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

[T. David Yarnes]

I missed some of this discussion, so I may be off track 
here.  But I think I know what Vic means.  Some message 
memories record in real time--you leave a long space, and it 
shows up in your memory the same way.  But the K3 seems to 
be tied to a rather precise gap between letters or words.

Actually, this kind of method will help point out flaws in 
the way a person sends.  Some time back I was trying to 
record a "CQ" message in a keyer memory, and I discovered I 
had developed a tendency to leave a bit too much space 
between my next-to-last call letter and the last letter.  I 
was sending "W7AQK" as "W7AQ K".  I probably did it for 
years!  It was also possibly one of the reasons so many 
people came back to me as "W7AQ", thinking I had sent the 
"K" as an "invitation to transmit".   In contests, etc., 
they weren't even waiting for the second "K" at the end. 
Now that I've been paying more intention (and it hasn't been 
easy getting out of that habit), I don't seem to get as many 
incorrect responses.

The message buffers in the K3 are pretty large, so they make 
a pretty good recording device for recording yourself and 
checking on your sending technique.  I know this method is 
kind of a pain in the butt for a lot of us, but I really 
like it if my messages come out like machine code.  I'm not 
sure other methods would do this as effectively.

Another thing I've been playing with a bit is sending CW and 
letting the K3 convert it to RTTY.  If you don't move right 
along, with proper spacing, you get a bunch of extra garbage 
between characters.  Being able to send RTTY without a 
computer is sort of a "gee whiz" feature, but it's been fun 
playing with it.

Dave W7AQK

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Vic K2VCO" <vic at rakefet.com>
To: "Tom Hammond" <n0ss at embarqmail.com>
Cc: <elecraft at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Friday, January 11, 2008 3:12 PM
Subject: [Elecraft] Re: CW-to-RTTY with message buffers: are 
spaces there?


> 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
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