Hi friends,
It's that most wonderful time of year again when we get to track Santa on his annual yuletide adventures around the world using these electromechanical marvels that keep us all so enchanted.
For the uninitiated, this is an ITTY-like broadcast at 45 baud where periodic reports of where Santa was sighted and the circumstances of that sighting are sent out as the reports are verified. Our eyewitness reports provide a unique, intimate tracking experience, and it's particularly enjoyed by kids aged one to 92.
Tune in whenever you can at
http://tty.nerdology.org:8000/santatrack using the same configuration as you would for standard ITTY. NOTE: this URL will result in a 404 error until 15 - 30 minutes before the first test message on the 23rd.
The schedule will be as follows:
- December 23, 3:00 PM MST - Test messages including Christmasy RTTY art (some pix will have overstrike) broadcast every hour on the hour for this and the following 11 hours, which should give all global time zones some chance to tune in before tracking starts
- December 24, 3:00 AM MST - Based on prior timetables, we expect Santa to begin his journey and the reports of sightings to start coming around this time
- We will track Santa for the following ~24 hours as reports of his whereabouts and descriptions of what he's doing keep coming in, with these brief messages likely rolling in roughly every 10 - 20 minutes dependent upon how the sightings go this year
Remember, this is an autostart-style broadcast with silence in between messages.
I believe I have solved the USOS (unshift on space) timing problem and will be able to support USOS at last, but I need to do some further testing this week to ensure it is so. If you don't hear otherwise before December 23, this broadcast should finally be compatible with those machines that expect USOS.
Merry Christmas all, and, of course, 73,
-
Jordan Spencer Cunningham