Wednesday evening data net notes for 2021-12-15

[Steve Stroh]

A few notes from our third Wednesday evening data net on 2021-12-15

Joining me (Steve N8GNJ) were:
Budd WB7FHC
Chris KC9AD
Deid VA7REI
Kevin KI7KUR

We chatted from 20:00 to approximately 20:58.

Budd demo'd the + feature of fsq to send and read files on other's fsq
systems. It's a neat capability that kind of reminds me of the
"finger" and ".plan" utilities on old UNIX systems.

I tried sending a text file of the 2021-12-17 script of Amateur Radio
Newsline (https://www.arnewsline.org/news/2021/12/16/amateur-radio-newsline-report-2303-for-friday-december-17th-2021)
to allcall, but had to abort it by shutting down fldigi. I assumed fsq
would use an efficient method (compression) for sending a file, but
fsq simply took the characters in the text file and put them into the
transmit buffer, no different than sending a string of text from the
keyboard. That's a useful capability that I'll use to begin and end
the Wednesday nets.

A good time was had by all.

For the remainder of December, we'll continue to do this net on
Wednesday evenings from 20:00 to approximately 21:00.

At the December 2021 MBARC Digital Group meeting on Tuesday
2021-12-21, we'll discuss a possible change to a different day
starting in January. At the moment, this net overlaps with a voice net
in San Juan County that also occurs Wednesdays at 20:00.

I look forward to chatting via fsq next Wednesday.

- - - - - - - - -

The MBARG DG Wednesday Night Data Net (currently) meets on Wednesday
evening at 20:00 - 21:00 Pacific. This will be a CASUAL net - not
"official" or formal, or directed. Anyone that wants to participate is
welcome to do so.

We meet on the MBARC 146.740 repeater which is located on Mt.
Constitution on Orcas Island. 146.74 is a wide area repeater, offering
coverage into the San Juan Islands, lower British Columbia, and as far
South as North King County. Operating via repeater instead of simplex
is a more consistent, pleasant experience because all stations can
hear each other equally well, minimizing doubling (collisions). If
you've been participating in the Sunday morning casual net on simplex,
the only changes needed are to change the settings of your radio:
Receive: 146.74
Transmit: 146.14 (- 600 kHz offset)
Subaudible tone (CTCSS / "PL"): 103.5

In the first weeks / months, we'll use the fsq (Fast Simple QSO) mode
of the fldigi suite - same as is done during the Sunday morning casual
net on 145.580 simplex in the Bellingham area.

Adding a minimum of 1.5 seconds of “txdelay” allows the repeater to
decode the CTCSS tone, bring up the repeater’s transmitter, and the
modem to begin transmitting well-modulated tones. In Fldigi, go to:
Configure > Config dialog > Configure > IDs > RSiD > Pre-Signal Tone >
1.5 seconds. This insures that listening stations will receive the
full callsign of the transmitting station. (There is a txdelay setting
in Fldigi, but it doesn’t seem to have an effect.)

Because the 146.740 repeater permits high signal-to-noise, we suggest
using the 6 characters per second speed.

If you have any questions, please email me.


Thanks,

Steve N8GNJ
President 2021-2022
Mount Baker Amateur Radio Club Digital Group

--
Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Editor
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