omnibus97 Yahoo! Groups Links
[digitalradio] Re: Working Asia from Eastern USA
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hopefully, your problem is that simple to identify and correct. So how did you correct it? Did you just turn off everything that causes noise when you want to use the radio, or did you find effective ways of filtering out the noise?
Re: [digitalradio] Re: HF Digital Modes and NVIS (iow, short range??? as in 300 mi or
Gee I have been doing it all wrong then. My PACKET - AMTOR PACTOR station runs on a Dell 200mhz system running DOS 6.2 with YAPP (yet another packet program) that cane out in 1985 or 86. The SCS PTC-LLex pactor III TNC has not clue what OS I am running. John Becker wrote: At 02:03 PM 1/21/2007, you wrote in part: I'm a bit confused here. Are you saying that you need some special OS to run pactor 2 3 ? Yes, you need one of the proprietary MS versions of windows. Windows is *not* the only OS out there -- millions of people use Apple or Linux. When, not if, the proprietary MS windows OS goes down and you find yourself in a non-MS windows environment the proprietary Pactor II III systems will be useless. (Unless I have been misinformed and Pactor II III also run under Apple and Linux.) Not to mention when the proprietary Pactor II or III software fails or the matching proprietary hardware fails. Two rare and one sometimes unavailable and often compromised (MS windows) variables in order to make any use whatsoever of Pactor II or III. Talk about planning to fail! Reliable systems for distributed and unpredictable environments are not designed with rare hardware and software but with the capacity to get the job done with whatever is on hand -- The MacGuyver Principle. IMHO, YMMV ... -- Thanks! 73, doc, KD4E
Re: [digitalradio] Re: Working Asia from Eastern USA
The printer was replaced, the router had a bad 120V -12V power converter and that was replaced, TV's remain a problem but are turned off or powered down (and this is band dependent - one TV tears up 30M while others do not). DVR is still a problem but I can normally work DX when this guy is the single RF noise source. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tue, 23 Jan 2007 11:28 AM Subject: [digitalradio] Re: Working Asia from Eastern USA --- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hopefully, your problem is that simple to identify and correct. So how did you correct it? Did you just turn off everything that causes noise when you want to use the radio, or did you find effective ways of filtering out the noise? Check out the new AOL. Most comprehensive set of free safety and security tools, free access to millions of high-quality videos from across the web, free AOL Mail and more.
Re: [digitalradio] Re: HF Digital Modes and NVIS (iow, short range??? as in 300 mi or
John Becker wrote: At 02:03 PM 1/21/2007, you wrote in part: There was no good reason to distort the tests by inserting the specialized hardware, I believe that Pactor I will run on a sound card, only Pactor II and III are dependent on rare proprietary hardware with rare proprietary software run under a proprietary OS. I'm a bit confused here. Are you saying that you need some special OS to run pactor 2 3 ? Yes, you need one of the proprietary MS versions of windows. Windows is *not* the only OS out there -- millions of people use Apple or Linux. When, not if, the proprietary MS windows OS goes down and you find yourself in a non-MS windows environment the proprietary Pactor II III systems will be useless. (Unless I have been misinformed and Pactor II III also run under Apple and Linux.) Not to mention when the proprietary Pactor II or III software fails or the matching proprietary hardware fails. Two rare and one sometimes unavailable and often compromised (MS windows) variables in order to make any use whatsoever of Pactor II or III. Talk about planning to fail! Reliable systems for distributed and unpredictable environments are not designed with rare hardware and software but with the capacity to get the job done with whatever is on hand -- The MacGuyver Principle. IMHO, YMMV ... -- Thanks! 73, doc, KD4E ~~ Projects: http://ham-macguyver.bibleseven.com Personal: http://bibleseven.com ~~
[digitalradio] Re: Working Asia from Eastern USA
Peter K1PGV wrote: Am I simply listening at the wrong time, or in the wrong place to find Asia/Oceania? Am I doing something else wrong? Or is my setup here (TS-2K barefoot and a dipole at 60 feet) simply too humble to allow my signal to make the 6700 mile journey from Boston to Tokyo? Hi Peter, You didn't mention what bands and frequencies and times you were trying... :) Your path from Boston to Tokyo is over the magnetic north pole. The bands haven't been too good over the north pole lately because we are in the bottom of the solar cycle. If you look on the propagation maps, you will find that the maximum usable frequency over the north pole area, and magnetic north pole doesn't get much above 10MHz most of the time. Your best chance for working Japan, Korea, China, or Siberia on PSK31 or MFSK is during the 40 meter band opening between 0830UTC and 1200UTC on your Friday or Saturday (wee hours of the morning for you). All the JAs work PSK31 and MFSK between about 7025.5kHz to 7029kHz. Set your VFO dial to about 7025 USB and watch the waterfall for weak signals... you may catch something. You may also find some JAs on PSK31 on 14070+ kHz around 2200UTC-0100UTC on your Friday or Saturday evening. The 20m band opening happens when the A Index is below 6, the K Index is Zero, and the Solar Flux is above 80. Don't bother trying 20 meters if the A index is above 12 or the K index is above 1. You could more easily work Far East Asia with MFSK or Olivia 500/16 on 7MHz, but unfortunately there are fewer ops here using these modes. Perhaps that will change in the future as more operators discover how much better they are than PSK31. 73--- Bonnie VR2/KQ6XA
[digitalradio] SCS modems and Linux OS
Although it is possible to run Pactor 1 on Linux, the comments have been that it is not a very good implementation. I don't know if this is true as I have never tried it, and the computers are much more powerful now. In order to run Pactor 2 or 3, there is only one choice and that is the SCS modem which is hardware and software combined. You can probably use most any computer. SCS in some cases has a Linux service integrated into their modem. The PIB software (Pactor to Internet Bridge) specially seems to be designed to work with Linux OS as it installs from a CD ROM onto a Linux computer. I am not sure if this can work with MS OS. There isn't any question that Linux OS is making headway in the amateur community. Just look at the surprisingly large number of hams who post on this group and who also use Linux. It seems like it is several times more than you would expect if only 4% or less use Linux. But they tend to be the more technically inclined hams and those who are interested in new things such as digital modes. Thus the likely cross-over. In fact, the tables have been turned a bit due to now having some software, especially PSKmail, only available on Linux OS. 73, Rick, KV9U kd4e wrote: Yes, you need one of the proprietary MS versions of windows. Windows is *not* the only OS out there -- millions of people use Apple or Linux. When, not if, the proprietary MS windows OS goes down and you find yourself in a non-MS windows environment the proprietary Pactor II III systems will be useless. (Unless I have been misinformed and Pactor II III also run under Apple and Linux.) Not to mention when the proprietary Pactor II or III software fails or the matching proprietary hardware fails. Two rare and one sometimes unavailable and often compromised (MS windows) variables in order to make any use whatsoever of Pactor II or III. Talk about planning to fail! Reliable systems for distributed and unpredictable environments are not designed with rare hardware and software but with the capacity to get the job done with whatever is on hand -- The MacGuyver Principle. IMHO, YMMV ...
