[GreenKeys] CFH 10.943 Now Dead

[John Vendely]

The Dutch navy still has a few frequencies with 75/850 RTTY in use, 
which I heard over the weekend, but they're just channel availability 
broadcasts.  It's better than nothing, though.  Hopefully they didn't 
disappear after the holiday as well.  The Portuguese navy still had 
similar transmissions, though I haven't checked recently.  The German 
weather bureau transmissions are still there on several frequencies 24/7 
at 50 baud, and I occasionally hear Indian navy RTTY broadcasts in the 8 
Mc band, with shifts as high as 1 kHz.  I also occasionally hear some 
French Forces 50 baud 85 shift RTTY, probably special operations, as 
they appear only sporadically.  Virtually all the French Forces point to 
point links using the Siemens ARQ modems (ARQ-E, ARQ-E3, etc.) are now 
extinct. The only one I still hear is the link from La Reunion to Paris, 
both sides of which are copyable here at this moment at 11,421.7 and 
11,521.7 kc.  This link idles most of the time, though a small but 
consistent amount of traffic does come through.  Of course, this is 
really not "classic" RTTY.
Suffice to say that HF data transmission has changed radically in the 
last several years.  Maritime stations have gone mostly to proprietary 
versions of Pactor, and the military has moved to the esoteric high 
speed HF waveforms.

It's gotten to the point where we'll have to provide our own RTTY 
traffic if we want something to receive on HF.  For what it's worth, 
every April at the Vietnam Veteran's Reunion in Melbourne, FL, we set up 
a large display of operational military radio gear, including 850 shift 
teletype using two truck-mounted AN/GRC-122 systems.  Regular schedules 
are maintained, and a number of stations around the country participate 
in the RTTY nets.  It's dismaying to see how few ham operators even knew 
how to set their software-based RTTY systems for 850 shift.  Many assume 
that anything other than 170 shift is illegal.  If there's any interest, 
I'll make sure this list is notified the next time we operate...

73,

John K9WT



On 12/27/2010 2:45 PM, Ron Boltz wrote:
> The Canadian Forces 10.943 RTTY marker went silent over the Christmas
> weekend.  This was the last CFH station transmitting.  It will be greatly
> missed by me as it was always a good demonstration of RTTY to visitors and a
> good way to test the equipment.  The CFH 10.536 WX was better but that went
> silent several months ago.  Now there is nothing reliable I know of here in
> the east.
>
> Ron Boltz
> K3TZJ
>
>
>
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