[GreenKeys] HAL ST-8000 (New Toy)

[William Wuttke]

Thanks to Joe Gilliam, I’m now the proud owner of a legendary HAL ST-8000. I never expected to be able to own one of these rare modems. I’ve spent the past few days familiarizing myself with the manuals and the unit. (A set of pdf manuals was graciously provided by Colleen at halcomm.com <http://halcomm.com/>.) The only thing I really had to do was adust the CRT display centering and intensity controls. So far, I’ve tested with all 3 ITTY feeds and actually copied yesterday’s W1AW bulletin using my recently restored KWM-2 as a receiver. I copied about 99+%. During the transmission, signal varied from S7 to S1 due to fading, with a couple of complete dropouts. The only time I actually had errors was when the signal totally dropped out.

I finally got the MIC (AFSK/PTT) connector in the mail today and made up a cable for the transmit side. I need to do some testing first, but plan to get on the air soon with the ST-8000, ASR-33, and KWM-2. The ST-8000 makes it easy to use a model 33 using the regeneration feature (plus 20ma loop to RS-232 adapter) - plugs right in. I wonder how many hams still use RTTY for normal QSO’s. I guess I’ll soon find out.

For those who own ST-8000’s: I’ve never used the crossed ellipse tuning indicator before and wonder what I should be seeing. With the standard 2125/2295 45 baud signal, the ellipses are somewhat “tilted”. The MARK is a little clockwise from horizontal and the SPACE is somewhat counterclockwise from vertical. Is this normal?

Having fun with my new toy,

Bill
KE3BK

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/greenkeys/attachments/20180504/b684ae5e/attachment.html>