Envelope-to: dave@picks.force9.co.uk
Delivery-date: Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:59:32 +0100
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Date: Mon, 12 Sep 2005 09:59:08 -0400
To: rsgb_lf_group@blacksheep.org
From: Bill de Carle <ve2iq@magma.ca>
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Subject: Re: LF: Request for information.
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At 01:13 PM 9/12/2005 +0100, Andy wrote:
>         Seem to recall talk about a few datamode  software authors who
>were contemplating adding some GPS capability to their  products and I was
>wondering if anyone has information or progress on  this.         G4JNT    

AFRICAM has GPS-sync capability - it has proven most useful with very
slow BPSK where it would otherwise take a long time to find the signal.
Did some tests last season with it - the error correction capabilities
aren't as robust as those in WOLF.  It's easy to do the GPS part, just
put the 1-pps onto the Ring Indicator pin of a serial port. If the rest
of the serial port is available (i.e. you use a sound card instead of the
usual sigma-delta serial interface board) - then you can use the serial
port to monitor NMEA output from the GPS unit - AFRICAM only uses the
$GPRMC sentence to set the computer's clock so he knows for sure which
second each 1-pps input pulse corresponds to.  If the serial port is not
available you must manually set the computer's clock to within a half
second or so of UTC immediately before starting AFRICAM - thereafter it
keeps track of time by counting the 1-pps inputs.

AFRICAM can be used with a sound card - but not very user friendly -
it works great with my sound card, others have found it hard to set up :)

This is a DOS program, doesn't get along with Windows.  If you're
interested, you can download it from my website:

www.magma.ca/~ve2iq

Documentation is weak - any questions, I'll try to answer by e-mail - it has
been a while since I last looked at it.

Bill