pa0r

We are back home from our autumn trip. We started thursday 3rd November with nice, warm, sunny weather as we are used to. First planned stop was Calais. We had heard rumours that you could stay at Bleriot Plage near the ferry terminal free of charge. Which happened to be true. We stayed at a large parking lot reserved for campers, with service.

Quite a new experience to see the big ferries come in and leaving in 15 minute intervals. The only drawback was the noise of the big diesel engines when they turned around in harbour. There was no possibility for shopping within walking range.

We started to our favourite spot at the french coast, Honfleur, on friday. Last year we had taken the scenic route along the coast, but we have learned in the mean time that taking the autoroute saves time and (fuel) cost, even if you take the payed routes. The numerous village passages and roundabouts take an enormous amount of time and nerves. The mobile home parking in Honfleur was still open and we managed to get a power socket.

First thing to do was put up the new short wave antenna, which now also operates on 80 meters. I tried to get my email from PI4TUE in Eindhoven, but I could not hear the server. Also the beacon of SM0RWO on 30 meters could not be heard.

I tried my own server on 80 meters but also here complete silence! I gave up. Fighting hardware is like fighting windmills. They always win.

Honfleur was pleasant as usual, and we decided to stay over the weekend. The weather was quite nice. 16 degrees Celcius and no rain. Actually, the sun was shining until 15:00 hrs.

On saturday I managed to get my son to look at the server at home. It turned out that it was 1 kHz off frequency. After that was corrected I managed to get my email... with the execption of some mails containing attachments (one of them 3.5 MB, wo9uld have taken a day to get that in..). The ~KEEP function really showed its value here, I was able to shift those mails into webmail territory.

On saturday afternoon we went to the Cyber bar in Honfleur which has meanwhile changed its owner. I mailed Per, SM0RWO that I could not reach the server. On sunday the problem was solved, it had QSY'ed tom 3595 kHz... From sunday onwards I could use the server with S3 to S8 signals, and PSKmail worked flawlessly.

On thursday we went south, the final target being Carnac at the coast of south Brittany. We wanted to take a look at the famous megalith alignments there.

We did not quite make it, and spent the night in Redon, near the 'Port de Playsance'. It was a noisy place, near a major traffic route, but we were tired enough to get a good night of sleep.

From Redon it took us only 1 hour to reach the megalith site at Carnac. There a part of the parking lot is now reserved for mobile homes... We had a look at one of the oldest public domain hardware displays of Europe. 30.000 stones nicely aligned for some unknown purpose.

We decided to go back north on the same day. The goal was to spend the night in Cancale, on the north coast of Brittany. When we got there it turned out that the parking for mobile homes was closed and the city was full of signs stating "forbidden for campers". Nice welcome. As it was near to getting dark we decided to find another place for the night. We found it in Sains near the N175. This small village has a small park devoted to campers (6 places, free of charge, with service (4 euros for 1 hour of electrical power)). We have not heard silence so deep for 30 years. And at 23:00 local all the lights went out, spending darkness unseen by modern humans.

At 8 o'clock the next morning one of the campers started a generator, tearing the silence apart. Which I though was a strange behaviour with respect to the local population. We really felt like guests in this village with unmatched hospitality. Some people obviously don't feel like that.

When we returned to Honfleur friday afternoon we were astonished to find the camper parking (capacity 140 mobile homes) completely filled. Good thing we had visited a supermarket in the morning, as it turned out to be 11.11, a french national holiday.

As the weather forecast was quite bad for the coming week we decided to drive home on saturday. We did the trip from Honfleur to Eersel in 7 hours, and are now again ready for continued chaos.

The 'connect' sequence of PSKmail is rather long. It looks like 00cPA0R:1024 PI4TUE:24 4EDF1. When link conditions are bad, or the server has qrm on the channel sometimes it is impossible to know if the server is active at all. Of course you can wait for an hour to catch a beacon transmission, but that is impractical for the mobile station who just wants to do a quick APRS update. The beacon transmissions are meant for the server sysops to see if the system is alive. (and to gather propagation info of course).

To overcome this practical problem I have written a 'ping' service. The link layer sequence is '00uPA0R:7 ABCD' , short enough to penetrate most qrm. If this is not working, the link will be unuseable anyway...

The 'u' in the header is an indication that this is a datagram service, not unlike the packet 'UI' sequence. This saves a lot of time on the channel. The client has been changed to include this. A ping is started with ctrl-p, and the server will answer with a similar packet with its call inserted. An adjustable delay at the server will allow more than 1 server to answer to a ping, so you can see very quickly which server has the bes chance of being useable.The ping service will be included in version 0.1.6. More to come...

This is a copy of the email I just sent to my ADSL provider. Sorry it is in Dutch.

They are pestering me with spam offering to join their music stream service, and give 40 downloads per month free. But they are only supporting IE6. They suggest I 'UPGRADE to WINDOWS XP' To help you a little with the translation: ACHTERLIJK means BACKWARD (as in medieval).

To: customerservice @ planet.nl

quote

Ik had niet gedacht dat jullie zo **ACHTERLIJK** zouden zijn om Firefox niet te ondersteunen met jullie mediastream gedoe. Ik stel dan ook geen prijs meer op 'aanbiedingen voor gratis download'. Dit is een FARCE!!
UPGRADE (???) naar Window$ XP? Ik dacht dat ik het met professionals te doen had.Misschien moet ik mijn ADSL service maar eens upgraden.

Ik heb dan liever dat jullie mijn abonneeprijs lager maken.

Ik ben hierover bijzonder geschokt.

Hebben jullie aandelen Miro$oft?

Groeten,

Rein Couperus (sinds 20 jaar tevreden Linux gebruiker).

P.S.: Ik heb me dus maar weer afgemeld.

unquote

We are back home. The weather forecast for the next week is miserable, and we had a fine sailing week. Temperatures of 15 degrees C during the daytime are not good for my Rheuma-struck hands and feet. We don't mind having that in the evening, or when we are in a harbor or just sitting hi and dry on a sand bank. Our Diesel heater does a perfect job of making the boat a cosy place. We did a lot of reading (I read Dan Brown's 'Digital Fortress"), and I did not have enough power to run the computer all day. Which made it a real relaxed operation. I could not prevent getting a few good ideas for pskmail though, so the next few days will be quite busy :)

We took all the stuff from the boat, as we can take the camper when we go next time to lay the mast and make water tanks and sanitary system ready for the winter. Then the boat can rest for 5 months on shore. We have decided to go early next year so we don't run into the time trap like this year. Plans are to visit the German tidal waters in May 2006 with some friends , and if the weather is good enough to continue to Denmark. But that's still some time off.

First we have to clear the mess we have taken home. You cannot imagine (we cannot) the size of the heap of clothes, books, shoes, radio gear, canned food, etc... our boat is hiding during the season...

I have suggested we just put all the stuff into the camper...

At the moment we are sailing on the frisian lakes. We have hit the nice weather, and we think we will be here for at least a week. Meanwhile I am preparing the next goodies for PSKmail.