Re: [digitalradio] PSK Modes
Why do some modems use more rectangular waveforms instead of what appears to be the optimum waveform for HF modems? Or are there downsides to raised cosine waveforms? In terms of bandwidth, it seems to me that for most uses, a 500 Hz bandwidth is a wise choice. This seems to be a good tradeoff in width vs potential throughput for keyboard modes and even some higher speed data modes like Pactor 2 can do under better conditions. Also, 500 Hz filters have been commonly available for CW. With more rigs using DSP filters, I admit that it is less of an issue to tailor make it to one particular width. How about a two tone, DPSK scheme with 50 (maybe even 25?), and also 100 and 200 baud rates? Even if you would initially require manual adjustment. Then we also should have a mode that can run in a voice channel, probably 2.4 to at most 2.7 KHz width. How about an 8 tone DBPSK and maybe switchable (manually at first) to higher PSK rates? All of these modes could have similar timing for ARQ. How about 0.5 seconds pause between transmissions and awaiting an ACK or NAK or control signal? With right control signals you could change the length of time for the packet burst. But for starters, maybe just a simple packet size. 73, Rick, KV9U Walt DuBose wrote: One solution suggested to me was that each tone be individually shaped/filtered before transmitting and then each tone have an individual brick wall filter before it is decoded. I believe that there is not going to be one mode or mode configuration that works well on 3-30 MHz...we will probably have several sets of configurations or perhaps even one optimum configuration for each band or set of conditions. The more options you have that you can adjust of the fly or that can be used adaptively the better off the mode will be. Someone (perhaps all) needs to keep technical notes on what modes work best on what band. Also, we need to come to an agreement on what mazimum bandwidth and user throughput we want as well as how robust and how sensitive we want the mode to be. My personal belief is that we go for 500 Hz wandwidth, 400-800 WPM user throughput 99.9% error free and work down below a 0 dB SNR (0 to -5 dB) on a poor CCIR channel. Put your thinking caps on and make your wish list. 73 CLU, Walt/K5YFW KV9U wrote: Some of us did try Chip modes when Nino first came out with them, but they did not seem to perform as well as existing modes. I really implore to our treasured programmers to see if they can come up with some modes that can compete with Pactor modes. Especially some ARQ modes that can work on MS OS. We know from Pactor 2, that a raised cosine shaped pulse is likely a very good basic waveform. Then for the most robust mode, a two tone DBPSK modulation is used and as the conditions improve, the modulation changes to DQPSK and then with further improvements to 8-DPSK and even 16-DPSK for maximum throughput when conditions are very good. This is what enables Pactor 2 to send about 700 bits per second at the peak speed and do it in only a 500 Hz wide span. We know this can be done at the higher speeds under good conditions with sound card modes since SCAMP was even faster than P2, although a much wider signal. The problem with SCAMP was that it had no fallback position. Pactor 3 is runs an occupied bandwidth of about 2.4 kHz, but raw speed is over 2700 bps. Instead of 2 tones, P3 uses up to 18, separated by 120 Hz and modulated at 100 baud DBPSK or DQPSK. SCS has some fairly detailed data on Pactor 3 at: http://www.scs- ptc.com/download /PACTOR-III- Protocol. pdf http://www.scs-ptc.com/download/PACTOR-III-Protocol.pdf I wish someone could explain why we can not have a sound card mode that is roughly the same as Pactor 2 at least. Even if there was no ARQ at first. And how different is Pactor 3, than what the SSTV hams are using everyday? Aren't they using OFDM with QAM? If you recall what Tom Rink said back in 1995 on the TAPR HF SIG: As mentioned in the introduction, PACTOR-II uses a two-tone DPSK modulation system. Due to the raised cosine pulse shaping, the maximum required bandwidth is only around 450 Hz at minus 50 dB. ASK, which was also tested in the early stage, provided poorer results in weak conditions compared with a higher DPSK modulation, as different amplitude levels are more difficult to distinguish in noisy channels than more phase levels. Additionally, ASK increases the Crest Factor of the signal. For these reasons, it is not used in the final PACTOR-II protocol. Basic information on these items can also be found in the first part of this series. Although not ASK, doesn't QAM employ amplitude changes as part of the modulation scheme? What happens if you use a multitone DPSK? It seems to a non-engineering person like myself, that a lot of what P2 and P3 are made up of are really a series of PSK100 or PSK200 tones (carriers). Isn't Q15X25 a similar modulation scheme? It even runs at 83.33
Re: [digitalradio] Working Asia from Eastern USA
Peter G. Viscarola wrote: Forgive a relative newbie if this is a dumb question: For me...not at alll My QTH is East Cost USA (about 50 miles north of Boston). I've been working PSK31 (and other digital modes) a few hours a day for about 4 months now. I haven't once even HEARD a station in Asia or Oceania. Mine is in the same time zomejust twentysome degrees south of you. Neither have I. I've had pretty good luck into Europe, and I have QSOs as far south as southern Africa (Namibia, Zambia, etc). And of course in good throughout the US, into the caribbean, and down into central and (parts of) South America. Me tooas far east as Madagascar, Saudi Arabia, southern Russia... Am I simply listening at the wrong time, or in the wrong place to find Asia/Oceania? Am I doing something else wrong? Or is my setup here (TS-2K barefoot and a dipole at 60 feet) simply too humble to allow my signal to make the 6700 mile journey from Boston to Tokyo? Possibly it is too humbleand there is a catchthere is too much activity on SSB on 7070, and a chinese over the horizon radar on the lower edge of the band. As I read in QST many years ago : You've gotta hear'em to work'em And it is very hard for them to hear across the largest body of water on Earth with so much CRUD. At least, that's what I rememberthat VK2QQ told me a few days ago. I'd appreciate a little elmering from the list on this topic... I will try to run VOACAP later and see what happens from Havana to Hong Kong on 7 MHz... I need fresh solar data...will look for it and throw some numbers at that path. Hope some time of day will show an open path. TIA, de Peter K1PGV 73, Jose, CO2JA
Re: [digitalradio] PSK Modes
