Paul Schleck posted on 24 Mar 08:

AF6AY writes:

According to this recent demonstration on the Tonight Show with Jay
Leno:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhsSgcsTMd4
Ahem...quibble mode on...that little bit on the Tonight Show was
a 'setup' gig that employed two young local male actors as the
(described) "text messaging experts" but the two hams (one of which
would very soon become marketing director for Heil Sound) were
real. That is the input I got directly from a reliable staffer on
the Tonight Show. Took a few phone calls to get that information
but it is an advantage of living inside the entertainment capital of
the USA (aka Los Angeles, CA)...and the NBC western Hq is only
about 5 miles south of my place, down Hollywood Way to Alameda and
then east about a mile. That whole bit was really a send-up on the
popular fad of text messaging done by teeners and young adults.
That bit is about as 'real documentary' as Leno's send-ups on the
'street interviews' with ordinary (apparently clueless) younger
folk on various kinds of knowledge. In short, ONLY for gag purposes.

Sorry, but I've got to call baloney on this one. The individual who
appeared on the Tonight Show who sent the text message was actually Ben
Cook, and not an actor. Ben held the world's record for fastest text
messaging:

If you say so, then it is so. All I've got are some acquaintences IN
the entertainment industry who work behind the camera...plus five
professional actors (who don't count in this particular discussion).
That 'recent demonstration' was over a year ago, was it not?

"The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" is an entertainment vehicle. It is
not a documentary source of absolute facts. All such 'talk' shows
are convenience outlets for Public Relations in this capital of
motion picture and television production of the USA. MOST of the
movie and TV production in this city lives or dies by PR.

If I had become persuasive in my inquiry I MIGHT have gotten at
least a Call Sheet for the 'Leno show' in question. Usually those
are (by common agreement) Non-Disclosure documents. I could have
then digitized that Call Sheet and sent it privately as 'evidence.'
I did not think that such was necessary in this case.

The two Morse code operators, Chip Margelli, K7JA, and Ken Miller,
K6CTW, have attested to this being an actual contest with an actual,
previously unknown, message to send, which was sent both by Morse code,
and by text messaging. And there's no disputing that fast Morse code
would always beat an SMS text message of the same length.

I have corresponded with Mr. Margelli in his new position as
Director of Marketing for Heil Sound...about Heil products, not
about this alleged 'test' or 'contest' on the 'Leno show.' I have
NO complaints about Mr. Margelli's nor Mr. Miller's capabilities
with manual morse code communications. I only have complaints
about this entertainment gig being used as 'factual demonstration'
of any comparison of manual morse code versus any other mode.

I haven't used a Teletype Model 28 machine in many years...but I
could challenge ANY manual morse code operator pair to send either
clear text or enciphered (5-character groups) textual data as to
which method is 'faster' (TTY v. manual morse). I would not need
a recipient on-stage since another TTY terminal would repeat all
input sent by the transmitting terminal. The only problem there
is that it ALSO is a 'set-up' kind of 'test' (any touch-typist on
a TTY would 'win') and has very little entertainment value. The
latter item would cause its non-appearance on 'the Leno show.'
I am a touch typist who learned that in middle school on manual
typewriters with no legends on key tops. I am age 75 and still
retain the ability to continuously 'send' keyboard input at about
50 WPM with burst-input rates approximately 100 WPM.

Two named witnesses would appear to trump one anonymous source.

Therefore, your anonymous "reliable staffer" seems anything but.

I cannot argue your statements or 'baloney' comments in this
venue. My original source is now working for another show.
No more access to Tonight show records is possible. If you or
any other morse code mode champion say it was a 'real test,'
then it must be a real test.

As to the efficacy claim that manual morse code communications
beats cellular telephone textual-only (by keypad) communications,
I do not know of a single communications service or provider
that uses 'text' (via cellphone) for two-way communications. Of
what point was this entertainment venue 'test' actually proving?

