My name is Mark. My callsign is KE5LIB. I enjoy using RTTY and other digital modes (including the original- Morse!) to send and receive, and I participate in a group called “Greenkeys”- a group that preserves and promotes the use of Teletype and other teleprinter machines for historical purposes as well as modern applications such as RSS and news feeds, social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc…) and amateur radio. I just discovered Outernet, and would like to gauge interest in developing a TTY feed specifically for those interested in receiving information and news over a Teletype machine or computer.
Using software or a demodulator device, it is easy to receive and decode information via audio feed to Baudot code, for fldigi/MMTTY software reception or by FSK/AFSK demodulator device for an actual “heavy metal” machine, such as my model 15 or model 28 KSR Teletype machines. On some opening sound effects/music for news programs one hears an old “impact printer” typing away, as information pours in. For some of us, this is the sound of a wonderful past, much like hearing a large grandfather clock keeping time. It is indeed another reason to hear our machines run, and see the past bring to the future the news of today, as it did many years ago when our machines were new technology!
If this pursuit piques your curiosity, whets your interest or just makes you want to explore it a bit more,
come join me. There is still magic in this world yet to be discovered.
Hey mark, Chris K6RWJ here, im a fellow GreenKeyer, although all mine are military…
ive kinda converted my UGC-74B to a “printer”, and have it RX stuff from the net to print off… currently it prints tweets from certain people… so its kind of a rapid news feed like the old API (news) stuff… but this was only really a test.
Outernet seemed ripe for at least HF input from things like ARRL News feeds, and HF weather faxes, etc. i’m currently porting over some FLDIGI stuff i have to run on DreamCatcher so i can schedule in weather faxes from the New Orleans to augment the Weather data on Outernet.
Essentially i want Dream catcher to be there absorbing all the non-internet data sources i can think of then presenting them to “users” who connect…
This being said there is no reason why Dreamcatcher or pi or whatever cant become a messaging appliance for RTTY, Winlink or whatever…
I have thought that the Outernet would have a better wow factor with a live stream added, kind of like a ticker feed. I worked on the old low and high speed AUTODIN systems in use for DOD facilities. Yes, that included the Kleinschmidt teletype systems on the slower circuits. This was in the message switching era, before the internet era.
the “messages” application is kind of like that… YOU can send a message to be there via APRS if you have the license ( and not just via the ISS either!)
An APRS message can be broadcast just minutes after it is sent, in some case
Mark,
I have an old model 28 that I run once in a while with a HAL ST-6000 demodulator. I have gone digital and receive RTTY with FLDigi on a RaspberryPi.
There is a local (elderly) amateur here who still exclusively uses a teletype (telex as wel call it here, not made by teletype but by siemens) to type the weekly bulletins still transmitted by club stations.
One of the club stations alternates between RTTY and PSK31, which he cannot receive because he has no computer whatsoever (and is proud of it / does not want to have it because he knows it only means trouble).
I have considered constructing a PSK31 to RTTY transcoder on an Arduino so he can plug that between his radio and his RTTY demod. Should be possible, building blocks for such a thing do exist.
