Rich:
>Brett, I've brought along books, magazines, and CDs to entertain myself in a
>hotel room while travelling, but never a grocery bag full of mail. Of
>course, unlike you I don't receive mail in grocery bag quantities!
Yeah, one of the negative aspects of being DX... ;^)
>My sure-fire hi-tech way to abort an RTTY message is to hit the power off
>button on the TNC. Of course that means I have to reinitialize it before I
>can get back going again, which is a less than optimal solution. It sounds
>to me as if you guys have found a better way.
>
>Kirk, I think the ":" merely tells the computer to start accepting input
>from the keyboard instead of from the programmed function key message until
>you press <Esc> - it doesn't start sending stuff to the TNC, the act of
>pressing the function key has done that already. So I think putting the ":"
>in F9 only means that you would have to press <Esc> before the rest of the
>function key message would be sent. <Esc> may even be programmed to
>terminate sending to the TNC entirely, in which case you wouldn't even get
>to the rest of the programmed F9 message.
>
>I think of the normal function key as doing three things: starting to
>transmit, sending the programmed contents, then stopping transmit. F10 is
>the same, except that its programmed contents are simply ":". And if a ":"
>appears anywhere in any function key message, including F10, then instead of
>continuing with the programmed contents of the function key, TRLog waits for
>input from the keyboard, terminated by an <Esc>, before continuing. In CW,
>you can also terminate keyboard input with <Enter> or F10 (at least if you
>started with F10), but these two keys don't work that way in RTTY.
>
>I don't have a PK-232 to play with, but it seems to me that you may be able
>to simply press F9 to abort a message, without pressing F10 first.
>
>My thinking goes as follows: I assume you are using the RTTY SEND STRING
>(=TC<0D>X<0D>) and RTTY RECEIVE STRING (=<04>) recommended by Brett, and
>that you have set F9=<03>R<0D>. In this case, the entire F9 sequence would
>be:
>
>TC<return>
>X<return>
><ctrl-C>R<return>
><return>
><ctrl-D>
>
>Unlike the normal case when there is only a single <ctrl-D> left in the
>buffer, when you press F9 to abort a message there is already stuff in the
>buffer (the stuff you are trying to abort) ending with a <ctrl-D>. The TC
>and X would simply tack more useless stuff onto the end of that buffer, the
><ctrl-C>R should stop the transmit immediately, an extra carriage return is
>added automatically by TRLog (I could be wrong about this, but it doesn't
>make any difference), and finally another <ctrl-D> would be added to the
>buffer (RTTY RECEIVE STRING). The next time you press any function key, the
>TC at the beginning of the RTTY SEND STRING would clear everything from the
>buffer.
>
>If you press F10 first, I think all you do is tack an extra TC<0D>X<0D> onto
>the buffer (does no harm, but does no good either).
>
>However, there may well be something wrong with my logic. In CW, if you
>press F10 followed by another function key, the second function key is
>ignored. From your description, this is not happening in RTTY, so maybe the
>function keys work differently in RTTY than in CW. But in that case, I would
>be tempted to conclude that by pressing F10 before F9, you may have placed
>TRLog in a state where it continues to expect keyboard input even after you
>press F9, i.e. that you may have to press <Esc> after F9 to terminate the
>sequence. Since you didn't mention that as a side effect, my mental model of
>how the function keys work may be wrong. Still, it's worth a try to see if
>F9 alone will do the trick.
I'm beginning to think that hitting the RADIO switch on the PK-232 is the way
to go, as a downside of what you describe above - which, first thing Monday
morning I'm following & this means you are spot on or I'm not awake (or both) -
there will be so much text coming back from the PK-232 (command prompts
& "transmit data remaining" messages) that received text in the terminal
window is likely to scroll off before operator realizes it is gone.
>Sorry I can't test this myself: (a) I have an MFJ-1278, not a PK-232; and
>(b) I seem to have somehow damaged the COM port I was using to talk to the
>MFJ (all the pins are now stuck on 0V), which means I can't use my TNC
>anyway. I am using soundcard AFSK RTTY instead. Since my soundcard software
>receives a lot better than my MFJ TNC did, I'd be quite happy, except now I
>can't use TRLog in RTTY.
Sorry Rich - they almost issued me VR2BrainFade previously.
>BTW, I'd be interested to hear how TRLog works in WAE RTTY. The rules are
>different from CW/SSB (everyone works everyone, so there are lots more mults
>available, and anyone anywhere can send or receive QTCs, which only have to
>be exchanged between different continents). Will TRLog let you take full
>advantage of these differences while automating both sending and receiving
>of QTCs, and will it score the RTTY contest correctly?
Will pick that one up with another thread!
73, VR2BrettGraham
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