ninelocks
NineQSO
Some friends doing qso practice wanted to generate fictitious information to exchange such as random QTH, random weather reports etc. To reduce the burden of thinking these up, this program was written.
NineQSO was built to generate practice QSO texts by generating a collection of random callsigns, QTH, Location and reports that could then be used in other morse tutorial programs. The callsigns are all real and you can add your own additional ones.
It works by subsituting the generated random information into template QSOs that you can customise.
In addition the program can also turn the generated text into audio files (thanks to the Jeremiah Stoddard CW Library ) and optionally save the QSOs generate to a text file for you to use in your preferred CW tutor program.
so its really a big search and replace function that happens to produce CW!
How to Use It
Fill in your own details in the own call, own name and own qth fields.
Click on Create New Amateur and it will create a fictitious ham/qth/name/antenna etc
Click on create QSO and it will substitute the imaginary hams information into lines source from the qsolines.txt file.
You can then cut those lines out of the window to use in your favourite CW practice program.
Click Save to Wave file and it will convert the generated "Qso Lines" into cw and save it as wav file.
.
How to use the files
The associated variable that you insert into your qso lines is their names should explain their content.
The lines from which the program builds qso lines are in qsolines.txt and are of this form
(OUR_CALL) DE (HIS_CALL) =
GD ES TNX FER CALL =
UR RST (HIS_RST) =
NAME IS (HIS_NAME), QTH IS (HIS_QTH) = HW?
The parameters inside () are the ones that get subsituted into the pretend qso lines.
All the files are plain text, the colouring above is just to highlight the variable portions of the QSOs
The () are only there to make it more obvious where the variables so you can use () in your qso templates.
Parameters you can use that get subsituted into the qsi lines are
| Variable Name |
Sourced from |
| (OUR_CALL) |
Main Application window |
| (OUR_QTH) | Main Application window |
| (OUR_NAME) | Main Application window |
| Variable Name |
Used for |
Sourced Randomly from |
| (THEIR_CALL) | the contacts callsign | callsignlist.txt |
| (THEIR_NAME) | the contacts name | opnamelist.txt |
| (THEIR_QTH) |
their qth |
qthlist.txt |
| (THEIR_RIG) | their rig |
riglist.txt |
| (THEIR_POWER) |
the power sent in the
qso |
powerlist.txt |
| (THEIR_ANT) |
the antenna sent in
thee qso |
antennalist.txt |
| (THEIR_RST) |
an RST value |
rstlist.txt |
| (THEIR_WX) |
a Weather report |
wxlist.txt |
| (USERDEF_1) |
Whatever text you would
like to insert |
userdef1list.txt |
| (RAGCHEW) |
Ragchew text |
ragchewlist.txt |
Char Speed is the raw character speed
Overall WPM allows farnsworth spacing
Randomness varies the sending speed, higher values give more variability. Its certainly interesting but how useful may be debatable.
The cw also supports some prosigns
<ar>
<as>
<bt>
<cl>
<ct>
<kn>
<sk>
<sn>
There are many "cheat sheets" out there showing a standard QSO from the perspective of the station calling and the station replying.
For some being able to hear such an exchange is useful. NineQSO can provide and audio version of those cheat sheets.
Two files are provided "qsocalling.txt" and "qsoanswering.txt" these contain the messages for each station in the QSO.
You can customise these files to suit your own requirements.
To differentiate the two stations each can have a differant CW frequency. This is specified in the file by starting a line with the
value (freq=nnn) where nnn is the frequency in Hz you would like that lines CW to be in. If no freq is specified the program will use the frequency you have set on the oncreen cw generator parameters.
The QSOs are intended to simulate a QSO between you and another station. For the purpose of simulation and for practice purposes some of the content of the messages from "you" have some random values in them. Again you can change which these are by changing the variables in the QSO lines.
OR you can replace these in the qso files with fixed values.
| Variable Name |
Provides |
| (OUR_WX) |
a random weather report
(from wxlist.txt) |
| (OUR_TEMP) | a random temperature (from
temperaturelist.txt) |
| (OUR_RIG) | a random rig (from
riglist.txt) |
| (OUR_ANT) |
a random antenna (from
antennalist.txt) |
| (OUR_POWER) |
a random power report (from
powerlist.txt) |
To try the simulated qso
1) start NineQSO
2) go to file menu and choose qsoanswering,txt
3) Press the create QSOs button
4) Press the save as wave button
Sit back and listen (it should save the file then launch windows media player)
It should produce an audio files with you and the pretend amateur.
To make it obvious which is which the pretend amateur has a cw frequency of 500Hz , so assuming you dont set your side to 500 as well you should be able to tell them apart.
(the frequency for the other amateur is inside the qsocalling.txt and qsoanswering.txt.
An early release can be downloaded from here. The downloaded zip should be unpacked into a folder of your choice. The NineQSO.exe and all the .txt files should reside in the same folder! Later version may have an installer. :-)
Ultimately source will be available once its tidier!
errors, bug reports, requests gm0hyy@ninelocks.com