The CAT Control Center (CATCC) discussion mailig list has
been created to provide a dialog between the amateur
community and Steve Hajducek, N2CKH on the subject of amateur
station computer control software for MS-Windows being developed
by him for commercial sale to the hobby. The intent of CATCC is
to support all popular (and not so popular) amateur equipments
with computer interface capability to one integrated software
package for a single point of control for an entire radio
station. We are heading into the next century and now more than
ever the amateur station and the personal computer are being
integrated for the competive (in the case of the Kachina and
others to come, required) edge in operation.
Yes, there are already a number of MS-Windows based applications
that perform radio control (barely in some cases) and there
are many computer based logging applications (many very good
ones and some very bad ones) and some even some that attempt to
do both. However in the authors opinion, none of these packages
do the entire job, they do not even come close.
The goal of this open discussion forum will induce the active
user community to actively exchange their ideas and opinions on
this subject matter, and through this medium bring about better
software fo the hobby. Yes, the author is looking to develop a
greater insight into the subject in question to better his
develop the CATCC software, but it will be an open forum that
will benefit any and all interested parties in the subject
matter, that means other publishers as well, but more
specifically it will benefit the user community. We have no
specific forum, be it a e-mail relector or newsgrooup on
computer control of our amateur stations.
Without making reference to any particular product other than
CATCC, we look forward to hearing what is best liked about the
software you may be using now, wether DOS, Windows or what
ever and what you dislike the most. We hope to here pipe dream
features discussed as well. It is from this forum that we hope
to learn about emerging methods and processes of operation
within the hobby that can be addressed by software to benefit
us all from the arm chair ease of operation to nabbing that
rarest contact to date.
You may subsribe to the mailing list by pointing your browser
to http://CATCC.Listbot.com or from our website were we have
additional information about CATCC. We also have a very early
proof of concept 16 bit MS-Windows application that we
developed some time ago to get a feel for many aspects or our
concept in operation and to test the MS-Windows waters with
respect to it supporting what we wanted to achieve. Feel free
to download and play with what we have call "CATCC-Jr". However
bear in mind that it is NOT a product, that in itself, it is
NOT even a finished program (we decided 16 bit tools and OS were
not up to the task) and that it only supports a sampling of
Yaesu (FT-840, FT-890, FT-900, FT-990, FT-1000 and sub band as
well as FT-736R) and Kenwood radios. You will also find some
demo MS-Windows software for rig control of makes and models
of equipments and rotor control as well.
It will be the middle of 1999 or later before the 32 bit beta
of CATCC becomes available, we can do a lot of talking between
now and then.
Sincerely,
/s/ Steve Hajducek, N2CKH
http://www.qth.com/n2ckh.bytewise.org
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