AF6AY

On Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:09:24 EDT, AF6AY wrote:

In 1960, while working in the Standards Lab of Ramo-Wooldridge Corp.
in Canoga Park, CA,

Errrr, Len, the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation went out of existence in
1958 when it merged with Thompson Products to become Thompson Ramo
Wooldridge, Inc. Remember that I started with the "original" R-W in
1957 and was employed by them at the time of the merger at the former
El Segundo Boulevard facilities (I never did get to work at the Arbor
Vitae Street facilities which were the headquarters of the Air Force
Ballistic Missile Division). They didn't move to Canoga Park until
the late fall of 1959, and I was laid off (for the second time) in
June of 1960. Thompson Ramo Wooldridge, Inc - later TRW, Inc. - went
on an acquisitions binge and itself went out of existence in 2002 when
the electronics and aerospace parts were acquired by Grumman (now
Northrop Grumman) and the automotive parts mostly by Goodyear.

In context - RW was always friendly to ham radio, and the pre-merger
RW Corp. actually let us scrounge both new and recycled parts for ham
rigs and audio projects which became our property as long as we signed
a register/release stating what we were building.

I got to pull some OT on Saturdays to measure
the difference between east coast transmissions of WWV and the
local General Radio frequency standard. Just a plain old quartz
crystal standard oscillator driving divider chains to the built-in
clock.

While at the El Segundo Blvd. facility we had a project of measuring
distance to a transmitter using the time delay of HF transmissions
received at different sites with a calibrated link between them
(azimuth was easy using standard DF techniques) and we used the GR
frequency standard referenced above. Using WWV was too error-prone.

I would record the microseconds of difference between local clock
ticks and WWV ticks from the east coast. Not much variation in a
week's time, don't remember just how much (it was 48 years ago).

My references about time differences, BTW, was to the time of day, i.e
the time of the tick, not the interval between the ticks. GPS has a
very noticeable offset compared to NIST.

I guess that it's only nuts like me that care about that. My early
training as a broadcast studio engineer while I was in engineering
school required timing of program starts and endings to the second.
"Dead air" was not permitted. Three o'clock did not mean three
o'clock plus 1 second - the Western Union clock reset pulse on the
hour was broadcast as a "beep".

From my other hobby, "railroad accuracy" of watches (which are
compared with a master clock at the start of a shift) requires one
second per day, 30 seconds per month. Easy to do with quartz watches
nowadays. There even used to be a SP Railroad dial-up number (now
long gone) where the "time man" would announce the time "Southern
Pacific Standard Time is ...." as contrasted to Ma Bell's "time lady"
who would announce "Pacific Standard Time is ..."
--

73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

From a Clearing in the Silicon Forest
Beaverton (Washington County) Oregon

e-mail: k2asp [at] arrl [dot] net

On Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:10:13 EDT, wrote:

Each GPS sattelite has it's own on board atomic clock and the system can
easily provide UTC with accuracy on the few microseconds level with an
ultimate limit of +/- 340 nanoseconds using an appropriate receiver and
hardware.

Something must have changed (or been fixed) then - we made
measurements about three years ago and there was about six seconds
offset - an eternity for accurate time measurements. 340 nanoseconds
we can tolerate. Six seconds we can't.
--

73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

From a Clearing in the Silicon Forest
Beaverton (Washington County) Oregon

e-mail: k2asp [at] arrl [dot] net

On Mon, 24 Mar 2008 13:41:25 EDT, Cecil Moore
wrote:

My ARRL Band chart says "USB phone only" for 60m.

60m is a special case - it is not a worldwide amateur band despite
efforts to make it so. It's channelized by regulation, emission and
power restricted by regulation, and I know when I am near one of the
channels by the presence on adjacent humongous (tm) US Navy
wide-spaced encrypted synchronous RTTY signal.....
--

73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

From a Clearing in the Silicon Forest
Beaverton (Washington County) Oregon

e-mail: k2asp [at] arrl [dot] net

On Mon, 24 Mar 2008 18:06:34 EDT, Klystron wrote:

Thus, a
pile of old, junkyard computers will do the job quite well and at an
aggregate cost of $20 to $100 in total.

