PSKmail Experimental / Development versions

jPSKmail-2.1.a alpha testing contestia mode and CW mode

contestia mode

Now testing the CONTESTIA mode. In simulated channel tests by K2MO  this mode had excellent
results in QRM, QRN, Multipath and Noise conditions.
One of the areas where pskmail has problems is when you are in a harbor or in a camp site
with lots of switching chargers. Also PLC equipment can cause QRM.
So far my tests have confirmed this for the NOISE, QRM and QRN conditions.
Here is a waterfall picture showing contestia used during a heavy thunderstorm:



The lower decoding limit of the system is now the RSID decoder... The mode switching
in PSKmail depends on that. For CONTESTIA, it means that if RSID decodes, contestia will also.
As contestia is upper case only, like RTTY, I had to code each payload character into
2 characters on the link. This will enable the use of another layer of error correction in future.

The mode is not yet available for the java V2 modem, it has still to be ported from C++ to java.
So fldigi-3.21.72BM was used at both the client and the server side,
with a special patch for Contestia
. This was necessary because
contestia was not yet contained as a pskmail mode in globals.cxx.

At PA0R and PI4TUE, this version of fldigi is quite stable.
In this experiment the submodes are not switched, the submode has to be set manually to
CONTESTIA 500/8 in fldigi:



The client used is 1.5.12 with fldigi 3.21.72mail. The change with respect to 1.5.11 is the addition
of the contestia mode to the modes list:



Installation procedure:

Downloads:
jPSKmail-1.15.12
pskmail_server-2.1.a
fldigi-3.21.72BM

Feedback:
to the pskmail mailinglist @ freelists.org

Last change:  16.07.2013   PA0R