KV9U wrote: If I understand it correctly, the raised cosine pulses tend to be more efficient with power, reduce the crest factor (Pactor 2 is under 1.5), and perhaps make it easier to have a cleaner signal. Raised cosine is, above all, less bandwidth greedy. Just for clarification I have a question: Is QAM modulation a form of ASK? It would seem so to me but I am not sure. Otherwise, what other modulation forms fall into the ASK category? It may be seen as that. Just depend on what abstraction you make to reach that conclusion. FSK is a form of complementary ASK of two carrierswhich is bad is pure ASK because one state is pure signal and another pure garbage (noise, etc). QAM can be seen as an ASK of four phases at a fixed amplitude. Using two quadrature modulators, you create four states keying them with (1,1) (1,-1), (-1, -1) and (-1,1). 1 is the same phase, -1, reversed phase. Combine them and you get a constellation with points every 45 degrees. off the XY axis. Although the SSTV modes are not automatically adaptive, there is a limited choice of number of tones, but for the most part I believe that they have found 16QAM to be about all you can get to work well on many HF circuits, particularly on the lower frequencies. It depends on the signal to noise ratios. There is a video presentation of Doug Smith on Georgia Tech about Digital Voice which is pretty illustrative. Some Googling should find it. It shows the constellations and the effects of noise on it. The more complex the constellation, the less distance there is between constellation points, and so, less leeway for noise before confusing the decoder. I wonder how a 4-QAM mode compares to say a 4-PSK mode when up against the ionosphere? Should be about the same... There must have been a reason that DRM uses QAM instead of PSK? Any thoughts on why? When you need a modulator for 64QAM for the MSC, it is rather easy to create 4QAM with the four extreme points of the 64QAM constellations. In terms of coding, it would be very interesting is to compare two multitone modems, perhaps a 2 tone and an 8 tone (similar to pactor 2 and 3) and have one with R-S and one with Viterbi and see if there is any difference on various circuits. Pactor II and III use both Viterbi decoding and block encoding with interleaving... That is not the test that needs to be done. The difference between P2 and P3, is that P3 stays with the most robust and capable constallation, 4DPSK, and starts deploying carriers using it. The coding tricks are about the same. What I don't know so far is how does it distribute the traffic among the carriers. Jose, CO2JA
Re: [digitalradio] Re: HF Digital Modes and NVIS (iow, short range??? as in 300 mi or
John Becker wrote: At 02:03 PM 1/21/2007, you wrote in part: There was no good reason to distort the tests by inserting the specialized hardware, I believe that Pactor I will run on a sound card, only Pactor II and III are dependent on rare proprietary hardware with rare proprietary software run under a proprietary OS. I'm a bit confused here. Are you saying that you need some special OS to run pactor 2 3 ? John, It requires a SCS multimode box and a Pactor III license. OS can be whatever that communicates with the box. I have used MSDOS, Windows and Linux, so the OS is not an issue. It is just communicating a DTE with a DCE. SCS uses a form of advanced host mode that requires a suitable program to make the best use of it. It may be made to work on a DUMB telephone terminal (Telix, Procomm, etc) FBB (MSDOS, Windows and Linux), Airmai (Windows) and some terminals written for the PTC II are able to deal with advanced host mode well. On Airmail it can show transfer speed, frequency offset, retries, etc, on the computer screen. I am not familiar with the PTCIInet, but seemingly it just requires a 802.3 Ethernet link. It might work with other Unixes and MacOS... Jose, CO2JA
Re: [digitalradio] Working Asia from Eastern USA
I have done that with the audio up and the waterfall. The video on the scene sends different levels of noise in certain frequencies. But the pulse power supply on standby also makes some noises. I did not care what frequency, I just wanted the noise abated, that means SUPPRESSED. Unplugging the TV set was the cure. At 5 AM it doesn't matter much, my wife is not watching TV at those hours. She just might wonder why I interrupted a nice sleep to play with those whistling noises. Resetting the TV clock is the least of two evils, later. Jose, CO2JA [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Peter, I'm just west of Philadelphia and I had the same problem for a few months until I discovered a number of noice sources within my QTH. I finally powered down the house except for my receiver and attached a dB meter to the audio output and set things up on an idle frequency so I was just reading idle noise. Then, I powered up each circuit breaker one at a time watching to see if there were an increase in the readings. If a particular breaker had a noise generator on it's line, I could see an increase in dB reading. In the end, I found that there were eight different sources of radio noise polution in my QTH ranging from my router, printer, one computer, all TVs (one when turned off) and my DVR. Now I can hear Asia Pacific along with the rest of the East Coast where they used to be down in the noise. Hopefully, your problem is that simple to identify and correct. 73 Russ WA3FRP
[digitalradio] Baud rate
I am a little behind the curve on the various modes and how they are created but in looking at the specs on my ARD9800 Digital modem, it baud rate can run as high as 3600 but of course under ideal conditions with a band width ofapprox 2.6 khz. Besides voice, it does sstv, file transfer using Hyper-term with windows and even keyboarding at that rate. I fully understand the need to keep digital data modes under the 5000 hertz bandwidth due to recent rulings but if you can move up in the voice band and still transmit at that high of a baud rate and transfer files, sstv, keyboard and digital voice it seems the digital data folks got shafted with this recent ruling. Other countries as I saw in many messages have the wider bandwidths for digital data, hence the higher baud rates and faster handling of traffic, whether it be regular routine traffic or emergency. The price of the ARD9800 is pretty close to the commercial pactor modems but being limited to use of only pactor II due to bandwidths, makes the AOR modem a real bargain if you want to move traffic, effectively and rapidly. So much for my limited and shallow understanding of the problem. Get a ARD9800 and start using those newer frequencies on 75 and 40 meters, it sounds like no one is down there yet. An interested ham in digital communications, Jack wa5rop If I showed my wrong side, my apologies.
