On Wed, 2010-02-17 at 01:03 -0800, Julian, G4ILO wrote: > I don't know. Someone could write a bit of software to actually reply to the > station and make the contact saving you the bother. Wouldn't that be even > better? :P)
Back in the late 70s when I was working as a W1AW operator, Irv Hoff W6FFC came to visit the station one evening. Irv was rather famous at the time for his work in RTTY (inventor of several popular demodulators) and later became famous for his work in computers (writer of much early CP/M software). Irv loved to talk and we chewed the rag all night, right on through until the next morning when he had to leave for the Hartford-Windsor airport to report for duty in his job as a United Airlines pilot. (I'll never understand how he could fly a plane on no sleep!) One of his stories was about his ham station. Somewhere he had acquired a surplus DEC PDP-7 (I think it was) minicomputer that he had interfaced to his RTTY station. He had hacked a program that would automatically answer anyone calling W6FFC when he wasn't at home. It would then engage in a typical ham QSO, play the brag tape, and respond to simple questions, all with no human intervention. It even remembered the other operator's name so the next time he called it could answer him my name. He did all this back in the days before home computers. (The Apple II was introduced in 1977.) He asked me to keep the story quiet since it was technically illegal to operate a station with no control operator, but since he passed away some years ago (1991) I think he is now beyond the FCC's reach. :=) Al N1AL ______________________________________________________________ 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
