Sunday, October 17, 2004
PSK31 and Net control
My oldest daughter has her ham radio license, general class. She got her technician license at the age of 9. By studying morse code and more radio/electrical theory, with in a year she advance to general class. Two of the most notable things she has done and is doing is Net control for ARES(amatuer radio emergency service) nets and working contests using a digital mode known as PSK31 (phase shift keying).
She started out as a district net controller encompassing 6 counties, this is a nightly net were she was responsible for one night a week. She did this for 2 years, before her busy school schedule demands caused her to cut back. Ever since the district net she has done the County ARES net, this net is once a week and on Monday, she has the fourth Monday of each month. The way this works is at the appointed time, she opens the net by introducing the net and its mission, the first order of business is to open the net to any emergency traffic. After that she does a roll call for all the communities in the county, then opens up the net for any late check ins or any one else who wishes to check in. This is also a time were one person may want to find another and requests a contact, this is done through the net controller, any announcements are also allowed during net.
To make this as personal as she and I can, we keep a log with regular check ins, so when that person shows up, she can greet them by there first name. She demands I help her with this part, so I am alway there to assist. Local nets like these are usually done through a repeater. A repeater is a device that is usually placed in an area that can get good coverage and recieves a signal on one frequency and retransmits it on another. When my daughter unkeys the radio, the radio automatically reverts to the repeaters output frequency, so she can hear any one checking in.
PSK31 is a digital mode using a radio and computer, it is a keyboard to keyboard type of communication. The signals are only 31 hertz wide, so the signal to noise levels are really good. I have even worked my friend in AZ with a half watt of power using this mode. In one of the recent contests my daughter work, she managed 3rd place in the low power catagory. She likes the fact that she can type into the computer macros for most common parts of an exchange. In a contest they usuall have to get the other persons call sign, name and some other info like location, grid square, zone, all depending on the contest involved. In her case she would pretype something like this in the one of the macros to call for a station.
'start' cq cq cq contest
cq cq cq contest de KF6ULI K 'stop'
Then when she is on the air she hits the predefined F-key which keys up the radio, sends the CQ (think icq) de (this is) and KF6ULI (station call sign, in this case art bell's fan club, hmmm do you believe in UFO's? i wouldn't hold my breath). You never know were a station might be calling back from, could be anywhere in the world.
She started out as a district net controller encompassing 6 counties, this is a nightly net were she was responsible for one night a week. She did this for 2 years, before her busy school schedule demands caused her to cut back. Ever since the district net she has done the County ARES net, this net is once a week and on Monday, she has the fourth Monday of each month. The way this works is at the appointed time, she opens the net by introducing the net and its mission, the first order of business is to open the net to any emergency traffic. After that she does a roll call for all the communities in the county, then opens up the net for any late check ins or any one else who wishes to check in. This is also a time were one person may want to find another and requests a contact, this is done through the net controller, any announcements are also allowed during net.
To make this as personal as she and I can, we keep a log with regular check ins, so when that person shows up, she can greet them by there first name. She demands I help her with this part, so I am alway there to assist. Local nets like these are usually done through a repeater. A repeater is a device that is usually placed in an area that can get good coverage and recieves a signal on one frequency and retransmits it on another. When my daughter unkeys the radio, the radio automatically reverts to the repeaters output frequency, so she can hear any one checking in.
PSK31 is a digital mode using a radio and computer, it is a keyboard to keyboard type of communication. The signals are only 31 hertz wide, so the signal to noise levels are really good. I have even worked my friend in AZ with a half watt of power using this mode. In one of the recent contests my daughter work, she managed 3rd place in the low power catagory. She likes the fact that she can type into the computer macros for most common parts of an exchange. In a contest they usuall have to get the other persons call sign, name and some other info like location, grid square, zone, all depending on the contest involved. In her case she would pretype something like this in the one of the macros to call for a station.
'start' cq cq cq contest
cq cq cq contest de KF6ULI K 'stop'
Then when she is on the air she hits the predefined F-key which keys up the radio, sends the CQ (think icq) de (this is) and KF6ULI (station call sign, in this case art bell's fan club, hmmm do you believe in UFO's? i wouldn't hold my breath). You never know were a station might be calling back from, could be anywhere in the world.
# posted by Trail Seeker @ 4:23 PM 