Re: [digitalradio] Baud rate
Jack, From what I can see in the specifications of your unit, this is a 36 tone (carrier) DQPSK system running at 50 baud. The total throughput is the 3600 bps (bits per second) rate. You could theoretically use a 3600 baud system (if you could actually get it to work in the HF bands) for voice and FAX/image in the voice/image subbands, but when in the Data/RTTY bands you can only go up to a maximum of 300 baud. You would not be legal to operate keyboard mode in the voice bands due to our crazy rules here in the U.S. since text modes are to be operated only in the Data/RTTY area and are prohibited in the voice subbands. The future proposal that has not been acted upon yet from the ARRL, recommends a maximum of 3500 Hz for the widest bandwidth modes, except for the grandfathered AM voice which is much wider, around 9000 Hz. I would rate the SCS modem tremendously more useful than the AOR products, because of what it can do with data. And you can use either P2 or P3 in either the RTTY/Data area for text data, or use either in the voice area if you are sending FAX data. Remember that to use SSTV and even FAX transmissions, you need to have a computer anyway, and the software is of excellent quality and compares with the AOR concepts, but is free. Hard to compete with that. The more I have been looking into to digital voice, I do not see how HF DV will ever become very popular because of the limitations of the S/N ratio with such a narrow bandwidth and with our relatively low power levels. DV may become popular in the VHF and higher spectrum, but even then the price has to come way down and the current codecs are not impressive with voice quality compared with analog FM. 73, Rick, KV9U Jack McSpadden wrote: I am a little behind the curve on the various modes and how they are created but in looking at the specs on my ARD9800 Digital modem, it baud rate can run as high as 3600 but of course under ideal conditions with a band width ofapprox 2.6 khz. Besides voice, it does sstv, file transfer using Hyper-term with windows and even keyboarding at that rate. I fully understand the need to keep digital data modes under the 5000 hertz bandwidth due to recent rulings but if you can move up in the voice band and still transmit at that high of a baud rate and transfer files, sstv, keyboard and digital voice it seems the digital data folks got shafted with this recent ruling. Other countries as I saw in many messages have the wider bandwidths for digital data, hence the higher baud rates and faster handling of traffic, whether it be regular routine traffic or emergency. The price of the ARD9800 is pretty close to the commercial pactor modems but being limited to use of only pactor II due to bandwidths, makes the AOR modem a real bargain if you want to move traffic, effectively and rapidly. So much for my limited and shallow understanding of the problem. Get a ARD9800 and start using those newer frequencies on 75 and 40 meters, it sounds like no one is down there yet. An interested ham in digital communications, Jack wa5rop If I showed my wrong side, my apologies. No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.17.8/648 - Release Date: 1/23/2007 11:04 AM
[digitalradio] Re: HF Digital Modes and NVIS (iow, short range??? as in 300 mi or
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, kd4e [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: John Becker wrote: At 02:03 PM 1/21/2007, you wrote in part: There was no good reason to distort the tests by inserting the specialized hardware, I believe that Pactor I will run on a sound card, only Pactor II and III are dependent on rare proprietary hardware with rare proprietary software run under a proprietary OS. I'm a bit confused here. Are you saying that you need some special OS to run pactor 2 3 ? Yes, you need one of the proprietary MS versions of windows. Windows is *not* the only OS out there -- millions of people use Apple or Linux. When, not if, the proprietary MS windows OS goes down and you find yourself in a non-MS windows environment the proprietary Pactor II III systems will be useless. (Unless I have been misinformed and Pactor II III also run under Apple and Linux.) Not to mention when the proprietary Pactor II or III software fails or the matching proprietary hardware fails. Two rare and one sometimes unavailable and often compromised (MS windows) variables in order to make any use whatsoever of Pactor II or III. Talk about planning to fail! Reliable systems for distributed and unpredictable environments are not designed with rare hardware and software but with the capacity to get the job done with whatever is on hand -- The MacGuyver Principle. Sorry, but you don't even have the *first clue* about what you're talking about. Yes, you need one of the proprietary MS versions of windows. That is absolutely, positively false. It is not even REMOTELY true. The SCS modems are exactly that - modems. They don't care a bit about what machine or OS is using them. You can work Pactor III perfectly well with a VT100 terminal hooked up. For that matter, you could also work Pactor 1, Pactor 2, PSK31, RTTY, AMTOR, VHF 1200 and 9600bps packet. And you can do all those with the same VT100. Throw in a host with a graphical display and you can do SSTV, Navtex, and FAX, as well - regardless of the OS. Claiming that you need to use MS-Windows for Pactor is absolutely false, and shows that you're just spewing your ignorance. I have no idea why - maybe you have some agenda, and maybe you're just like to talk about things regardless of your actual knowledge. But the record needs to be set straight. - Rich
Re: [digitalradio] PSK and Yeasu ft-101
I have four 4N29s in my stock. I'll send you one for free. I think the 4N29 will do the trick. The 4N29 will give 2500 Vdc isolation. They cost 20 cents. Please confirm your address off list to my E-mail at [EMAIL PROTECTED] and I'll pop one in the mail for you. The transformer can be anything close as the impedance for your radio output is probably 8 ohms and the input to the computer is around 5K ohms. I do not use any transformers in my setup. http://www.w5bbr.com/soundbd.html has some alternative suggestions. The isolation transformer prevents ground loops. Try what you have from the junk boards. You can also wind a small transformer on a ferrite core. Check google for design parameters. If you have some ferite beads, you should place one on the input and output audio lines; that should help as well. I would recommend placing all your interface components in a shielded box. I mounted RCA jacks on the back of my interface box for the input and output interfaces and then used standard audio patch cords which can be purchased already made up. 73, Bernie - Original Message - From: Bob To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, January 22, 2007 10:27 PM Subject: Re: [digitalradio] PSK and Yeasu ft-101 Hi Bernie, Thanks for the info Does the transformer have to be a 600 ohm, I have some junk boards here I may be able to scrounge a few from, but not sure of their value. And yes I could use one of them 4N35's I would gladly pay you for it. The schematic you refered me to was one I was looking at. The radio is very stable after about 45 min. I allready have the line in to the computer set up and using digipan. 