{"id":202,"date":"2016-01-24T01:54:55","date_gmt":"2016-01-23T23:54:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.dj6dp.de\/?p=202"},"modified":"2016-01-24T01:54:55","modified_gmt":"2016-01-23T23:54:55","slug":"why-hellschreiber-is-cool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.dj6dp.de\/?p=202","title":{"rendered":"Why Hellschreiber is cool."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So I just joined the <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.google.com\/site\/feldhellclub\/\" target=\"_blank\">Feld Hell Club<\/a>, hoping to become a little more active in one of my favourite modes again. And I thought that this would be a nice opportunity to blog about why I like it.<\/p>\n<p>When I started to be interested in amateur radio, years before I acquired my first license, I was fascinated with SSTV and spent quite some hours monitoring 14,230 MHz. It was clear to me that some day, I wanted to do this myself! Although now I could, I never transmitted SSTV so far. I still think it&#8217;s a nice mode, but it also has some disadvantages: Not only does it take up as much bandwidth as an SSB phone transmission, it also has a near 100% duty cycle and transmission times can be quite long. And even if you use templates, SSTV just isn&#8217;t the right mode for common two-way QSOs, in my opinion.<\/p>\n<p>Now usually I&#8217;m active in PSK and occasionally RTTY or other modern digital modes (I&#8217;m not really using phone outside of contests, for a number of reasons), but I also like Hellschreiber (Feldhell) a lot. Here&#8217;s why:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The duty cycle is very low, therefore perfect for portable operations where you want your batteries to last as long as possible (think FT-817 with no external power source).<\/li>\n<li>The bandwidth is also reasonably low, so there is almost no limit as to where in the bands you can use it.<\/li>\n<li>It is usually text-only (at least I haven&#8217;t seen any graphical content implemented, although that&#8217;d be easily possible &#8211; and cool), but as the text is encoded in a matrix rather than bytes, encoding problems cannot occur. Also, as everybody can set up the font being used by his or her own likings, it feels just a little more personal than one of the usual text modes like PSK. I mean, voices are individual too, right?<\/li>\n<li>There is no decoding algorithm between you and the band. With PSK and similar modes, you hear a beeping sound and either get somewhat readable text or not. When using Hellschreiber, you literally see what you hear and the actual decoding process is done in your head.<\/li>\n<li>Tuning isn&#8217;t very critical. This might be useful when using homebrew transceivers. Also, it enables you to tune with your rig&#8217;s VFO instead of within the software, so the audio frequency remains constant all the time and you don&#8217;t need to re-adjust levels.<\/li>\n<li>At least theoretically, you could use this mode with no computer of any kind at all &#8211; just like it was done when it was invented.<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s just cool. Period! \ud83d\ude42 (and I probably forgot some points as well)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All in all I think it&#8217;s just cool that some communication protocol that old can still be of so much use today. Dr. Rudolf Hell was a true visionary, more than he could know back in the day! I&#8217;m always happy to meet other Hellschreiber enthusiasts on the band and I hope more hams will learn to appreciate this mode.<\/p>\n<p>Some practical advice in the end: As Hellschreiber uses short pulses, please be extra careful about splattering. If possible, adjust the audio input to your transmitter using a 0dB sine tone of the same audio frequency you are going to use for your actual transmission. Fldigi, which I am using, has a very handy &#8222;TUNE&#8220; button which does exactly that. On a common 100W transceiver, I&#8217;d always set it to no more than 50W HF output. This leaves a lot of dynamic range before distortion should occur. On QRP rigs like the FT-817 mentioned before, you&#8217;ll probably want to use the available power to the fullest, but at least watch the ALC meter (it shouldn&#8217;t show anything). In doubt, it is never a bad idea to monitor your own signal or ask a friend to do it. And please remember that there is nothing polite about giving a fake 599 report.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-204\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.dj6dp.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/DJ6DP-1.jpg.gif\" alt=\"DJ6DP-1.jpg\" width=\"850\" height=\"640\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So I just joined the Feld Hell Club, hoping to become a little more active in one of my favourite modes again. And I thought that this would be a nice opportunity to blog about why I like it. When &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.dj6dp.de\/?p=202\">Weiterlesen <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[21,20,22],"class_list":["post-202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amateurfunk","category-english-articles","tag-feldhell","tag-hell","tag-hellschreiber"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dj6dp.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dj6dp.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dj6dp.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dj6dp.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dj6dp.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=202"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dj6dp.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":205,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dj6dp.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202\/revisions\/205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dj6dp.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dj6dp.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dj6dp.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}