Four such computers in a single box would be ideal for the way I run
my ham data-modes (packet/PACTOR/APRS/BPSK31 setup - 24/7 each). Too
bad we can't get that in a box the size of a toaster at a price that
is less than $100.
--

73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

From a Clearing in the Silicon Forest
Beaverton (Washington County) Oregon

e-mail: k2asp [at] arrl [dot] net

On Mon, 24 Mar 2008 18:10:15 EDT, Klystron wrote:

I take it that you don't know what "machine language" is. Humans are
not supposed to be involved. If they are, it's not machine to machine
communications.

Ham radio is supposed to be human-to-human communications, not
machine-to-machine communications.
--

73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

From a Clearing in the Silicon Forest
Beaverton (Washington County) Oregon

e-mail: k2asp [at] arrl [dot] net

On Mon, 24 Mar 2008 18:13:01 EDT, AF6AY wrote:

The only problem there
is that it ALSO is a 'set-up' kind of 'test' (any touch-typist on
a TTY would 'win') and has very little entertainment value.

My secretary at March AFB (early 1960s) could and did type faster than
the Model 28 could cut tape. It frustrated her no end.
--

73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

From a Clearing in the Silicon Forest
Beaverton (Washington County) Oregon

e-mail: k2asp [at] arrl [dot] net

On Mon, 24 Mar 2008 07:48:10 EDT, wrote:

Actually, there were, just not in the same form as in radio. The
licenses were regulations; the Elmers were people who developed
easier-to-use systems.

Yes, there were "licenses" to users but it was a one-way deal. My
former FCC Bureau Chief went to the Reagan White House as the
Assistant Chief of Staff for Administrative Services, which included
overseeing the White House Communications Agency (staffed by the
military, not the Secret Service which has its own comm net). He was
given an ARPANET connection at home and WHCA mobile phone in his car.
When Reagan left office and George Bush I put his own Chief of Staff -
John Sununu - in place, my guy was replaced because of a personality
conflict and his ARPANET connection and mobile phone were physically
removed from his house and car with less than two hours notice.
--

73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

From a Clearing in the Silicon Forest
Beaverton (Washington County) Oregon

e-mail: k2asp [at] arrl [dot] net

Phil Kane wrote:

Something must have changed (or been fixed) then - we made
measurements about three years ago and there was about six seconds
offset - an eternity for accurate time measurements. 340 nanoseconds
we can tolerate. Six seconds we can't.



Could "selective availability" have anything to do with that?

--
Klystron

Klystron wrote:
Phil Kane wrote:
Klystron wrote:

Wouldn't it make more sense to include WWV and WWVH along with WWVB?
Are you familiar with the Internet-based ntp system? Then, there is the
matter of GPS, which has a time capability that is incidental to its
navigation function.


Want some fun? Compare the time ticks received from WWVB, WWV,
NIST-on-line, and GPS. What, they are not all simultaneous? Welcome
to the real world. GPS time does not correlate with UTC by any means
(several seconds difference).

In one of the first digital military command and control system that I
was involved in during the early 1960s, we used rubidium standards at
our switching centers to get accurate time synchronization, and even
then it was rather crude because the line delays varied so much. HF
propagation (WWV/WWVH) is even worse in that regard.


My understanding is that ntpd can handle that problem quite well. An
OPTIMAL setup would involve 1 computer per radio, each acting as a radio
controller (also called a strata 0 server). You could have a radio for
WWVB or WWVH, a second radio that is set to scan the WWV frequencies and
a third "radio" for GPS. Those 3 computers would connect to a fourth
computer that would act as a strata 1 server. The result would be a time
server that is as accurate as if it were connected to other ntp servers
via the Internet. Such an arrangement is sometimes used by firms that
need metrology-grade time service on a secured, internal LAN.
By the way, do not be put off by the expense of the four (or more)
computers described above. According the ntp documentation that I have
read, they need to have at least 100 MHz processor speeds for optimum
accuracy, but there is no benefit in going much above 100 MHz. Thus, a
pile of old, junkyard computers will do the job quite well and at an
aggregate cost of $20 to $100 in total.

Just about any piece of cheap junk from the last decade could handle
all three sources at once, though it would be pointless since the
ntp software would always choose the GPS source (unless it became
unavailable for some reason).

--
Jim Pennino

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