PK-232 MBX Operating Manual - N3UJJ

PK-232 OPERATING MANUAL
BAUDOT AND ASCII OPERATION
CHAPTER 6
BAUDOT AND ASCII RTTY OPERATION
6.1 Overview
Baudot (pronounced Bod-dough) has been around for many years. The
five bit Baudot/Murray code was the basis of the Western Union Telex
service and Baudot RTTY (Radio TeleTYpe) is still widely used on the
HF amateur bands. The Baudot character set contains the upper-case
letters, the numbers 0-9 and some common punctuation characters.
Because Baudot has only five bits, it is less prone to errors than
seven bit ASCII. Your PK-232 provides Baudot RTTY at all the standard
speeds in use today, including all commercial speeds up to 300 bauds.
ASCII; the American Standard Code for Information Interchange
(pronounced Ask-kee) has been around for nearly 30 years. ASCII is a
7-bit code and was designed to overcome the limitations of the Baudot
character set by including both upper and lower case letters, numbers,
all punctuation as well as many computer control codes. ASCII is not
so popular on the amateur bands, but its operation is almost identical
to Baudot RTTY so we will describe them both in this chapter.
6.2 Where to Operate Baudot and ASCII RTTY
Before you can operate Baudot or ASCII RTTY, you must first know where
the activity is. Most RTTY operation occurs on the 20-meter amateur
between 14.08 and 14.10 MHz. RTTY activity can be found on the other
HF amateur bands as well and is most often located between 80 and 100
KHz up from the bottom of the band as it is on 20 meters.
6.2.1 PK-232 Baudot RTTY Parameter Settings
First you must enter the Baudot mode of the PK-232.
If you are using a Timewave or AEA PAKRATT program, follow the
instructions in the program manual to enter the Baudot mode.
If you are using a terminal, simply type "BAUDOT" or "BA" from the
Command Mode followed by the key to enter the Baudot mode.
The PK-232 responds by displaying the previous mode:
Opmode
Opmode
was PAcket
now BAudot
Your PK-232's front panel will show the CMD and BAUDOT LEDs lit.
The following parameters are the most common settings for HF Baudot
operation. Check the parameters and make sure they are set as follows:
RBAUD 45 (this is the most common amateur speed on HF)
RXREV OFF
TXREV OFF
WIDESHFT OFF
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