73 Bob KC9GMN - Original Message - From: ve3fwf To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, January 22, 2007 7:22 PM Subject: Re: [digitalradio] PSK and Yeasu ft-101 Have a look at http://www.geocities.com/n2uhc/interface.html This is the opto-isolated circuit I initially built for my HW-100 and it works just fine with the ICOM radios. The above circuit should work on your FT-101. The important thing is that the rig should not drift. While a jump of 50 Hz is OK on SSB, it will cause loss of signal on digital. You will be able to spot a drifting problem by watching the signals on the waterfall. I can send you a 4N35 if you can't source one locally; I'm fairly certain I have some spares. Radio Shack used to have 1:1 600 ohm transformers but I don't know if they still carry these anymore. Good luck and join the fun on digital. 73, Bernie - Original Message - From: Bob To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, January 22, 2007 7:18 AM Subject: [digitalradio] PSK and Yeasu ft-101 Hi Gang! I am fairly new here to this group and have been reading some of the posts. I would like to know if anyone here is using a older rig like mine, a Yaesu FT-101 Z and running PSK31 mode, and what kind of interface they are using. I have seen several schematics for homemade interfaces and am unsure which would be the best to use, I have a 1.8 GHZ computer and a sound card in it. Thanks Bob KC9GMN No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.17.4/644 - Release Date: 1/22/2007 7:30 AM
[digitalradio] Baud rate continued
Hi Rick and thanks for helping me to understand some of the finer points of data vs digital voice. When PSK31 first got started a few years ago, I got a rig interface for my Kenwood 570DG I owned at the time and worked it very well for a couple years. I am blind and had to arm wrestle my screen reading software to make it work properly for me. To lock in on a signal, the program I finally register was MIXW and have kept it updated. To achieve a lock on a signal since I couldn't see the waterfall, I used the auto seek function of f11 and f12 as well as the arrow keys and it sufficed and made many satisfying contacts. Now this Digital voice thing has gotten under my wig and I really have enjoyed it . I wasn't aware that keyboarding in the phone band would be prohibited and thanks for making me aware of that. Yes, the SN factor with the AOR modem is an issue right now, but I truly feel that we hams need to put the hurt on our manufacturers to come out with some better receivers with a lot lower noise floors and the ability to kill noise when desired, not just DSP. I owned an Atlas 210X (don't laugh too hard) and believe it or not, it had the lowest noise floor of any radio I have ever owned, bar none. Their scheme was to use a double ring diode mixer rather than an amplifier stage right after the input from the antenna and boy I could get on a QRN night and hear even the mobiles through it and everyone wondered what I was using. Anyway, I personally feel there will be a digital hf voice mode on some transceiver within the next 4 to 5 years if not sooner. I know Icom has Dstar but it is mostly VHF and above. I also think they could narrow the bandwidth a little more and still maintain a fairly decent quality signal with some FI to it. So again, forgive my ramblings but I am a true believer in digital modes of communications, I just need to get busy and learn more of it technicalities. Your ham friend and fellow digital radio buff, Jack wa5rop
Re: [digitalradio] Re: HF Digital Modes and NVIS (iow, short range??? as in 300 mi or
Claiming that you need to use MS-Windows for Pactor is absolutely false, and shows that you're just spewing your ignorance. I have no idea why - maybe you have some agenda, and maybe you're just like to talk about things regardless of your actual knowledge. But the record needs to be set straight. - Rich This has already been clarified, acknowledged, and resolved. On to the rest of the legitimate concerns about SCS as a mainstay of emergency comms. -- Thanks! 73, doc, KD4E ~~ Projects: http://ham-macguyver.bibleseven.com Personal: http://bibleseven.com ~~
Re: [digitalradio] Re: HF Digital Modes and NVIS (iow, short range??? as in 300 mi or
It requires a SCS multimode box and a Pactor III license. OS can be whatever that communicates with the box. I have used MSDOS, Windows and Linux, so the OS is not an issue. It is just communicating a DTE with a DCE. SCS uses a form of advanced host mode that requires a suitable program to make the best use of it. It may be made to work on a DUMB telephone terminal That is helpful news. One of the three vulnerable legs of SCS has been clarified as not as vulnerable as thought and subject to MacGuyver makeshift redundancy. However, SCS still retains a pair of rare, costly, and vulnerable elements - proprietary SCS hardware and SCS software. Nice to have in the mix, if one can spare the precious cash from the budget, but not on what one wants to hang one's entire disaster communications hat! It would appear that Winlink2000 is a different kettle of fish, dependent on one or more of the proprietary, costly, big-hardware dependent, and problem-plagued MS versions of windows. A poor choice for field deployment, though another optional tool. Not a robustly redundant tool due to hardware and software dependencies. We have to be able to do better! IMHO, YMMV ... -- Thanks! 73, doc, KD4E ~~ Projects: http://ham-macguyver.bibleseven.com Personal: http://bibleseven.com ~~
Re: [digitalradio] Working Asia from Eastern USA
Peter G. Viscarola wrote: Forgive a relative newbie if this is a dumb question: My QTH is East Cost USA (about 50 miles north of Boston). I've been working PSK31 (and other digital modes) a few hours a day for about 4 months now. I haven't once even HEARD a station in Asia or Oceania. I've had pretty good luck into Europe, and I have QSOs as far south as southern Africa (Namibia, Zambia, etc). And of course in good throughout the US, into the caribbean, and down into central and (parts of) South America. Am I simply listening at the wrong time, or in the wrong place to find Asia/Oceania? Am I doing something else wrong? Or is my setup here (TS-2K barefoot and a dipole at 60 feet) simply too humble to allow my signal to make the 6700 mile journey from Boston to Tokyo? I'd appreciate a little elmering from the list on this topic... . Keep in mind that we are near or at the bottom of the 11 year sunspot cycle. While it is possible to work anywhere during any time in the cycle, openings will become better and far more common as we enter the ascending part of the curve. Within 18 months things should be measurably better. de Roger W6VZV
Re: [digitalradio] Working Asia from Eastern USA
You hear this said quite a bit about the propagation during the bottom of the sunspot cycle. But is that directed toward any particular band? It seems to me that the lower bands can actually get better for longer distance (mostly nightime and grayline) propagation. Or are you saying that the lower bands will get better too with more sunspots? 73, Rick, KV9U Roger J. Buffington wrote: Keep in mind that we are near or at the bottom of the 11 year sunspot cycle. While it is possible to work anywhere during any time in the cycle, openings will become better and far more common as we enter the ascending part of the curve. Within 18 months things should be measurably better. de Roger W6VZV No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.17.8/648 - Release Date: 1/23/2007 11:04 AM
Re: [digitalradio] Working Asia from Eastern USA
