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>From eric%modular.UUCP at cs.arizona.edu (Eric Gustafson)  Fri Jul  1 17:50:32 1994
From: eric%modular.UUCP at cs.arizona.edu (Eric Gustafson) (Eric Gustafson)
Date: Fri, 1 Jul 94 09:50:32 MST
Subject: slow FD ops
Message-ID: <9407011650.AA13852 at modular>


Steve Harrison wrote:

 >Yeah, this zero-beating thing is one of my pet peeves about any CW 
 >contest. Give a listen to somebody running a pile on CW sometime, and 
 >marvel at how far off frequency almost all of the callers are. Then, try 
 >to figure out why that is. The only thing I can figure is that very few 
 >of those with modern-day rice boxes understand that they are supposed to 
 >leave their RIT alone and tune in the station they want to call at the 
 >same audio pitch as their keying sidetone. <stuff deleted>


Steve,

I have recently used a number of radios other than my own as guest op at
other stations.  What I notice is that the ones that depend on passband
tuning to get a narrow bandpass for CW work rather than spend the extra bux
for CW filters rarely achieve alignment between the passband center and the
sidetone pitch.

I also notice that ICOM 765s have a very perverse feature.  They allow you
to vary the sidetone pitch to suit the natural resonances in your phones or
hearing but the pitch change does not affect the offset frequency (the
TS-850 does this correctly...both change when you change the pitch).

This FD I was using an unfamiliar TS940.  It is not owned by a CW op but
ostensibly has a CW filter in it (passband is actually only narrow when
WIDE is selected).  It also has a tuneable narrow audio filter and several
different flavors of passband tuning.  It took the CW crew about 45 minutes
to get all the various adjustments aligned so that the receiver bandpass
sounded like it was centered on the sidetone pitch.  Then, during the
course of operating for several hours (all the phone guys left us), we
noticed that the stations calling us were distributed in a gaussian
distribution centered about 200 Hz below our frequency.  The distribution
curve was about 800 Hz wide at the 2 sigma points.  So even though we were
aware of how to zero another signal, and aware that the radio wasn't
initially aligned correctly, and aware of how to adjust for the offset, and
made a diligent effort to get things right, I believe we were still about
200 Hz off.  Since we were running 100% of the time and did NO S&P, it
didn't matter much to us.  We just parked the TX VFO and tuned the RX
around to catch calls.

My point is that the effect you noticed may have very little to do with the
operators understanding of how to correctly operate a modern radio in terms
of tone matching the sidetone oscillator frequency.  I imagine that during
field day MOST of the stations you hear consist of an operator who is not
the owner of the radio he is using and does not know in what state the
previous operator left all of the (mostly unnecessary) bells and whistles
controls.  Unless the offset is so bad that nobody ever answers him, he
will have no indication of a severe offset between TX and RX.  Since the
radio is someone elose's, he will probably be reluctant to do any tweaking
on his own (although some of us just can't help ourselves).

73,  Eric  N7CL



>From peterj at netcom.com (Peter Jennings)  Fri Jul  1 18:16:14 1994
From: peterj at netcom.com (Peter Jennings) (Peter Jennings)
Date: Fri, 1 Jul 1994 10:16:14 -0700
Subject: Canada Day
Message-ID: <199407011716.KAA23147 at netcom5.netcom.com>

>
> Curious how many Canadian stations in the contest stayed below 14150!
>                                       Kris AA5UO

And there was a bunch below 3750 as well. Strange.

Peter

--                  AB6WM / VE3SUN               peterj at netcom.com

>From Paul Williamson <williams at qualcomm.com>  Fri Jul  1 16:51:25 1994
From: Paul Williamson <williams at qualcomm.com> (Paul Williamson)
Date: Fri, 1 Jul 94 8:51:25 PDT
Subject: TS-850
Message-ID: <CMM.0.90.0.773077885.williams at maui.qualcomm.com>

As long as we're sharing anecdotes about TS-850S performance ...

I've had TWO of the DDS chips in my TS-850S fail, at different times,
for no apparent reason.  The failures occurred during normal casual
operation, not at powerup or under contest conditions.  One DDS was a
local oscillator and thus killed the receiver dead; the other one just
killed sidetone and SSB monitor.

Kenwood's parts fulfillment house was able to provide me these chips
promptly out of stock (for $32 each), so I didn't have to deal with
the legendary Kenwood service department.  Luckily, I have some
experience reworking surface-mount boards.  I could also have replaced
the CAR unit (a little board with 4 DDS chips and not much else) for
something like $160 and no soldering.

I've also had trouble with the external speaker jack.  It makes
intermittent connections, because the contact spring isn't springy
enough.  A replacement jack helped temporarily.  I'm going to replace
this jack with something reliable - why mini phone plugs are popular
I'll never know.

Oh, and I have some microphonics in the receiver.  It's sensitive to
taps on the back panel.  Hard to imagine in a modern radio.  I haven't
tried to trace this down.

Despite all these gripes, and some of the problems already mentioned,
I like the radio overall.

