[MRCG] Clatternet Tonight at 18:30 PDT

[Mark J. Blair]

I'm sorry I didn't make it to the AM net last night. I was just too pooped after planting a mast for a microwave link between my folks' house and mine. That Riverside dirt is tough stuff, and we were way too far from an outlet for me to run my gigantic Milwaukee hammer drill.

I expect to run Clatternet as normal tonight, but note the time change: We'll start at 18:30 PDT tonight and hope for a better propagation window. We'll continue on 40m for now. And of course, the wall clock time will shift again soon when daylight savings time ends.

I'll recap the technical parameters:

Net start time:                         18:30 PDT
Mode:                                   RTTY, 850 Hz shift, mark low, 45.45 baud
Channel freq (AFSK suppressed carrier): 7087 kHz (as indicated on PRC-47)
AFSK mark tone:                         1575 Hz
AFSK band center:                       2000 Hz
AFSK space tone:                        2425 Hz
Actual mark freq:                       7088.575 kHz
Actual space freq:                      7089.425 kHz

How you get your mark and space tones onto the correct radio frequencies varies depending on your equipment, and there may be multiple ways to get the same effect (for example, I tune my Yaesu FT-450D to 7087.5 kHz and set the center freq in fldigi to 1500 Hz in order to center the mark/space tones in my radio's audio passband). It can be really confusing at first, but it gets easier once you figure it all out.

Note that there's a Dovetron MPC-1000 RTTY converter on eBay at the moment, with the listing ending on Tuesday afternoon. I used mine with a UGC-74C and a Yaesu FT-100 to check into Clatternet a decade or so ago, and I plan to put it back on the air again one of these days.

I hope that we can encourage more MRCG folks to try out RTTY on Clatternet. Anything from vintage WW2 gear to modern ham stuff is welcome, and we're all happy to help out with the learning curve.

-- 
Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net>
http://www.nf6x.net/