I am considerably South of you (Virginia), but also do not have all that many PSK contacts into Asia, and have been doing it for a few years, including in much better sunspot conditions. I have 129 countries, out of 708 PSK contacts, but by far Europe and S American/Carribean are the majority, behind stateside stations of course. There are a few out in the S Pacific, but Asia is just HARD. We will both improve in those numbers as the spots increase, and also as more Asian Ops use the mode. Danny Douglas N7DC ex WN5QMX ET2US WA5UKR ET3USA SV0WPP VS6DD N7DC/YV5 G5CTB all DX 2-6 years each . QSL LOTW-buro- direct As courtesy I upload to eQSL but if you use that - also pls upload to LOTW or hard card. moderator [EMAIL PROTECTED] moderator http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DXandTalk - Original Message - From: Roger J. Buffington To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2007 9:37 PM Subject: Re: [digitalradio] Working Asia from Eastern USA Peter G. Viscarola wrote: Forgive a relative newbie if this is a dumb question: My QTH is East Cost USA (about 50 miles north of Boston). I've been working PSK31 (and other digital modes) a few hours a day for about 4 months now. I haven't once even HEARD a station in Asia or Oceania. I've had pretty good luck into Europe, and I have QSOs as far south as southern Africa (Namibia, Zambia, etc). And of course in good throughout the US, into the caribbean, and down into central and (parts of) South America. Am I simply listening at the wrong time, or in the wrong place to find Asia/Oceania? Am I doing something else wrong? Or is my setup here (TS-2K barefoot and a dipole at 60 feet) simply too humble to allow my signal to make the 6700 mile journey from Boston to Tokyo? I'd appreciate a little elmering from the list on this topic... . Keep in mind that we are near or at the bottom of the 11 year sunspot cycle. While it is possible to work anywhere during any time in the cycle, openings will become better and far more common as we enter the ascending part of the curve. Within 18 months things should be measurably better. de Roger W6VZV -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.17.8/648 - Release Date: 1/23/2007 11:04 AM
Re: [digitalradio] Baud rate continued
Jack, I can imagine the challenge for being blind and working with a Windows computer today compared to the early text based machines. Recently, there was an article in QST written by two blind hams who developed an add-on for one of the MFJ antenna analyzers. Ironically, they pointed out that many of the digital devices of today have made it more difficult to use technology. Digital voice is probably as good as it can get unless there is some breakthrough in the laws of physics. The noise floor of the receivers is also about as good as we can get, and often below what is even needed. If you connect your receiver to the antenna and notice an increase in noise, you are above the noise floor of the receiver. And that is normal for almost any kind of antenna on HF. Even on VHF, since the noise floor is mostly dependent upon the atmospheric conditions, not the receiver, assuming the receiver is a reasonably good performer. The D-Star DV voice requires just over 6 kHz of bandwidth so it will not be an option for HF because it is too wide. More than double a typical analog SSB width signal. As you have found, the even narrower digital voice signal that must fit into the very narrow analog filter bandwidth, just does not have the ability to compete with SSB when signals are below the threshhold. Digital modes really shine for data since we do not require the huge data throughput necessary in real time for voice and can actually work well below the noise and can even compete with CW. 73, Rick, KV9U Jack McSpadden wrote: Hi Rick and thanks for helping me to understand some of the finer points of data vs digital voice. When PSK31 first got started a few years ago, I got a rig interface for my Kenwood 570DG I owned at the time and worked it very well for a couple years. I am blind and had to arm wrestle my screen reading software to make it work properly for me. To lock in on a signal, the program I finally register was MIXW and have kept it updated. To achieve a lock on a signal since I couldn't see the waterfall, I used the auto seek function of f11 and f12 as well as the arrow keys and it sufficed and made many satisfying contacts. Now this Digital voice thing has gotten under my wig and I really have enjoyed it . I wasn't aware that keyboarding in the phone band would be prohibited and thanks for making me aware of that. Yes, the SN factor with the AOR modem is an issue right now, but I truly feel that we hams need to put the hurt on our manufacturers to come out with some better receivers with a lot lower noise floors and the ability to kill noise when desired, not just DSP. I owned an Atlas 210X (don't laugh too hard) and believe it or not, it had the lowest noise floor of any radio I have ever owned, bar none. Their scheme was to use a double ring diode mixer rather than an amplifier stage right after the input from the antenna and boy I could get on a QRN night and hear even the mobiles through it and everyone wondered what I was using. Anyway, I personally feel there will be a digital hf voice mode on some transceiver within the next 4 to 5 years if not sooner. I know Icom has Dstar but it is mostly VHF and above. I also think they could narrow the bandwidth a little more and still maintain a fairly decent quality signal with some FI to it. So again, forgive my ramblings but I am a true believer in digital modes of communications, I just need to get busy and learn more of it technicalities. Your ham friend and fellow digital radio buff, Jack wa5rop No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.17.8/648 - Release Date: 1/23/2007 11:04 AM
Re: [digitalradio] Re: HF Digital Modes and NVIS (iow, short range??? as in 300 mi or
Gee Rick, you mean the whole telephone system, inclulding cells were out for one cut? Sounds like they need to do some backup planning at the phone company too. Danny Douglas N7DC ex WN5QMX ET2US WA5UKR ET3USA SV0WPP VS6DD N7DC/YV5 G5CTB all DX 2-6 years each . QSL LOTW-buro- direct As courtesy I upload to eQSL but if you use that - also pls upload to LOTW or hard card. moderator [EMAIL PROTECTED] moderator http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DXandTalk - Original Message - From: KV9U [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2007 10:25 PM Subject: Re: [digitalradio] Re: HF Digital Modes and NVIS (iow, short range??? as in 300 mi or Because the SCS modem works so well, and except for HAL, no other manufacturers developed any competitive systems. Also, there has been minimal interest from the programmers in the amateur radio community to move forward with competitive sound card modes. So for now there is SCS as a proprietary, one source product. Winlink 2000 dropped Clover II support some time back and concentrated only upon Pactor. So if you want to use the HF portion of the Winlink 2000 system, you either use Pactor 1 from a new or used cloned product, (e.g., Kantronics or AEA/Timewave), or you buy the SCS product. Pactor 1 is not fully supported with all the servers and there are time limits from what I understand. For me it is not the price. I simply will not support this kind of approach in amateur radio as I believe that these systems are contrary to what amateur radio is all about. Closed systems with proprietary designs are anathema to me. But others see it differently and will use the system mostly for casual use, such as RV and boating. Some even extend that to emergency communications, but again, that is a stretch for most of us, because it doesn't solve the main emergency needs that we have. And it is a fragile system, dependent heavily on the internet. From