73  -Paul
kb5mu at amsat.org


>From Paul Williamson <williams at qualcomm.com>  Fri Jul  1 16:38:35 1994
From: Paul Williamson <williams at qualcomm.com> (Paul Williamson)
Date: Fri, 1 Jul 94 8:38:35 PDT
Subject: Packet points on FD
Message-ID: <CMM.0.90.0.773077115.williams at maui.qualcomm.com>

> NO REPEATERS!  Anything that repeats your signal could be deemed illegal.
>  Point-to-point 2 meter packet QSOs can be made just as easily as
> non-repeater 2 meter FM QSOs.  Easy!

The whole point of packet radio is NETWORKING.  If you prohibit that,
you might as well prohibit packet.

  -Paul
kb5mu at amsat.org

>From David Robbins KY1H 413-494-6955(w) 413-655-2714(h) Robbins at GUID2.DNET.GE.COM <robbins at guid2.dnet.ge.com>  Fri Jul  1 19:52:44 1994
From: David Robbins KY1H 413-494-6955(w) 413-655-2714(h) Robbins at GUID2.DNET.GE.COM <robbins at guid2.dnet.ge.com> (w h w h)
Date: Fri, 1 Jul 94 14:52:44 EDT
Subject: fd packet
Message-ID: <9407011827.AA25417 at thomas.ge.com>

OH BOY!  I figured out how to do ditto messages on here!

>> NO REPEATERS!  Anything that repeats your signal could be deemed illegal.
>>  Point-to-point 2 meter packet QSOs can be made just as easily as
>> non-repeater 2 meter FM QSOs.  Easy
>
>The whole point of packet radio is NETWORKING.  If you prohibit that,
>you might as well prohibit packet.
>
>  -Paul
>kb5mu at amsat.org

it seems today that the whole idea of 2m fm is repeaters and 'shack on the belt'
users, but repeaters are banned for fd.  and since the point of fd is emergency
preparedness, we force the 'shack on a belt' repeater user to find out how
well 2m fm works simplex, or better yet how well 2m ssb or (horrors!) CW works.
 why should packet be any different?  after all if a flea power packet station
is camped out under the digipeater antenna that is driven by a radio and
computer on commercial power how much is that simulating a disaster?  would
that guy know how far he could reach without a node?  would he know how to
adjust the radio, antenna, or tnc to minimize noise to increase his range? 
does he know how to capture a message and resend it manually to another station
instead of just putting it on a bbs and letting the mail address do the work? 
remember, in the beginning, when you actually connected to someone direct on 
packet???  at one time there weren't any nodes, bbs's, or conferences, let 
alone enough digipeaters to get anywhere useful.  this is how i feel during 
ice storms up here in the wma hills, and those aren't even considered
disasters most of the time.  

i would like to offer one good use for packet and digipeating/nodes during
fd... allow use of the pacsats if that would be useful for increasing
awareness of how to use them.  

or make it more of a challenge and only allow digipeating after you
have made a contact with the station and found them running in class a,b, or
c... but not via unattended stations or class d or e fd stations.  that way
once you made a contact with another fd portable site you could use them as a
digipeater to reach the next area.  this would be more realistic emergency
operation since you would be building your own network on the fly!  just
think of the area wide coordination this could create as you tried to keep
the guys on the next hill on the same freq so you could reach the next town!
just think of the maps you would have to draw to figure out where you could
cq into next!  just think of the hidden transmitters and the collisions you
would have to learn to put up with, just like a real disaster might be!


73, dave ky1h robbins at guid2.dnet.ge.com


>From McCarty, DK 'Dav" <DKMC at chevron.com  Fri Jul  1 21:30:39 1994
From: McCarty, DK 'Dav" <DKMC at chevron.com (McCarty, DK 'Dav)
Date: 01 Jul 94 13:30:39 PDT
Subject: LA trip
Message-ID: <199407012028.AA18543 at portal.chevron.com>


From: McCarty, DK 'David'
To:  OPEN ADDRESSING SERVI-OPENADDR
Subject:  LA trip
Date: 1994-07-01 15:11
Priority:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------


CQ LA DE K5GN

I'll be in Los Angeles/So. Pasadena this weekend visiting my brother and
going to a World Cup match (Sunday at the Rose Bowl).  Will have some free
time and would love to visit with some of the contesters from that area, if
possible.

QSX 713 668 8632 until Saturday/Noon
QSX 818 395 6063 / 6872 Saturday afternoon

73
Dave

David K. McCarty, K5GN
dkmc at chevron.com



>From Kenneth G. Kopp" <0006485696 at mcimail.com  Fri Jul  1 22:15:00 1994
From: Kenneth G. Kopp" <0006485696 at mcimail.com (Kenneth G. Kopp)
Date: Fri, 1 Jul 94 16:15 EST
Subject: TS-850
Message-ID: <83940701211538/0006485696PK4EM at mcimail.com>


I'm a long-time TS-940 owner who has been delighted with the radio. 

A friend bought a '450, giving me the opportunity to try it, and I
secretly thank him for saving me from buying a '450/'850 series.
The always-have-to-move-forward method of filter selection is absurd,
and reason enough alone to not own the radio/s.  Add the short-coming
of not being able to tell what filter/s are in the radio because the
display doesn't indicate them after you've added them, and I'm REALLY
not interested.

I kept the '940 and bought an FT-1000 ... what a marvelous radio!
Did get the replacement earphone units from Heil for my Proset and 
I'm happy with the audio.

73! de Ken Kopp/K0PP