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Fall 2002 Issue |
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A Beginner’s Guide To
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A brief history of meteor scatter and how amateur radio operators used the “big three” annual meteor showers to make “slow CW” and SSB DX contacts on 144 MHz was presented in Part I of this two-part article. However, operating meteor scatter (MS) only three brief periods each year was not enough for the Europeans, who began making contacts every day of the year using high-speed techniques to take advantage of the huge number of daily sporadics that continually bombard the Earth. This time we outline the development of high-speed CW meteor-shower activities and the development of associated software programs. North American HSCW North American high-speed CW meteor scatter (HSCW MS) began in May 1997, when Steve Harrison, KOØU (now KØXP) and I ran several standard “slow speed” CW skeds. Both of us enjoyed CW MS, so we increased our speeds to the absolute limits of our ability to copy—approximately 50 WPM for me and 80 WPM for him. I used a programmable electronic keyer, while Steve used the keying program in OH5IY’s MS-Soft program. At about this same time, DL3JIM released his SBMS (Sound Blaster Meteor Scatter) program. Immediately upon learning about this program, I downloaded it and began using it to assist with receiving, while Steve continued to copy by ear. That August (1997), Tihomir Heidelburg, 9A4GL, a college student in Croatia, released the first DOS version of his HSCW receiving program, MSDSP (Meteor Scatter using DSP). The MSDSP program, although not highly developed, showed great potential. We began corresponding with Tihomir by e-mail with suggestions and requests. He responded with version after version. Before the Perseids that year, a beta version with transmit capability was available and speeds immediately jumped to 2000 LPM (letters per minute, or 400 WPM). As other operators learned about MSDSP and joined the group, speeds continued to increase, eventually reaching the current record of 16,000 LPM (3320 WPM)!1 In 1999, Tihomir released his first Windows® version of the program, WinMSDSP 2000.2 This version was quickly downloaded by operators in Europe and North America, and it is now the most common means of operating HSCW MS (see figure 5).
Notes
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