Ham population stats

From: John Wilson <wilson_at_dbit.dbit.com>
Date: Wed Feb 16 15:31:35 2000

On Wed, Feb 16, 2000 at 06:44:14PM +0000, Tony Duell wrote:
> Hmmm.. I've tried to learn morse several times, and failed every single
> time. I don't know why, but it just doesn't seem to 'click' with me.

Well, having an actual use for it makes it a lot easier to remember. My
best friend and I learned Morse code in 6th grade so that we could pass
notes in class that no one could understand. Naturally that later fizzled,
the 7th grade teacher was a ham and the 8th grade teacher was a radio operator
in the Norwegian underground in WW2, so much for that idea! But learning
Morse code is a lot easier than memorizing the ASCII table, there are way
fewer characters...

> It would be considerably more entertaining to attmept to output data
> packets directly from the 11/44 without using a TNC. A DUP11 might be
> able to produce a suitable data format. A KMC11 + a suitable comms card
> certainly could.

I *always* wanted to do that, I actually bought a DUP11 years ago for this
purpose but never dug up documentation on it until recently. You'd need to
build some kind of external clock (PLL really I guess) that synchronized to
the bit transitions of AX.25, shouldn't be a very big deal though.

Stupid question: what comes out of the other side of a ham TNC these days?
It used to be Bell 202 modem tones at 1200 baud HDX, over an FM voice signal,
it *can't* still be that easy though can it? Some place I still have the
202 style TU I built from a kit (hmm, Fletcher TU-1200 maybe, or did I just
make that up?) to go with the DUP11 before I dropped the ball.

> > to lash up an RTTY program for the PDP, to send and recieve Baudot
> > in real time.
>
> DL11s can be jumpered for 5 bits and 1.5 stop bits IIRC.

Hmm, any idea how well that really interacts with real TTYs? I thought they
used 1.4xxx stop bits or something (really whatever scrap of a rotation is
left over after all 5 bits get sampled and before the selector doodad hits
the stop again). I suppose you're unlikely to type fast enough on a real
TTY to cause framing errors... Anyway the *true* joy of Baudot is that
ridiculous keyboard layout, and all that crap with FIGS and LTRS, using a
computer would miss some of the wackiness. Geez, I miss my model 19...

John Wilson
D Bit
Received on Wed Feb 16 2000 - 15:31:35 GMT