[Elecraft] Re: CW-to-RTTY with message buffers: are spaces there?

[Vic K2VCO]

Tom Hammond wrote:

>> One way to handle this would be to use "1/4 letter space" as the basic 
>> spacing element. Then recording, decoding, and playback would be 
>> closer to real-time.
> 
> Can you 'splain this a bit better Vic? Never heard of this method of 
> timing... always worked on the baud method.

First I have to reverse-engineer Wayne's code!

The firmware now listens to the spaces between characters as you send. 
If the space is less than some fixed threshold it assumes that it is a 
letter space; if more, a word space.

When it records what you have sent, it puts in a token that indicates 
either a word space or a letter space is needed. During playback, when 
it comes to a letter-space token it waits for the appropriate time 
(whatever that is);  when it comes to a word-space token it waits longer.

This means that while you are recording, if you wait a little bit past 
the threshold that it uses to decide what size space it is, it will put 
in a word space token. So when I send my call K 2VCO, I get K   2VCO.

My suggestion is that instead of just two possibilities for spacing, 
there should be more. This could be implemented by creating tokens for 
smaller spaces, like 1/4 of a letter space. That would sound almost like 
a real-time recording, in terms of preserving the spacing as sent. But 
even using units of half of a letter space would avoid the difficulty 
that those of us who do not send like tape machines have when recording 
messages!
-- 
73,
Vic, K2VCO
Fresno CA
http://www.qsl.net/k2vco