JT65 Articles from CQ Magazine

Last year (October and November 2010) I co-authored with Tomas NW7US a two-part article "Communicating Under the Noise" about JT65A on HF which was published in CQ Magazine.  Thanks to Rich Moseson for agreeing to make the articles available in digital form.  PDF copies of the articles can be obtained here: Download (PDF)

Enjoy.

You're doing it wrong

The ARRL kicked off 2011 with a news item that hopefully is not a harbinger of more retro-tech lameness to come during the new year.  (Hint: It is.)  "Ring in the New Year with Morse Code Ringtones" started off well enough; make your cellphone ring with CQ CQ CQ or some such.  I did this almost two years ago and it's great fun; I even made ringtones with my wife's name, the callsigns of hams in the Bay-Net group, etc.  I got lots of good comments on my ringtones from folks at the 2010 Dayton Hamvention; a few even requested that I email them copies of my MP3 files for their phones.

The ARRL article fails on two fronts; first off it talks about creating Morse Code ringtones like it's a completely new thing (clearly it's not), and secondly it goes into detail about the horribly convoluted process Tom AD1B used to create his tones.  Tom actually used his Ten-Tec rig and a keyer paddle to generate the Morse Code, recorded the audio (article is unspecific on how he did this; my money is on "8-Track Tape Deck"), massaged the audio files in Audacity, and then generated MP3 files.  Talk about using a bazooka to kill a mosquito.

Clever.  And completely unnecessary.  I generated my MP3 files by going to LWCO.net, a website created by Fabian Kurz, DJ1YFK.  Fabian's website (the URL is an acronym for "Learn CW Online") offers a number of useful tools, many of which are based on Fabian's excellent open source "ebook2cw" library.  One of the tools on LCWO is "Convert text to CW".  You type in text.  It generates an MP3 file for download.  You put the file on your phone.  Done.  I can generate a library of unique ringtones for twenty people in the time it takes Tom to record and process one.

And even my method is now somewhat obsolete with the advent of apps for smartphones that convert text to Morse Code on the fly.  MorseRing for Android is available in the Android Market for 99 cents.  It converts Caller ID strings to Morse Code.  The beauty of MorseRing is that I now know who's calling me even if my phone is 25 feet away.  I'm sure there is similar apps for the iPhone, possibly one for Palm, likely not for Blackberry.

You can't fix stupid

This post has nothing to do with wireless.

Somewhere, out there on the Internet, is a stupid family.  Quelle surprise, non?  Tell us something we don't know, you say.  But this is no ordinary stupid family.

Many years ago (back when the Internet was powered by steam engines which ran on barrels of kerosene) I signed up for a Yahoo account.  I chose my username based on a nickname given to me by a friend, and one I had used for my circa 1996 "homepage" which was a sophomoric collection of links, graphics, and sounds used to stake my claim to a corner of the nascent Internet.  Unfortunately my Yahoo username happens to be the last name of a stupid family.  I'll refer to them as "The Stupids". 

A few years later I started getting junk mail at my Yahoo address from a variety of sources; car dealerships, online car broker services, etc.  Apparently the Mama Stupid wanted to buy a new car, and had given my Yahoo address as hers.  The emails had a lot of information about Mama Stupid; her name, street address, phone, etc.  The amount of junk mail became painful, over a dozen messages a day; I had to activate a filter in Yahoo Mail to look for keywords and dump them straight to Trash.  10 years later, if I look in my Yahoo Mail trash folder, there are still car dealerships trying to contact Mama Stupid.

Papa Stupid has done likewise.  I've received over the years email from online shopping, stock brokers, get-rich-quick scammers, insurance brokers, magazine publishers, requests for donations, links to photos of newly-arrived Baby Stupid.  Again; I get a LOT of personal info on the Stupids from this.  A while back Mama Stupid decided she needed some spice in her life, so she signed up for an online casual fling hook-up service.  (I'm not kidding.)  She (I) started getting email from middle-aged men looking for some "Afternoon Delight", complete with photos intended to "sell the product" if you get my meaning.  Icanhazeyebleach?

In many cases I get requests to confirm my address for an account on whatever system the Stupids have tried to sign up for, I can then reset the password and basically do as I please.  Most of the time I change the password and then close the account. 

I've watched the Stupids build a family.  Their son (Stupid Junior) started out years ago using my Yahoo address as his "parental permission" email to sign up for online games.  As time's gone on I've watched his game interests evolve into more mature themes. Once he hits puberty I fully expect a lot of porn site account confirmation emails.  Their oldest daughter Missy Stupid just went to college in Florida.  I got some pictures from Disneyworld.  She looks happy.

You can imagine the amount of spam I receive because of the Stupids.  I've given up using Yahoo for email, simply because 99% of what I get is spam caused by the Stupids inability to figure out that lastname@something.com doesn't automatically route to their house.  I've been tempted to close the account, but in some bizarre way I feel like I need to continue.  What will happen next?  Will Papa Stupid have a midlife crisis and go looking for a red sports car?  Will Missy Stupid get knocked up and have to come home from college?  It's like my own private soap opera.