[TRLog] Aborting RTTY messages

[Richard Ferch]

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!

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.

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.

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?

It looks like I'll be using soundcard software, doing QTCs by hand, and
scoring by hand afterwards. Good thing I have Monday off from work!

73,
Rich VE3IAY