The stream is now live! First test message to be sent in 30 minutes.
It's that time of year again for all good little boys and girls to follow Santa's journey around the globe through the peak of communications innovation: the teleprinter.
For the uninitiated, this is an ITTY-like broadcast wherein reports of where Santa was sighted and the circumstances of that sighting are broadcast periodically. Our eyewitness reports provide a unique, intimate tracking experience particularly enjoyed by kids aged one to 92.
The schedule will be as follows:
- December 23, 3:00 PM MST - A test message followed immediately by a Christmasy RTTY art (some pix will have overstrike) will be 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. Print one, print them all. My kids particularly enjoy coloring these on Christmas Eve.
- 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 in around this time
- We will track Santa for the following ~24 hours with these brief messages likely rolling in roughly every 10 - 20 minutes dependent upon how the sightings go this year. You may consider keeping a good ol' fashioned globe or atlas handy to follow along.
Not to get into the weeds, but while I have attempted supporting USOS (unshift on space) for the past few years, I am again unable to support it this year due to a bug I found in the implementation of USOS in the software I use to generate tones (fldigi) for which I can't compensate, and the fact that I have been wholly unable to devote any time to migrating to minimodem with having everything in storage all year while I work on finishing up the Teletype Barn. I still have to dig out some equipment just to track Santa this year.
Anyway, those who have USOS on receive enabled, if you can disable it, that's advisable, though if not, it should only be a minor inconvenience, manifesting mainly in timestamps not printing correctly.
Merry Christmas, 73,
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Jordan Spencer Cunningham