comments I have heard there was a recent outage for a short time. Nothing is perfect. Even HF can lose communication due to aurora, bands going out, etc. Recently, our Section has most of the hospitals set up with at least a dual band VHF/UHF antenna, feedline, and power supply. Some have hams on staff and even have used some of the various funding sources to purchase dual band rigs. Yesterday, one of our nearby hospitals that just became well equipped for amateur radio, experienced a failure of cellphones and long distance. The radio amateur operator, who is also a hospital employee, luckily had their plan B backup which was a satellite phone. You really don't need amateur radio with all these other high tech solutions ... right? Except, of course, if the satphone system doesn't work. And it did not work! Quite a shock. Luckily, he was able to get help via amateur radio and make the necessary communications to find out what was going on with the cell phones (cut fiber optic cable) and if necessary we could have mobilized further. Communications were eventually restored about 12 hours from the time the outage was discovered (about 2 am to 2 pm if I have it roughly correct). Satphone system was apparently undergoing some additions to the constellation and was temporarily down or acting intermittently. 73, Rick, KV9U kd4e wrote: One of the three vulnerable legs of SCS has been clarified as not as vulnerable as thought and subject to MacGuyver makeshift redundancy. However, SCS still retains a pair of rare, costly, and vulnerable elements - proprietary SCS hardware and SCS software. Nice to have in the mix, if one can spare the precious cash from the budget, but not on what one wants to hang one's entire disaster communications hat! It would appear that Winlink2000 is a different kettle of fish, dependent on one or more of the proprietary, costly, big-hardware dependent, and problem-plagued MS versions of windows. A poor choice for field deployment, though another optional tool. Not a robustly redundant tool due to hardware and software dependencies. We have to be able to do better! IMHO, YMMV ... Announce your digital presence via our DX Cluster telnet://cluster.dynalias.org Our other groups: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dxlist/ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/themixwgroup http://groups.yahoo.com/group/contesting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wnyar http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Omnibus97 Yahoo! Groups Links -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.17.8/648 - Release Date: 1/23/2007 11:04 AM
Re: [digitalradio] Re: HF Digital Modes and NVIS (iow, short range??? as in 300 mi or
Hi Danny, Not the local phone company, but the cell phone system for the area and long distance were disconnected due to the fiber cut. They have no alternative routing since there is only the one fiber that everything has to pass through to get out of the area and get to the cell towers and long distance. You would think that there would be several alternative paths but I suppose for smaller sized communities, that is not possible. 73, Rick, KV9U Danny Douglas wrote: Gee Rick, you mean the whole telephone system, inclulding cells were out for one cut? Sounds like they need to do some backup planning at the phone company too. Danny Douglas N7DC ex WN5QMX ET2US WA5UKR ET3USA SV0WPP VS6DD N7DC/YV5 G5CTB all DX 2-6 years each . QSL LOTW-buro- direct As courtesy I upload to eQSL but if you use that - also pls upload to LOTW or hard card. moderator [EMAIL PROTECTED] moderator http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DXandTalk - Original Message - From: KV9U [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2007 10:25 PM Subject: Re: [digitalradio] Re: HF Digital Modes and NVIS (iow, short range??? as in 300 mi or Because the SCS modem works so well, and except for HAL, no other manufacturers developed any competitive systems. Also, there has been minimal interest from the programmers in the amateur radio community to move forward with competitive sound card modes. So for now there is SCS as a proprietary, one source product. Winlink 2000 dropped Clover II support some time back and concentrated only upon Pactor. So if you want to use the HF portion of the Winlink 2000 system, you either use Pactor 1 from a new or used cloned product, (e.g., Kantronics or AEA/Timewave), or you buy the SCS product. Pactor 1 is not fully supported with all the servers and there are time limits from what I understand. For me it is not the price. I simply will not support this kind of approach in amateur radio as I believe that these systems are contrary to what amateur radio is all about. Closed systems with proprietary designs are anathema to me. But others see it differently and will use the system mostly for casual use, such as RV and boating. Some even extend that to emergency communications, but again, that is a stretch for most of us, because it doesn't solve the main emergency needs that we have. And it is a fragile system, dependent heavily on the internet. From comments I have heard there was a recent outage for a short time. Nothing is perfect. Even HF can lose communication due to aurora, bands going out, etc. Recently, our Section has most of the hospitals set up with at least a dual band VHF/UHF antenna, feedline, and power supply. Some have hams on staff and even have used some of the various funding sources to purchase dual band rigs. Yesterday, one of our nearby hospitals that just became well equipped for amateur radio, experienced a failure of cellphones and long distance. The radio amateur operator, who is also a hospital employee, luckily had their plan B backup which was a satellite phone. You really don't need amateur radio with all these other high tech solutions ... right? Except, of course, if the satphone system doesn't work. And it did not work! Quite a shock. Luckily, he was able to get help via amateur radio and make the necessary communications to find out what was going on with the cell phones (cut fiber optic cable) and if necessary we could have mobilized further. Communications were eventually restored about 12 hours from the time the outage was discovered (about 2 am to 2 pm if I have it roughly correct). Satphone system was apparently undergoing some additions to the constellation and was temporarily down or acting intermittently. 73, Rick, KV9U
Re: [digitalradio] Re: HF Digital Modes and NVIS (iow, short range??? as in 300 mi or
