CONNECT via PACTOR

Contents

The ability to manually connect to another station via radio link was supposed to be the same for HF and VHF/UHF links and available from BOTH the BBS prompt and the sysop console.

NB: I would avoid using the console at this time rev2.0d since the sysop console method is still not working properly, and is actually quite unstable. Sorry for the trouble.

CONNECT ATTEMPT

BE CAREFULL !!! THIS COMMAND WILL CAUSE THE DXP38 TO START SWITCHING YOUR HF RADIO TRANSMIT ON AND OFF AT REGULAR INTERVALS. IN OTHER WORDS, MAKE SURE YOU HAVE YOUR HF EQUIPMENT SETUP PROPERLY AND THE FREQUENCY IS AVAIALABLE FOR YOUR USE. I'M NOT TO BLAME FOR DAMAGE CAUSED BY YOU FAILING TO FOLLOW PROPER PROCEDURES FOR SETTING UP YOUR HF EQUIPMENT. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED !!!

SETTING the RADIO

Pactor is normally specified at center frequency of the emitted signal, not the dial setting. To set the radio offsets are made for mode, shift, and modem. Additional settings for squelch, band filters, RIX/dTX, notch filters, etc may be required depending on conditions.

DIRECTING JNOS

For example, after gaining access and logging in (and registering at the initial contact) starting from the BBS or the sysop prompt the command is identical, if you want to connect to VE7DHM on your dxp modem connected to port “dxp38", you could enter the command:

...> c dxp38 ve7dhm

resulting in something lime the following seen on the sysop console (first 3 lines are colored status):

20:08  0015348 Ses: 1
BBS:
1 AX25: ve7dhm on port dxp38 TxQ 0000 St: Conn pending T1: 00023/002345 ms
Trying ve7dhm on port dxp38

or resulting in something like the following seen on the BBS screen:

You have 0 messages.
Area: ve4klm Current msg# 0.
?,A,B,C,D,E,F,H,I,IH,IP,J,K,L,M,N,NR,O,P,PI,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Z > c dxp38 ve7dhm
Trying... Escape sequence is: +++<CR>

Give it a few seconds (DXP38 needs some initializations), then you should see the modem start to make connect requests.

FAILURE TO CONNECT

If the DXP38 is not able to connect after a while (the time could be 1. minutes using the default parameters provided to get started), it will stop and you will see something like the following example on sysop console:

20:08  0015348 Ses: 1
BBS:
1 AX25: ve7dhm on port dxp38...   LIMBO!
Trying ve7dhm on port dxp38
AX25 session 1 failed: Timeout errno 111.
Hit enter to continue.

or you will see something like the following example on BBS:

You have 0 messages.
Area: ve4klm Current msg# 0.
?,A,B,C,D,E,F,H,I,IH,IP,J,K,L,M,N,NR,O,P,PI,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Z >
c dxp38 ve7dhm
Trying... Escape sequence is: +++<CR>
** failure with ve7dhm Area: ve4klm Current msg# 0.
?,A,B,C,D,E,F,H,I,IH,IP,J,K,L,M,N,NR,O,P,PI,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Z >

SUCCESS

If the DXP38 is able to connect, you will see something response like this on sysop console:

20:08  0015348 Ses: 1
BBS:
1 AX25: ve7dhm on port dxp38 TxQ 0000 St: Connected T1: 00023/002345 ms
Trying ve7dhm on port dxp38
** connected to vo1epc
[AirMail-3.1.936-B2FHIM$]
(am|em:h3,g:GN37pn)
Welcome to VO1EPC ...
St. John's , Newfoundland
No Traffic
VE4KLM de VO1EPC>

or you will see something response like this instead on BBS:

Area: ve4klm Current msg# 0.
?,A,B,C,D,E,F,H,I,IH,IP,J,K,L,M,N,NR,O,P,PI,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Z >
c dxp38 vo1epc
Trying... Escape sequence is: +++<CR>
** connected to vo1epc
[AirMail-3.1.936-B2FHIM$]
(am|em:h3,g:GN37pn)
Welcome to VO1EPC ...
St. John's , Newfoundland
No Traffic
VE4KLM de VO1EPC>

Once you are connected, you may proceed to process on the connected remote host. At ANY time you can issue the escape sequence +++ followed by a carriage return, which *should* disconnect you from the station, and return you to the BBS prompt.

After completing whatever you are up to at the remote host, you would enter the command, "Bye" at the prompt “...>", and technically, a disconnect should happen properly, at which point you would be returned back to the former BBS prompt. If the connection does not seem to terminate, you'll have to issue the '+++' command to do so. In the case where you are connected to an AirMail system like above, the available command list is not prompted yet it waits for your command.

OTHER VARIENTS

The same look and feel applies to using the PTC modem, it's just a different port name for the most part. For example, if you want to connect to WU3V, you would enter a command like"

...> c ptcpro wu3v

resulting in something like (OK, the “>" prompt example below is the “X"pert version):

[JNOS-2.0c4-BFHIM$] You have 10 messages - 0 new.
Area: ve4klm (#1) >
c ptcpro wu3v
Trying... The escape sequence is: +++<CR>

Give it a few seconds (the PTC also needs a few initializations), then you should see the modem start to make connect requests. The rest is more or less similar to what was shown earlier on in this section.