01 April 1997
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On 28th March a historic event in the development of packet took place.
In some ways it could be regarded as the packet equivalent of Marconi's
first transatlantic transmission. Unfortunately, it is my belief that
this momentous occasion went unnoticed by most packet users.

What was this great event? - Andrew, G8FSL, sent a packet bulletin in CW
format! It was addressed to HTML@GBR and entitled "Efficient bandwidth
use ^.cw". (Note the ^.cw WinPack viewer trigger). It probably went
unnoticed because most packet users did not have the means to read it,
other than by laboriously translating the CW by hand. As far as WinPack
users are concerned, what you all needed was a viewer for CW format
files! Unfortunately, this test transmission took place before the
development of the r equired viewer was completed.

However, I have now finished writing the viewer. I am sending it out
today in three 7plus parts to WINP7@GBR. The file is CWVIEW.ZIP. Unzip
it and put CWVIEWER.EXE and CWVIEWER.XTR in your main WinPack directory.
Reading CWVIEWER.TXT is optional! Restart WinPack and then use "Viewers
Editor" on the WinPack File menu to configure CWVIEWER.EXE as a viewer
for CW files. (Viewers only work with WinPack V6.1 and later). The file
is also available on the internet from www.peaksys.demon.co.uk.

If you still have the message from G8FSL on your WinPack system, try
reading it again and you should be offered the option of viewing it with
CWVIEWER. The raw CW message will be in the top window and the decoded
text in the bottom window. If you would li ke to listen to the CW,
select the "Play" menu option and it will be played on the PC speaker.

At the moment you will probably not find any other CW files on packet,
which is a great pity. It is quite clearly an ideal format for packet
messages - efficient, text only, and does not need Windows or any other
GUI. CW format messages can be decoded on the simplest of packet systems
and the narrow bandwidth required for CW should make it ideal for when
12.5kHz channel spacing on 2m FM is introduced later this year. What's
the point of wasting bandwidth experimenting with colourful, visually
attractive H TML files, when we can use CW!

As some of you will be aware, the RSGB has started transmitting the
propagation section of the weekly news in CW, so hopefully a packet
version of that transmission will soon be made available. What a
mouth-watering prospect that is - reading the latest p ropagation news
by means of CW sent over packet! Once again amateur experimentation is
breaking new ground in communications technology!

Another advantage of CW format is that it will allow the protagonists in
the two great debates - "Should the CW requirement for the class 'A'
licence be retained?" and "Should packet BBSs carry only plain text
traffic?" - to all argue together. The conseq uences of this are quite
unimaginable!

To really get CW on packet clicking along, all that is now needed is a
simple program for creating CW format messages... Well, CWVIEWER is dual
purpose, because it does that as well! You can start the program using
the "CW Viewer" option which will have a ppeared on your WinPack File
menu, then key in your message in the bottom window, select the "Encode"
menu option and the CW is generated in the top window! The "Save" menu
option will save it as CWENCODE.TXT in the WINPACK\TEXT directory.

If you wish, you can use the "Decode" menu option to verify that your CW
decodes back to what you originally wrote. This is a good way of making
sure that you don't accidentally send anything naughty, which would be
bound to get caught in your local BBS's CW filter!

CW experts may, of course, prefer to assemble the optional "bug" key to
IBM keyboard socket 'T' connector, so they can key in the CW direct. The
schematic for the connector will be sent out later this month. It will
be sent in CW format, (unless I drive m yself dotty getting the layout
correct!)

73 - Roger, G4IDE