Gee, Mostly out west there are microwave towers across country for the long distance, and I suspect those also carry the backbone for the cells now too. I dont see many MW -only towers around here thogh. Mostly its fiber cable here too, that I see running all the way up to D.C. I hope they have viable backups. I know we are getting more and more cells towers around here - sometimes within a half or quarter mile from each other. You would think they would share those things, considering the costs. Danny Douglas N7DC ex WN5QMX ET2US WA5UKR ET3USA SV0WPP VS6DD N7DC/YV5 G5CTB all DX 2-6 years each . QSL LOTW-buro- direct As courtesy I upload to eQSL but if you use that - also pls upload to LOTW or hard card. moderator [EMAIL PROTECTED] moderator http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DXandTalk - Original Message - From: KV9U [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2007 11:24 PM Subject: Re: [digitalradio] Re: HF Digital Modes and NVIS (iow, short range??? as in 300 mi or Hi Danny, Not the local phone company, but the cell phone system for the area and long distance were disconnected due to the fiber cut. They have no alternative routing since there is only the one fiber that everything has to pass through to get out of the area and get to the cell towers and long distance. You would think that there would be several alternative paths but I suppose for smaller sized communities, that is not possible. 73, Rick, KV9U Danny Douglas wrote: Gee Rick, you mean the whole telephone system, inclulding cells were out for one cut? Sounds like they need to do some backup planning at the phone company too. Danny Douglas N7DC ex WN5QMX ET2US WA5UKR ET3USA SV0WPP VS6DD N7DC/YV5 G5CTB all DX 2-6 years each . QSL LOTW-buro- direct As courtesy I upload to eQSL but if you use that - also pls upload to LOTW or hard card. moderator [EMAIL PROTECTED] moderator http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DXandTalk - Original Message - From: KV9U [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2007 10:25 PM Subject: Re: [digitalradio] Re: HF Digital Modes and NVIS (iow, short range??? as in 300 mi or Because the SCS modem works so well, and except for HAL, no other manufacturers developed any competitive systems. Also, there has been minimal interest from the programmers in the amateur radio community to move forward with competitive sound card modes. So for now there is SCS as a proprietary, one source product. Winlink 2000 dropped Clover II support some time back and concentrated only upon Pactor. So if you want to use the HF portion of the Winlink 2000 system, you either use Pactor 1 from a new or used cloned product, (e.g., Kantronics or AEA/Timewave), or you buy the SCS product. Pactor 1 is not fully supported with all the servers and there are time limits from what I understand. For me it is not the price. I simply will not support this kind of approach in amateur radio as I believe that these systems are contrary to what amateur radio is all about. Closed systems with proprietary designs are anathema to me. But others see it differently and will use the system mostly for casual use, such as RV and boating. Some even extend that to emergency communications, but again, that is a stretch for most of us, because it doesn't solve the main emergency needs that we have. And it is a fragile system, dependent heavily on the internet. From comments I have heard there was a recent outage for a short time. Nothing is perfect. Even HF can lose communication due to aurora, bands going out, etc. Recently, our Section has most of the hospitals set up with at least a dual band VHF/UHF antenna, feedline, and power supply. Some have hams on staff and even have used some of the various funding sources to purchase dual band rigs. Yesterday, one of our nearby hospitals that just became well equipped for amateur radio, experienced a failure of cellphones and long distance. The radio amateur operator, who is also a hospital employee, luckily had their plan B backup which was a satellite phone. You really don't need amateur radio with all these other high tech solutions ... right? Except, of course, if the satphone system doesn't work. And it did not work! Quite a shock. Luckily, he was able to get help via amateur radio and make the necessary communications to find out what was going on with the cell phones (cut fiber optic cable) and if necessary we could have mobilized further. Communications were eventually restored about 12 hours from the time the outage was discovered (about 2 am to 2 pm if I have it roughly correct). Satphone system was apparently undergoing some additions to the constellation and was temporarily down or acting intermittently. 73, Rick, KV9U Announce your digital presence via our DX Cluster
[digitalradio] SDRs Open Possibility for 18kHz Bandwidth HF Data?
SDRs Open the Possibility for 18kHz Bandwidth HF Data providing more robust communications and higher speed data. With new Software Defined Radio (SDR) transceivers that use computer audio as the IF and DSP for filtering and modem, wider bandwidths than the traditional 3kHz SSB transceivers are possible. 12kHz or 20kHz BW is certainly within the range of SDRs. This opens the possibility for some very fast and/or robust HF digital modes that can take advantage of wider bandwidths when needed, or could scale down and up in speed or bandwidth depending upon propagation conditions and need to coexist and share with other spectrum users. There are bandwidth limits for ham emissions in many countries. In some countries there is a 6kHz limit. In others, it is 9kHz or 10kHz or 20kHz. Some countries have no bandwidth limit, other than the obvious requirement of simply keeping your signal within the ham band :) Some countries such as USA don't specify finite bandwidth. Using 18kHz bandwidth, it is possible to have a digital mode that could decode at -20dB or -23dB SNR. That is significant, because it opens the possibility for a new use of HF bands that often become unused in parts of the solar cycle when propagation is poor. When the band goes dead, and everyone else is gone, one could simply switch to the wide/robust mode and continue communications... the equivalent of tremendously increasing transmit power on both ends of the QSO. Following is a side note for USA hams pushing the data speed-vs-bandwidth envelope: Contrary to what many USA hams believe, there is presently NO FINITE BANDWIDTH LIMIT enumerated for HF data emissions by FCC in USA. There is an FCC rule that bandwidth shouldn't be wider than a phone emission and that it be no wider than necessary for the purpose. The 300 symbols/second limit for data in FCC rule DOES NOT SET ANY BANDWIDTH CONSTRAINT, and it applies only to the data subbands. If the content is images or audio sounds such as voice, there is no 300 symbol/second limit in the appropriate subband. Assume that for important purposes, you need a data transmission to carry as much data on HF as possible in a very short time. Perhaps you are sending it for important EMCOMM purposes... You also need it to be very robust, and work in negative SNRs. So, the wider the bandwidth, the better, since a wider transmission can be faster and can be made more robust with spectral and time redundancy. That important need satisfies the no wider than necessary requirement of the FCC rules. The next question for USA hams becomes: How wide is an HF phone emission, if one can't exceed that bandwidth? AM (Amplitude Modulated) phone emissions are the foundation of FCC rules. A normal AM signal with human voice modulation can be as much as about 18kHz bandwidth. That is also the normal AM broadcast bandwidth. Some shortwave AM broadcast stations use 10kHz bandwidth. However, for communications purposes, especially by hams, the AM audio modulation source is usually low-pass filtered with a cutoff at around 3.5kHz to 5kHz, and this usually limits the AM signal to about 7kHz to 10kHz. But, there are presently hams who communicate using higher fidelity AM with 18kHz bandwidth on HF (especially 80m 10m) and MF (160m). Effectively, the status quo is what sets a defacto bandwidth limit on HF data in USA at somewhere between about 7kHz to 18kHz, depending upon how you want to interpret it or push the envelope. Perhaps this open door will be closed to USA hams in the near future if narrow finite bandwidth limits are put in place on HF. The availability now of wide bandwidth on HF combined with availability of SDRs, or transceivers that can be modified for wider IFs, certainly provides a window of opportunity for experimentation by hams to develop faster and better HF data. Bonnie VR2/KQ6XA
