On Nov 24, 2013, at 8:16 AM, Don Hill AA5AU wrote:
> It's called Winmor and it has a rate of either 47 or 94 baud
> and has a bandwidth of either 450 or 1600 Hz depending on which mode it used.
Winmor is actually very well behaved on the spectrum and was created as an open
system without any "encryption" properties.
I was watching one Winmor station two afternoons ago and it has a very nice and
tight signal.
(I had spent that entire afternoon with my panadapter, scanning the 14100 to
14140 kHz region, trying to learn the characteristics of the Winlink stations).
Winmor is to be encouraged over the use of the proprietary PACTOR modems, IMHO.
The main problem is that there are people who are not happy enough with the
throughput of Winmor and want higher and higher speeds, who knows what they
need the higher throughputs for.
There are also many users who don't understand, and don't want to understand
how to operate radios (not their primary aim to get a ham license), and they
prefer spending the money ($2000 is nothing to sailors) for a turn-key
interface such as an SCS modem, rather than having to cobble together
soundcards, SignaLinks, etc to use Winmor.
With an SCS box, you buy the cable, connect it to a radio, set it to USB, and
off you go. (At least, they *think.*)
However, if you go watch some of the stuff going on around 14110, it is almost
comical. You will see two PACTOR stations that are off tuned by 100 Hz beeping
at one another for a minute without even establishing a link. These guys
could not even zero beat their rigs to within 100 Hz of one another -- not to
mention the lack of any AFC system. "Modern modes," my foot. (100 Hz is how
far off Pactor III should lock, according to their specs.)
I am not sure, but I think Winmor, as an "AFSK" system, may be way superior to
Pactor when it comes to tuning.
73
Chen, W7AY
_______________________________________________
RTTY mailing list
RTTY@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/rtty
|