Andy,
Bill de Carle produced a version of Africam that allowed GPS sync. As I
recall, we thoroughly tested it in early 2004 with signalling rates as slow
as MS2000 (0.5 b/s). At the lower data rates, it provided a signal lock much
more quickly than the non-GPS version. It also held a signal better through
deep fades.
That said, the performance gain was not dramatic. WOLF was more effective,
though in a wider BW. As I recall, there were five of us capable of
transmitting and receiving GPS-sync Africam, and a couple of other guys
would copy the signals using the traditional sync. Jay Rusgrove and I have
continued to run it from time to time. But as Africam is a DOS based
program, and can be fussy about sound cards (most of us were using Bill's
S-D board), there hasn't been much interest.
The GPS-sync concept is still appealing, however. As last discussed, the
next idea was to feed 1pps ticks into the right channel of a sound card. I
don't believe that this has been implemented, however. It would be
interesting to see how that worked with an MS1000 version of WOLF. The
quicker sync time might compensate for the lower data rate.
I should still have email messages and screen dumps left from the Africam
tests, if you have any interest.
John Andrews, W1TAG
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