[Lowfer] PSK Update

[Bill de Carle]

At 04:45 PM 1/30/2004 -0800, Ed wrote:
>Lyle Koehler wrote:
>> 
>> I agree with John's observations about PSK. PSK31 is a great mode for HF,
>> and even for local work on LF. For some reason, though, the slower speed
>> variants don't seem to yield much performance improvement. I don't believe
>> that phase stability over the propagation path is the problem, because
>> VE2IQ's BPSK programs work pretty well even at MS1000 (1 baud).
>
>	Is that a sound card program?  If so, where can I get it?

AFRICAM can use either the Sigma-Delta board (7200 samples per second going
into
the computer on a serial port), or *some* sound cards.  In particular, it
works
quite well for sound cards based on the ESS688 or ESS1688 chip sets, or
laptops
which use those chips for on-board audio).  It is a DOS program.

For at least a year now I have had a GPS-disciplined version of AFRICAM in
use here in my shack but haven't bothered to upload it to my web site because
there seemed to be little interest.  I will try to get it uploaded tonight
and post a note here when it is ready.  I'll have to write up something to
tell folks how to get the 1-PPS signal from a GPS Rx into the program.

Altough AFRICAM was initially intended for receiving (monitoring) only, the
later
versions have a beacon capability - it can send short messages repeatedly
using
any of the supported modes (including WOLF) and/or speeds.  Might be fun to
try
WOLF at slower speeds synchronized to UTC.  Ought to work well for groundwave.
At present there is no WOLF decoder in AFRICAM - but I might be able to
find the
time to put it in if there is enough interest and it looks promising.

My web site is currently at:

http://www.magma.ca/~ve2iq

Give me an hour or two to get the latest AFRICAM uploaded.
Bill VE2IQ